Many people unhappy in their relationship say that their partner is lazy and unmotivated because they won’t get a job, especially when the person working is a woman and the person who isn’t is a man. Although many of these working people may have partners who really do just sit at home watching TV and playing video games, my stay at home man is much much more, and if you have one like mine, he is a keeper. So often, we assign value to the ones we love based on how much money they have and/or earn, even if that love originated for completely different reasons. Either they work all the time and make lots of money, but we are unhappy because we rarely see them, or they don’t have enough paying work and though we get to spend lots of time with them, we wonder why we keep them around despite any other work they do that doesn’t generate an income. Either way, we are focusing on the societal sin of not having more money rather than the possible blessing of being able to spend quality time with the person you’ve chosen to be with and benefiting from the things that they do, unrelated to money, that make life better for you.
My partner and I have had times when we’ve both worked, when one of us has worked, and when neither of us has worked. I have to say that the most stressful times we’ve had, along with the times that we’ve had the hardest times with money, were when we both had regular jobs. We didn’t get to spend enough time together. The extra money we made was eaten up by spending more money on eating out because we didn’t have the time or energy to cook. We didn’t have the energy to do anything fun together, so we’d mostly watch TV and buy video games (spending more money), didn’t eat much that was nutritious, deteriorating our energy level even more. We smoked a lot to deal with the stress (more money out the window)…the cycle just got worse and worse.
There have also been a few points in our relationship when neither of us has had a paying job. Depending on the circumstances, these have been some of the best and most productive times we’ve had together. The most distinct period of time when this happened was just after we left Portland, OR. I had a very stressful and unfulfilling job, our apartment building was full of bedbugs with no hope of the owner cleaning them out, and we were tired of living in the city, not getting ahead of our bills and saving money. I had just gotten a bonus for working a special project at work, and we decided that this was our shot, so we bought a bunch of camping equipment and rode the city bus out to the coast, intending to backpack down the coast to Baja California if we could make it. That isn’t how it turned out in the end, but neither of us had a paying job for five months after that. After a month of camping and learning a lot about the plants and ocean life on the coast, we ended up meeting a couple in need of some housekeeping, mechanical, and maintenance assistance, and stayed with them, exchanging work for lodging. Intermittently, we would backpack back out to a great little hidey-hole camping spot they had shown us and stay out for a week or more at a time, learning more about the plants in the area, living on crab, clams, and wild huckleberries and strawberries, and experimenting with basketmaking, building biodegradable but sturdy shelters, and other "primitive" living skills. Believe me, it’s not as easy as they make it look in the movies!
However, I have to admit, I was a lot less useful out of doors than my man (and still am). Although I quickly became accustomed to carrying a lot of weight long distances, I had had less outdoor experience starting fires, building things, fishing, cooking (especially outdoors)…I had to learn everything, whereas he just had to apply what he knew to our environment. It was a difficult transition, and although I had been a quick learner at school and in jobs, it took a lot longer for me to learn these new outdoor skills. I’m still working on them whenever I get a chance, preparing for whatever our next adventure is. I would not trade this experience for the world, though. I experienced more in those months than in any other previous period of the same length in my life. More importantly, it showed me the possibility of living a much less restricted life, one in which I don’t need money, but instead rely on someone else, who in turn relies on me, to be sane, pay attention, learn, and work, watching each others’ backs along the way.
The reasons that we didn’t continue our adventures on the Oregon coast are many, intricate, and can be saved for other stories. The point was just to illustrate that life is possible without two people working, and can be very liberating without being a burden on "society" at large. At last, we reach the third scenario, one person working and one staying home.
This might not work for everyone. I understand that some couples, especially those with children to support, have a harder time with only one member with a paying job if they make less than a living wage, and others prefer to each have their own careers, and their relationship works well that way. This article is not about being snide in the face of couples that both have jobs or saying that they’re wrong, it’s more about appreciating what you have if your partner doesn’t have a job. The double standard of it being okay for a woman to stay home and be a housewife while a man that does it is called a slacker or deadbeat is what makes me sick.
My man is one of the most wonderful, amazing people I know. He is talented at almost everything he tries to do, and picks up new skills all the time, whether he has a job or not. Right now he is learning about computer language and building websites, and has started a blog, trying to build an independent income in preparation for our next bit of travelling, you know, something we can do on the road. It’s not a huge income yet, but these things take time to build up. If you’re interested, it’s called "greenideas2flip", click on the link here to go to the one he writes about freedom and ways to attain it, or click on the link at the start of this article to read about being a stay at home man.
On top of that, he does the housework, cooks me delicious dinners every night (unless we’re steeped in delicious leftovers), does the laundry, does the grocery shopping, catches fresh fish and shellfish to cook for us, and grows herbs and vegetables. This is a full-time job and then some. The trade-off for not earning an extra income is that our food is more fresh and nutritious and costs less money, we’re not as stressed out, we have more energy and time to spend together, and we’re working towards being more prepared for our next adventure. We actually save more money this way, and have a better quality of life. On top of that, we live more sustainably and pay more attention to our environmental impact.
Leave a question if you want to know more details about how to make this work, or visit my man’s stay at home man blog; it’s easier than you might think! In the meantime, appreciate the partner you have, and whether they are working or not, make the most of the time you have with them because that time is much more precious than the money they bring home!
