I’m an AFAB person with a handful of “traditionally masculine” hobbies. Basically I’m woman-adjacent in a few men-heavy fields. So I get to live both sides of conversations like the one below.
Let me tell y’all: if this what your relationship looks like in terms of hobbies, you’ve got it more fucked up than you realize. My husband literally helps me search for things when I’m dollar bin digging. He knows that we’re going to the Lego shop of a certain mall or aisle of a certain store if we’re there for other stuff. Conversely, he buys whatever on Steam, and I pick up the physical pre-orders from Gamestop and get them installed so they’re ready when he’s off work. I know what day Warframe weeklies reset.
To be fair, some of those are my pre-orders, and he’s been kept up to date on my Marvel Rivals season (and before that Overwatch and before that League). And, to be even fairer, we have mostly overlapping hobbies. He just reads whatever books I buy, and we both came into the relationship fifteen years ago with a collection of books, comic compendiums, DVD, and video game collections.
I still know why you’re having this specific gender-based conflict around hobbies, though, particularly ones that read as “boyish.”
And, surprise, it comes down to the patriarchy and they way we’re taught to conform to the expectations of our assigned gender.
Let’s say we examine something like the modern sitcom. There’s a very common theme of the husband being a childish but good-natured buffoon who the wife has to constantly manage or he’ll get in over his head. But in the worst version of this dynamic, he’s the good guy and the wife is a villain. Just a guy with a sense of childish delight with an antagonistic wife
Consider the Game Over groom’s cake as a concept. The ball and chain. These are both symptoms of and cyclical contributions to that nag/manchild gendered power dynamic.
Young girls receive a lot of messaging that they mature faster than boys. They are also more harshly punished, socially, for not meeting expectations of maturity. It’s the teenage mom who gets ostracized and demeaned, not the teenage dad who was equally irresponsible or the adult man who took advantage of her naiveté. Girls are constantly nitpicked about looking or acting “too grown” while also being expected to meet more adult standards than their male cohorts.
That’s only the first layer, though. Because there’s extended messaging that men are always going to be a little incompetent around certain basic day-to-day domestic life skills. That they’re always going to need to be mothered to some degree.
There’s also the underlying intent that you, as the wife, are going to have to drag your male partner into adulthood behind you. That Boys only really become Men when they have wives and families and households to lead. The boys will be boys narrative is very quick to absolve them of negative behaviors.
Hyper-masculine messaging attempts to fix some of these things but swings the pendulum too far and doesn’t remove any of the negatives. Instead young men are told they need to meet this very narrow perception of masculinity, and it often comes with a different kind of misogyny on top. It’s not a perfect system, either.
Underscoring all of this is the phenomenon of the feminine erosion of identity. It is far more common for women to lose their sense of self under familial labels. “Jane” is more likely to be subsumed by Mom and Mrs. Smith than “John” is. Men are more often allowed to retain a sense of individual identity. And we don’t necessarily clock that this is happening. It’s a slow boil that changes you as the years progress. So it’s very possible for a grown woman to have a level of intellectual distance from the idea of full-freedom of expression
The patriarchal angle on all of this is to put women in a position where they’re forced into taking ownership of the basics of day to day life and the actions of their husbands without getting access to commiserate benefits of those responsibilities.
How does this trickle down into something like collecting LEGOS. We have a couple of possible logical considerations.
-Those are “kid” hobbies. You, as a man, need to be told what is adult, and I, as the wife, need to provide that instruction.
-This is my house. My domain. I’m in control of everything here. Your hobby is physically encroaching on the space that society has assigned to me, and that’s unacceptable.
-You’re not allowed, socially, to just do things you like because you like them. You have to, instead, do the things that society has declared are acceptable to you or you might face severe social repercussions.
-There are other men adhering to “traditional masculinity” why can’t you do the same? Particularly if I’m expected to adhere to “traditional femininity?”
And while these feelings are valid, the social situations that give rise to these feelings…are all kinda fake. Social pressures are made up. It’s just stuff we all collectively decided with no actual objective scientific support, which means we have the power to change it for ourselves at an individual level.
What does that look like, then?
If you’re the husband in this:
- Are you actually hobby-ing responsibly?
Because you’re receiving the reciprocal versions of the narratives above. That your wife is just going to nag nag nag, so you don’t really need to pay attention. That’s just what wives do. Is it possible, though, that she has a point? That her complaints are extremely valid. That your hobby, in some form or fashion, is putting undue burden on the rest of the family. Do you actually have the money for this? Are you taking up more space in the house than you’re due without providing commiserate maintenance on that house? Is time for your hobby getting in the way of spending time with your wife and kids or performing necessary tasks around basic living?
You need to be really honest with yourself here or the rest of the troubleshooting doesn’t work. - Have you…like…talked about it? Properly? Like adults?
Have you asked your wife, blatantly, “why do you get so upset when I buy/do xyz? Is there something specific you’d rather I be doing?” And if you have asked that question, did you listen? We really undersell this whole…basic communication thing. - How heavily do you weight friction in the relationship against “fairness” in terms of access to your hobbies?
You’ve had this self-reflection, and you’ve done the math. Your weekly comic purchases are well within budget. The time you spend in the shop, reading, and organizing your collection doesn’t get in the way of anything else you need to do. You spend time with your kids. You spend time with your wife. Your short boxes take up a very small section of the garage that you’ve personally converted to be safe storage. You are doing your job.
But she wants you to stop completely because she’s tired of looking at the boxes hanging around and thinks you should be spending your time on something more “useful.” Now, to me, of course, this is in no way shape or form a reasonable request, but what are you going to do about it? Maybe a compromise is that you only read digitally and don’t physically collect any more comics. Maybe that’s something that you just didn’t consider before, and even if it’s not entirely fair, it’s doable.
But when having to make that choice between making your wife happy and denying an element of self, what’s your line? Are you willing to stand up for your own interests in a calm, reasoned fashion? Is how you are living emotionally sustainable? - If the any above reveals that you actually are the problem, are you willing to change?
Yeah, turns out you’re $30k in consumer debt, forgo showering to game, and haven’t seen your kids in three days. So are you willing to make a change here? Because building a family does come with a change in priorities, there is a change in priorities. You can’t actually live exactly like you lived when you were single because you’ve entered into a partnership where you’ve agreed to share responsibilities. Add kids, and that increases. There’s a practical element there.
And as part of this partnership, are you allowing your wife equitable access to me-time/hobbies? Our aforementioned erosion of female identity. So if you pursue your passions without supporting her to do the same, you’re part of the problem. And you need to fix it.
Let’s say you’re the wife. You have your own checklist.
- Why do you give a shit?
In a purely introspective way, why do you have strong negative emotions about your husband’s “childish” (or otherwise) hobby? Is it time? Money? Some other variable? Have you adequately communicated this? And that’s not to say you haven’t, but if we’re trying to troubleshoot, we have to knock this obvious one off the list.
If there isn’t an issue with money, time, or otherwise…why do you give a shit what he does with his designated fun money or me-time?
When you have that answer in a solid form, then you can move forward with dismantling it in whatever way moves things forward. - Are you unduly caught up on “mature” vs “immature” hobbies?
Let’s consider our socialization around maturity. A lot of these lines are, ostensibly, fake. You, as a girl, were probably given “adult” tasks and expectations way younger than your male peers. They were allowed to be “boys” way longer than you were allowed to be a “girl.” That’s probably a big reason your husband still does his “boy” hobbies as an adult. He was never told to stop.
So is that coloring your perception of what is an “appropriate” hobby for an adult? Because if a guy is just hanging out once a month with his friends drinking beers, does it really matter if they’re watching football or doing a raid in World of Warcraft? Really examine the intellectual difference between those two. Because while both come with complex knowledge of a game, one is real-time strategy and communication, the other is yelling at athletic millionaires through the TV. Why is one more “adult” than the other? - You know you chose to marry/partner with this guy right?
You voluntarily entered into a partnership with this person. Presumably, he had this hobby before you ever made it official. What were you going to…like…do…about it? Were you just going to…stop him? Did you assume he would grow out of it?
Why?
Were you laboring under those narratives of transactional maturity? That you could pull him up the ladder behind you? What if you couldn’t? What was the backup plan?
If your husband is literally just acting like the man you married, what was the breaking point where that was suddenly a problem? Did something not meet your expectations? Were those expectations reasonable to begin with? - You know that you can have hobbies, too, right?
And they can be childish. You know what’s fun as hell? Making paper dolls. I found a travel spirograph at a toy store recently, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever bought. Spirography is delightful when you see the patterns emerge. There’s a reason adult coloring books are still in fashion.
We have all been tricked into thinking adulthood has to look a certain way. Your husband, however, is part of a group, that recognized, to some degree, that this is bullshit. He’s rebelled against the mainstream to maintain a sense of whimsy. You can do the same, and that’s going to give you a whole different perspective on his relationship with his hobby.
And if he suddenly has a problem with you doing a hobby you didn’t before, he’s a hypocrite and you can call him out on that.
What it ultimately comes down to is your both trapped in a cycle perpetuated by patriarchal standards of adulthood. A cycle that’s storing resentment on both sides. You don’t have to be doing any of this. And breaking that cycle come with a little bit of discomfort. But on the other side, you’re both free, and that’s worth it.
Pixels and Pins Studio 