Small Strokes Big Oaks

I think is interesting how feminism and long-distance relationships seem to fit together and be mutually beneficial.  I, myself, was in several long(er)-distance relationships throughout undergrad and well into my first teaching job.  In fact, I had relationships that involved some sort of travel all the way up until I met Tim – soon to be Mr. Samsanator. 🙂  I actually found that I enjoyed these long(er)-distance relationships because they allowed me to be myself and do my own thing and explore my studies or my career without distraction.  When I all of a sudden found myself ready for a close-distance relationship, though, I found myself with Tim.  But there were (and still are, truth be told) times where I miss that distance and that ability to test the waters and be truly focused on something other than your relationship, so to speak.

So when Jessica sent me a pitch for a post about her long-distance relationship, I jumped at the opportunity to publish it.  And this time, when Rachel pitched her post about the same topic to me, I immediately told her I’d love to read her post, because I’m both fascinated by and nostalgic for long-distance relationships and what they mean for feminism.  I’m so glad Rachel sent me her post, because it is both so similar to and so different from Jessica’s – just like any relationship can be so similar to and so different from anyone else’s – that I absolutely had to share it here.  So, enjoy!  And be sure to get all the way to the end, because the last sentence is so poignant, it took my breath away!

For the past two and a half years, my boyfriend and I have maintained a long-distance relationship, and the first chance we’ll have to change—or not change—this setup is eight months away. On the surface, the origins of my decision to stay in a long-distance relationship look righteously feminist. I’m comforted by the freedom and independence that living and working alone towards my career grants me. I lug my own groceries, and I study wherever and whenever I please. I cook and clean and launder, but only for myself. (I’m also, I’ve learned, quite talented with a power drill and a hammer.) I’ve held up my relationship arrangement as proof both to myself and to others that no man can affect my career goals, or I’m doing this for me, or every decision I make is with myself first in mind.

The (I thought) feminist underpinnings of my relationship have become much more complicated with our time apart coming to a close. I’m sure—especially now that we’re looking forward towards marriage—that I want to end this back-and-forth, and make a life for myself alongside my boyfriend in the city where he currently lives. Where in this carefully built feminist self will I find room to shelve all these assertions, these beliefs I’ve clung to as evidence of me doing me?

Right now, both of us are apprentices at the beginning of our careers. We’re both broke, we both study all the time, and we’re both putting miles on our shopworn cars. Despite this equality of practice, my partner’s and my career paths diverge sharply in areas of earning potential: he’s a medical student, interested in surgery, while I, a graduate student in the fine art of poetry, work as a freelancer and teach undergraduate writing classes. When we first left college and met new people in our respective programs, the same quip surfaced enough times to make my blood boil. “Thank you,” a writer in my program once said to my boyfriend at a party, his hand outstretched in mock gratitude, “for being a patron of the arts.” My ears red, all I could hear from his tone was judgment: you dabble, poet-woman, because he’ll make enough cash for you both.

It’s a joke, sure, but one that implicates me as mastermind in some sort of financial love-coup—one that insinuates my place as the taken-care-of one, the domesticated woman who needn’t worry. Yes, our projected lifetime incomes are inequal, and while I cannot deny that this imbalance makes me feel uncomfortable and defensive at times, I know that pursuing a life in the arts means embracing the in-hand lifetime of income uncertainty—and no, thank you, a marriage is not a patronage. If feminism dwells within a woman’s power of choice, then my love of poetry comes from the most feminist part of myself. The paycheck, mine or his, bears no concern on my life’s work.

My long-distance relationship, over time, has both raised and answered many questions about commitment and feminism. First: who gives in? When is it acceptable to compromise, and when does work come before a visit? When I give in, and he doesn’t, am I giving up more—traction, power, sense of self? On the weekends when I have piles of papers to grade or he has a test to take, we stay in our respective cities. If a month goes by—well, those are the months I thank AT&T and keep my nose to the career grindstone. Sometimes, I’m grateful for the space and the quiet; other days, the space and the quiet devastate me. It might sound cheesy to say, but I think I’ve learned more about love, its variants and textures and mutabilities, from allowing myself to miss someone in this manner. It also makes the work I do feel that much more important, and vibrant, because I know what I’ve given up—for now—to pursue it fully.

I’ve found myself redefining love at the same time as my ideas of feminism shift and grow, a pairing that I don’t believe to be accidental. Feminism, for me, is now more than just my decision three years ago to cultivate a life apart from someone I love; it’s also my realization that loving someone through the ebbs and flows of compromise is a form of self-assertion and self-value. Making decisions about a shared future—where two ambitious people in love can look across a couch, or a dinner table, or a stack of books at each other and make a life that works—need not become an exercise in power struggles or failed expressions of self. A feminist love can move closer, eradicate highways and flights and set up shop in a single apartment or home. It wasn’t the distance I placed between myself and my boyfriend that made my long-distance decision feminist; it was my determination to know myself wholly, and for my partner to know himself wholly, before I allowed room for mutuality and compromise.

Last week, I talked to my mother on the phone. I’ve been in a long-distance relationship, in a way, with my family ever since I left for college many years ago. She shared two thoughts with me whose force sat me down at the computer to begin drafting this post. First: you’ll never be with everyone you love forever. Life is one long wave, all comings and goings. Even the most stubborn of us (and I can hear her cough pointedly, implicating her oh-so-stubborn daughter), with so much to prove about their independence and career successes, need to make room for another person if that’s what the heart surely wants.

Second: “I’d have moved to the moon,” she said, “to be with your father. When I was ready to go to the moon, of course.”

Rachel Mennies is a writer currently living in central Pennsylvania. While in Pennsylvania, she’s spent time working for the University of Pittsburgh, and is nearly finished with her MFA in poetry from Penn State. She writes a blog at http://www.rachelmennies.com on creative writing and technology.

This was a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships, but is also about the author’s relationship with feminism and with religion and culture. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.