No Room for Tarzan and Jane

Published November 17, 1983. For several years now, and in numerous columns, I have been saying that marriage has changed. I’ve also mentioned that if marriages are going to survive during the latter part of the 20^th Century, we are going to have to make some changes.

This was recently mentioned in a letter I received not long ago from a column reader who is divorced. Much of her problem, she stated, was the “Tarzan and Jane” role expectation she and her former husband had of marriage and of each other. She wrote:

I have been divorced for a year now. Our marriage lasted three years, and we knew each other for several years before we were married. Our problems encompassed the familiar and perhaps the not-so-familiar.

Before we were married we each were independent and self-supporting. We admired those traits in each other and found them attractive. After marriage, however, these qualities became less attractive and led to much anger.

Our built-in stereotyped expectations of husband and wife roles got in the way. We lost sight of who and what we had been to each other as lovers and individuals before we were married. After the marriage, we held each other to rigid expectations of what we thought the other should do or be.

I was supposed to be like his mother, a tender of the home fires, the supportive one, the baker of bread, something he knew I wasn’t or couldn’t be. He, in turn, was to become the fixer of cars, the plumber and the overall handyman.

After our marriage each of us struggled to keep or put the other into the pre-assigned niche. During this time I think we privately mourned the loss of the time before marriage when these demands did not exist – when we just lived our lives and did what needed to be done. Our unrealistic expectations after marriage became a constant source of conflict as we continually negotiated over mutual and exclusive territory. Obviously, we did not survive.

Each time one of us tried to do something on the basis of skill, knowledge or expertise rather than assigned roles, the other would be hurt. It was a matter of pride, insecurity and a fear of being totally consumed by the other, a fear of losing control of our own lives, and a fear of losing one’s self.

When men expect their wives to be their mothers, or women expect husbands to be their fathers, no one wins. Yet we had no other models. The women’s movement may have exaggerated this point, but it may eventually create a healthier life for all, both male and female.

After our marriage I chose to work because I loved my job, was nourished by it, and was made complete by it. But with a joint income of $88,000 I was predestined by gender to be the one to scrub the toilets. We could never get by that in our marriage. With that much income we could have afforded a housekeeper or a bi-monthly maid, yet because I was the wife I was genetically ordained to push the vacuum.

We found marriage to be difficult because there are no longer any society rules of who should do what. Therefore, the “Tarzan and Jane” stereotypes must give way if we are going to survive marriage at the present time. We cannot go back to the 1950s – those days are gone forever. And we may continue to destroy each other in marriage until we can learn to live with each other as genuine individuals with more flexible roles for today’s marriage.

(Signed by the reader)

What do you think? Is she right? Should marriage, or our expectations of it, change to fit the times or vice versa?