Lady Chatterley's Lover

Poor ole D.H! I’m robbing the title of his most famous book and using it to describe a type of a relationship. So….let’s see….the titular Lady Chatterley and her Gardener crossing social and financial and moral lines to have an illicit affair.

If we apply this to today’s world o’relationships, it would work somewhat like this –

A female Vice President (aka Lady Chatt) decides to date a Roofer (the aforementioned Gardener).

With me so far?

Ok.

So…it’s all fun in the beginning. You have stuff in common, he amuses you, he fixes your roof for free (well, almost), he’s cute and affectionate. You two have a wonderful, wonderful time. It’s just ducky! Maybe you’ve been alone for a while, or maybe you were with someone who wasn’t that into you. At any rate, it feels great.

Six months into the relationship, Lady Chatt is yet again paying all the combined bills, and doing the laundry, and the cooking, and the cleaning, and shopping, and even fixing up the little broken things around the house! Our friend the Roofer is doing little jobs as they pop up, but has no consistent work. Nor does he seem to want to go acquire some…and grow his solo operation into a real business. So while Lady Chatt is off at work, the Roofer is using his copious downtime by sitting around watching Golf. Or Nascar. Or the fishing channel. Lady Chatt is off working on a mega merger, or some large cost reduction process, while the Roofer is sitting at home picking his nose. And yet the Roofer feels that there is nothing wrong with calling Lady Chatt from his reclined position (sofa, here I come!) and asking what she’s cooking for dinner!

Lady Chatt sits herself down, and says “hm. He’s a great guy but…” And she never finishes the sentence. None of us ever finish the sentence. Why don’t we? Why do we feel bad saying “He’s a great guy but he doesn’t make enough money”???? Is there some sort of taboo that says even thinking about money and a relationship in the same thought is not something a woman should never ever mention in her list of reasons something won’t work?

I have to call bullshit on that one. Serious bullshit. Why? I swear this is some creaky old happy fifties family traditional kinda crap that is drilled into us from conception forth. Money is Bad. Never EVER Talk To A Man About Money (or doing the laundry, or the dishes, or cleaning the toilet once in a while). Talking about money is a surefire way to emasculate a man.

Why? We talk to men about our periods, about cramps, about childbirth and labial tears and episiotomies and other really gross stuff with absolute glee. Why are we so afraid of the money talk?

I’m sorry, everyone, if it makes me shallow, but I will never, ever again even consider dating someone who makes less than half of what I make. I can honestly say that I ended up resenting having to carry the men in my relationship because, just as with Lady Chatt above, I was assuming all the gender roles humanly possible. Paying bills, doing laundry, mowing the yard, taking out the trash, doing the shopping, etc., etc. (at this point Yul nods his head and echoes “etcetera etcetera”!!) If it makes me a graspy, greedy harpy, so be it. I felt like I was the one bringing home the bank (at some points the only bank) therefore I should be the one who makes the decisions. No, you can’t spend $2000 on a new computer…we don’t have the money. No, you can’t go join the country club in order to play golf….we don’t have the money. The one advantage to being the money maker is that you have sole discretion in deciding where to spend your money. Your partner wants a new computer, but is unemployed, and you want a new coat or a pair of earrings or teeth whitening? You get to do it. It’s your money and you earned it.

You know…the real beauty of a blog and the even greater wondrousness of the internet is that no one gives a flying rat’s fuck about my writing style or sentence structure. I can literally spew out what I’m thinking, and I don’t get back a redlined paper, or a note that says “your argument isn’t very compelling to me”. I love it! :-)