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Are You the Husband or the Wife?
August 22, 2011 by The Next Family
Filed under Don Todd, Family, Same Sex Parent
By: Don Todd
An interesting topic came up while my husband and I had dinner with some friends of ours. They asked if we are offended if someone asks who the “wife” is. It’s one of the few times when I can’t seem to come up with a smart mouth answer (and that’s saying something). I just don’t know how to answer something like that. I guess it depends on who is asking the question, someone off the street or a good friend. I guess it could even depend on who in my immediate family is asking the question.
Our friends Ed and Todd put it best by answering, “we are two men who love each other. That’s it!” It is such an old stereotype that in a couple there needs to be a husband and a wife.
I brought up that the same question could really be asked of a straight couple, like these days when the female has the major career and the male is a house dad who takes care of the kids on a daily basis.
So I want to ask the question to everyone else in a same-sex relationship. How do you answer the question when it is posed to you? Are you offended if someone asks this type of question?
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(Photo Credit: City of West Hollywood)
I have friends who have said there is a division based on interests and abilities and it somehow works itself out.
I do find the question offensive. Even more so if they ask if our daughter calls me ‘daddy’. Um, no! Do I look like I have a penis?! We reply to the question usually with a smartass question back to them, such as, “Who wear the pants in your marriage?” Or simply “Neither, and would it matter anyway?”
I choose to willfully misunderstand the question, and laugh, saying, “We both are, of course!”
This is a ridiculous question although I think we can top it. When our daughter was about 10 weeks old we had a visitor, a lesbian of all things and she is a bit older and she asked which one of us was the daddy. I was pretty annoyed.
Well, with a baby on the way, we have been asked “who’s the daddy?” which is pretty annoying. I tell people that she is the mother and I am the mother, and that we have a donor not a daddy. People also always assume that I am the “husband” because I have the short hair, wear no makeup nor skirts, and am not feminine. But what they’re usually surprised to find out is that I am the one who cooks, cleans, does laundry, while my girly wife likes to put stuff together and complete DIY projects around the house. Just a lesson in never assuming anything about anyone.