[ SECRET POST #5532 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5532 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



__________________________________________________



02.



__________________________________________________



03.



__________________________________________________



04.



__________________________________________________



05.



__________________________________________________



06.



__________________________________________________



07.




















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #792.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/bgAYGW5.png

[(Anonymous)]

Everyone needs to take time away from always having to fight, just from time-to-time. A little bit of fantasy does you good, even if it is problematic.

[(Anonymous)]

I have thought this too. The problem is of course, that no other human is 100% reliable. You'd have a set of worries to weigh you down that are alien to us today - are you feeding your husband well enough? Do your kids and your husband look smart enough? Will your husband be pleased by the state of the house, is it clean enough? Do you look attractive enough for your husband?

Frankly, although it's hard to stand on your own feet, I much prefer it to being dependent on a man and having my world revolve around their pleasures. If I'm bringing in half the money, then the correct answer to a husband telling me he's displeased with how I look/the house/his meal is telling him to fuck off.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I mean, Durwood could be an ass in Bewitched, but the power always lay with Samantha.

[(Anonymous)]

+1
Yeah, the housewife fantasy is only ever appealing because the fantasy-husband is kind and respectful and won't let the power dynamic get to his head. Actual husbands from that time period though... oof

[pantswarrior]

...Yeah.

I have been both entirely dependent on other people (not a partner) and had a partner entirely dependent on me in the past. I would take "making it on my own" over either, though "everything split equally" was definitely nice while it lasted.

I could see how either being the supporter or the supported can be a happy fantasy though, where everything is going okay and no one is unhappy with the situation.

[(Anonymous)]

I always think how I'd have to clean other peoples' houses or something. Plenty of women had to have jobs back then.

[hey_hey_hey]

A lot of those upper middle class white housewives were hopped up on mommy's little helpers and beer half the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Absolutely accurate.

[(Anonymous)]

This is a sentiment that you see a lot and I'm never sure how to feel about it, because I don't totally get why there's such a big difference between those things and the use of modern antidepressants and other psychiatric medication that we accept as commonplace and good.

[(Anonymous)]

They were not. They drank gin, not beer.

[sparklywalls]

You would definitely still worry about money if your husband was the type to get his pay packet and drink most of it away within the first few hours.

Not trying to have a go or anything because there's the fact you've stated that there's a reason this is a secret, and I know it's not unusual that the extremely positive/upbeat version of housewife existence often presented in light entertainment appeals. But depending on your social class, worrying about money was still a thing.

Personally I'm glad to live in the world now, stressful as it is. I have always felt (right from my teens) like I can imagine nothing worse than being made to feel like I'm not allowed to be smart or ambitious or have any interests outwith the domestic sphere, like all that other stuff is purely my husband's domain.

[(Anonymous)]

You would definitely still worry about money if your husband was the type to get his pay packet and drink most of it away within the first few hours.

For real this. But I get the idea that op is talking more about the fantasy aspect of that lifestyle, because Rob Petrie would NEVER!

[(Anonymous)]

OP have you ever looked to see if you might have Complex PTSD?

I only say this because the ‘salvation fantasy’ can be part of the condition.

(Not saying you have to be mentally ill to have that fantasy, it just struck a chord with me.)

[meadowphoenix]

No offense, but your not desire is not about being a housewife in the 40s-60s, since you know good and full well at best those shows were about relationships more idealistically respectful than actually representative.

More importantly, all of those housewives think about money and survival, like quite literally in those shows you mentioned. Why do you think Samantha is so worried about fucking up Darren's job? Laura does the household budget! There are multiple episodes in those shows where women talk about the prices of food, of clothes, of class which is very much about the display of money and what they can afford. Many of the real housewives then were solely in charge of the household budget and would be judged on their ability to manage their husband's vices. No offense but there is zero time at which people of any gender did not have survival and money concerns in a way that wasn't specifically about how many resources they actually held.

Your desire is about being cared for in a structured and unsolicited way and being able to give back without taxing yourself. I think most people want something close to that. But no housewife had that certainty either.

[(Anonymous)]

It's always nice to imagine outsourcing various responsibilities and worries to other people, but I think in practice a lot of post-war couples still tackled things like income and budget as a team, so even if the wife didn't have to earn the money she still had to worry about ot.

[(Anonymous)]

I understand what you mean, anon. I like to be taken care of too, and adulthood is taxing af for most of us, so I imagine a lot of other people feel the same way. Its not wrong to want to be happy!

But be careful what you wish for: I was a child who grew up in this type of household in the 60s/70s (I'm a fanom Olde), with working father and stay-at-home mother. My father went to work, my mother literally did EVERYTHING ELSE. She was often overworked and stressed, and because I was the oldest and also a girl, I was put to work helping her. My father couldn't turn the stove on to save his life, didn't know how to operate a washer, didn't even know how to cook the simplest of meals, because he never had to learn. He would help my mother with yard work and they painted the house together once, but that was the extent of it. They both worked, but my mother didn't get to retire.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, house work is 24/7 job, where's a regular job is 9/5. Especially with kids, especially kids with special needs or something similar. I mean there's a lot stay at home mothers, and I do not envy them.

[dancingmouse]

If it can be EXACTLY like the idealistic fantasy on TV, I'd love to be a housewife. I'd even raise kids if that were the case. Sadly, like others have mentioned, it doesn't work that way in reality.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, if you told me I could have a nice, loving family and a comfortable life and all I would need to do was cook and clean and raise the kids? Sign me up for that in a heartbeat.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not my fantasy, but if I had to pick I'd rather fantasize about being a well-kept housewife/SAHM now, since it's a fantasy anyway, and at least now divorce is legal, marital rape is not, and I can open a bank account in my own name and not my dad's or husband's.

Then again, my grandmothers were housewives in the 50s, and the happily married one worked as a hairdresser out of her tiny front parlor for extra cash and raised three boys on a shoestring.

The unhappily married one left her kids alone to go drinking until my little kid uncles set the navy housing apartment on fire trying to feed and wash my tiny baby mother. My monster maternal grandfather beat the shit out of grandma when he was called back from the Pacific front (he was a rear admiral) and dragged her home after picking the kids up from CPS. They would've been better off in foster care, since he raped all of them. I never met my maternal grandmother, she died in her early 50s before I was born.

All that is to say, so long as I'm fantasizing, I'd rather dream of being filthy rich in my own right.

[(Anonymous)]

I've long suspected this is something many women feel and don't express, because we don't want to "set feminism back" or "give men the wrong idea" or come across as stupid/weak/submissive/conservative. Because of course we know that what we really crave about the housewife "fantasy" has very little to do with the reality of being a housewife--then or now.

I am asexual and I still feel a pang of irrational yearning sometimes, when I imagine being a housewife.

The way I've been emotionally processing that pang of yearning, for several years now, is by thinking about the first line of the song Down In The Valley by The Head & The Heart, which goes, "I wish I was a slave to an age-old trade/Like riding around on railcars and working long days."

Does he? Does Jonathan Russell really "wish he was a slave to an age-old trade"? I highly doubt it. But do I understand and resonate with the yearning that inspired said line? Absolutely. It's the same yearning I feel when I imagine being a 50's housewife.

Because yes, I too yearn for the comfort of simplicity. I year for a sense of structure in my life, in my self, the way someone who has been trying fruitlessly to move a boulder for ages and ages might yearn for something they can put their feet against--something that would allow them to finally get some leverage. I yearn to feel that I can handle the tasks my life requires of me, and be seen as capable, and maybe even aspirational in some way. I yearn to feel as though I understand what I must do to pass muster in my life, and I yearn to feel as though I have a hope in hell of actually doing it--because I've honestly never felt either of those things before and I likely never will.

And while the reality of being a 50's housewife, or alternatively, a 'slave' to an age-old trade, would, in reality, be mostly just a nightmare if I were to actually experience it, I think it's very in-keeping with human nature to simplify and romanticize that which we are not experiencing, while simultaneously feeling our current difficulties very heavily and acutely.

[(Anonymous)]

I 100% totally fucking understand.
(And I dream of the same thing too!)

[(Anonymous)]

Wouldn't it be nicer if equally unrealistic to just fantasize about winning the lottery? Being totally financially dependent on somebody else is horrible. Even here in 2022 I've seen way too many women suffer from the consequences of an unequal marriage to ever even entertain the idea of this.

[(Anonymous)]

Staying at home with a supportive spouse is amazing.