Your Feminist Boyfriend
BY MARY WILLIAMS
He’s the first boy you don’t have to explain feminism to. He tells you on your first date that he’s a feminist too, and it’s such a relief not to gently explain that you don’t hate men. Instead, you talk about old movies you both love despite their sexism. James Bond. It’s a Wonderful Life. Casablanca.
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he says, and you smile.
You catch yourself smiling all the time. Brushing your teeth, commuting to work, scanning contracts. Whenever he crosses your mind.
He talks about wine and discusses politics with the casual certainty of someone who knows what they’re talking about. Years of track have given him the perfect body, athletic and slim and muscular.
He says he meditates and, not wanting to admit you’ve never tried it, you say you do too. You undo the lie by actually meditating every morning. You start with free videos online, a soothing voice guiding you through it. When you meditate, you picture yourself at a zoo, where all your thoughts and feelings are behind glass, and you can watch them from a distance. You develop the habit of thinking in the second person, talking to yourself the way a meditation app would. You breathe in. You breathe out. When the soothing voice tells you to picture something you’re grateful for, it’s his face you hold in your mind.
Your friends marvel at how lucky you are, meeting him at a party and avoiding the hellscape of online dating. You’re all new in the city, working entry-level office jobs and living in crowded apartments. Your roommates miss college and have no idea what they’re doing, but not you. You feel all grown up, like your real life is finally starting. You meditate now. You arrive at the office 10 minutes early. You meet friends for happy hours after work and show bartenders your real ID. You say “my boyfriend” as often as possible.
He graduated from a small liberal arts college you’d never heard of but before long you know all about its clubs and traditions. You meet his college friends, who quickly become your friends. You learn their stories so well, it’s as if you’d been there. You can recount how they snuck onto the roof of Cargill Library that Halloween and wrote one another’s obituaries in Professor Murray’s journalism class. People start to think you went to school there, too.
Your boyfriend has his own one-bedroom apartment in a trendy neighborhood. You’re there so often, complaining about your messy roommates, that he asks you to move in on your one-year anniversary.
You say yes. You can’t wait. He’s an early riser and likes to make breakfast for you, which no one has ever done before. Living with him will cut your commute time in half. He has an incredibly comfortable bed, and he likes to fall asleep holding your hand.
The girl taking your old room asks how much you’re paying in the new place. You tell her, a little embarrassed both because you can technically afford it and because it is a significant increase in rent.
“That’s total, right?” she asks.
“Half,” you admit.
She looks surprised.
“Damn. But he already lives alone, right? How’s he affording that?”
You hesitate. You know he makes more than you do. That’s always been clear. He has a degree in physics and works in big data analytics. His company recruits from his university, so he secured a job before graduating. Your degree is in history, and you work for a non-profit. You feel lucky to have a job at all. You applied for months, only to land two interviews and one offer.
The truth is, you don’t know how much your boyfriend makes. He never talks about money. But you’ve noticed the weekly cleaning service and endless takeout. You don’t know of any entry-level salaries, even in tech, that could cover all that and you’ve assumed, without focusing on it enough to fully articulate the thought, that his family is rich.
In response to the girl’s question, you only shrug.
“Find out if his parents are paying,” she advises. “I mean, if you pay 50% of the rent and his dad pays the other 50%, you should pay less, you know?”
You think about that conversation over the years, even after you’ve lost touch with the girls in that apartment. You never confirm if his parents contribute to his income, even after you’ve spent time with them, even after you’ve gone on vacation with them to Costa Rica.
When you try talking about money, he slides out of the conversation so naturally you can’t grasp if it’s intentional. It’s as if you tried discussing urination. An accepted part of life, not especially taboo, but certainly not an appropriate conversation topic. Sometimes you poke around the larger question instead of tackling it directly.
“Isn’t that brand really expensive?” you ask, gliding your hands over a new suit.
“It’s a good investment,” he explains. “Now I won’t have to buy another one for a long time.”
But he does buy another one, in a different color, later that month.
You decide it doesn’t matter. You’ve been promoted and can better afford the rent now compared to when you first moved in. You’re making progress on your student loans. Your credit card debt is manageable. He pays for most of the restaurants and takeout. You do most of the grocery shopping. You split rent and bills equally. Paying your own way is important to you, and you love your apartment and your neighborhood. You don’t want the long commutes and roommates your friends deal with.
Your friends are moving further away from the city center and often in opposite directions. When your boyfriend buys theater tickets or discovers a new restaurant, he makes sure to invite them. But they gravitate towards house parties, fast-food chains, and dingy dive bars. When they decline, he shakes his head and says, “What’s the point of living in a city if you don’t enjoy what it has to offer?”
You enjoy everything that is offered to you. You go to museums. You attend concerts. You develop opinions about cooking techniques from cuisines you’d never heard of before him.
In a small fusion bistro, eating something so unique neither of you have tried anything like it, he says, “I love doing new things with you.”
Another night, walking home on cobbled streets under a full moon after too many gin cocktails, you catch him looking at you as if you’re a painting or a perfectly sliced piece of tuna or the moon itself: equal to his capacity for admiration.
You and your feminist boyfriend don’t fight. You discuss.
You discuss the chores, and he gets better about doing some of them instead of waiting till the Thursday cleaning service. You get better at letting things go if it’s already Tuesday.
Eventually, you learn how to avoid discussions. They’re so long and painful and seem to wound him more deeply than you intended.
You discuss getting a master’s degree. Or even a PhD. You’d like to study the Byzantine Empire: the plague, the chariot races, the empresses. Your boyfriend is encouraging. When you point out the cost and gently suggest moving to a cheaper apartment, he suggests looking into scholarships and grants. He’s gotten a new job again, one that often requires him to work late, and he doesn’t want a long commute. You keep an up-to-date spreadsheet of potential graduate programs and people you could ask for letters of recommendation. Once, you even attend an open house.
Your graduate school fantasy intensifies as your job stagnates. They put “senior” in front of your title, but the work has become monotonous and because of inflation, you’re technically making less than when you started. Your boyfriend is supportive, reminding you of the good work your organization does. He says they’re lucky to have you.
Sometimes when you write your boyfriend a check for your half of the rent, you feel a spasm of bitterness because a rich boyfriend should be good for your savings, not bad for it. You hate yourself when you think that way.
Before you know it, it’s time to renew the lease yet again. The rent’s gone up, though not as much as last time. Meanwhile, your salary has plateaued. There’s no more room for growth at the organization, and you’re finally feeling stressed enough about your savings and credit card debt and student loan interest to tell him in a soft, strained voice that you can’t afford 50% of the new price.
“Oh. I can cover your increase. No problem.”
He says it like it’s nothing.
You feel stupid for not bringing this up earlier, for not asking him to cover more rent so you could pay off your loans or build up your savings or take a vacation that isn’t with his parents. You’d been waiting for him to offer, you realize, but money was so unimportant to him, he hadn’t considered it. This whole time, all you needed to do was ask.
“Or…” he says, pulling up a real estate app on his phone. “We could get a place outside the city. Maybe buy something? This one’s a four-bedroom.”
You stare at the house.
“What?”
“Not right now,” he says. “I mean, in general. We should get more space.”
He scrolls through the properties he’s saved, each with a heart in the corner. The lowest listing price you see is half a million.
“Why?” you ask.
“I mean, eventually we’ll have kids.”
He’s smiling.
“We agreed we didn’t want children,” you remind him, and you watch his smile fade.
“I guess we never really talked about it.”
“We did. Yes, we did. The first year we dated. Before I moved in. You said you didn’t want children.”
“I meant I didn’t want them soon.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Look, I don’t remember exactly what I said back then. But we have talked about it more recently.”
“We’ve joked about it,” you correct. “But we haven’t had a serious conversation since the one where we agreed it’s not for us.”
“You can’t hold that against me.”
“Hold what against you? Your own words?”
You feel your face heating up. You hate this about yourself, how quickly your body reacts to emotion. You turn bright red, like a cartoon, whenever you’re embarrassed or angry. And right now, you’re both. While you stressed about rent and debated what not splitting everything 50/50 meant for you as a feminist, he’d been daydreaming about buying an expensive house and filling it with children.
You try to respond calmly, but your voice rises involuntarily with each sentence. He shouldn’t make assumptions. He changed his mind without telling you. He can’t bring this up, you shout, not like this. Not after you both said you didn’t want children.
He stands abruptly. You stop talking. You wait.
When he speaks, it’s with a tight, angry voice that startles you.
“I said that a decade ago.”
You look around, bewildered, and realize — it’s been nine years.
***
You’re 29. Some of the girls you used to be friends with are posting photos of their engagement rings on social media. One is already married with children. Another is doing humanitarian work abroad. Most moved to cheaper cities or nearby suburbs long ago. But you hadn’t given it much thought. You lived in an amazing neighborhood in a beautiful apartment with your gorgeous, feminist boyfriend. You didn’t care about marriage. You were childless by choice.
You ask your boyfriend if not having children is a dealbreaker for him. He reluctantly admits it is.
“Is this a dealbreaker for you?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
That’s the truth. You’d never thought about it before. It becomes all you think about.
You don’t know what to think of motherhood, except that it looks easy on TV and hard in real life. You were raised by a single father, who died your junior year of college. When you were growing up, he left you with your aunt most of the time. She’d been kind and strict, but she had four boys of her own, all much younger than you, so you’d been more like allies than mother and daughter. You never knew where your mother went when she left.
Thinking about motherhood, you realize, is easier than thinking about breaking up with your feminist boyfriend. You even like imagining him holding a fat-cheeked baby. You can picture coming home from somewhere, maybe a run — though you do not, nor have you ever, run — to find them asleep on the couch together. So, a few days later, you say, “I’ve been thinking about us having kids. I think it’s a good idea. I just want us to talk about it more.”
He scoops you up in a long embrace and kisses you and it already feels like the right decision.
He signs the lease, which has always remained in his name, and you write him a check for 25% of the rent instead of 50%. The rest you put towards debt. You also take yourself out for lunch instead of packing a sandwich.
That night, it’s your boyfriend’s turn to cook, so he orders takeout. He sits on the couch, turns on the TV, and asks, “What should we watch?”
You glance at the dining room table. You can’t remember the last time you used it.
“If we had kids, would we still do this? Watch TV while we eat every night? Or would we eat as a family, at the table, like your parents do?”
Your boyfriend shrugs, “At the table, right?”
“Yeah. The thing is, your parents always eat at the table. Whether or not we’re there.”
“That’s true,” he says, selecting a movie and pressing play.
It’s been a long day, and he’s been so easy-going about your motherhood freak-out, and he’s paying 75% of the rent. So, you try to let it go.
But you can’t resist when you’re in bed together, scrolling on your phones. You ask, “When it comes to technology, what would our approach be?”
“What do you mean?”
“We didn’t have smartphones or tablets growing up. Do we give our children all that or wait till they’re older?”
“I don’t want kids who are glued to screens.”
“Me either.”
His gaze hasn’t left his phone. His perfect profile is lit by the screen’s bluish light.
“But if a child sees us on our phones all the time, we can’t make a rule stopping them from doing the same thing.”
“Why not?”
“Whatever habits we want our child to have, we have to develop them ourselves.”
He turns to you, smiling, and demands, “When did you become such an expert?”
“My aunt,” you tell him. “She had so many rules, but she didn’t follow them. Like, we all had to finish our vegetables. But she never ate them. Didn’t even put them on her plate. So, my nephews didn’t listen to her. Why should they? They spent all their time yelling about it. You have no idea how loud that house was. Still is, I guess.”
Your boyfriend is serious now. He strokes your arm and kisses your shoulder.
He gets very serious and affectionate whenever your family comes up.
“Anyway,” you say. “If we want kids who aren’t constantly on their phones, we should be better about that. We should start eating at the table sometimes. Don’t you think so?”
“Sure. But we aren’t having kids soon.”
“Within the next four years, though.”
When he looks confused, you remind him, “Before I’m 35 and it’s harder, right?”
He finally puts his phone down and shuts his eyes.
“Oh, right. Well, four years is still a lot of time.”
It doesn’t feel like a lot of time to you.
“If I’m going to get a master’s degree, now is the time to do it. Or a PhD. Once we have a baby…well, it’s now or never.”
“Relax,” he says, pulling you close, “You can have children and go to grad school.”
“Yeah, some people do. But they’re both so much work.”
“We can get a nanny or something. We’ll figure it out.”
His voice is drowsy and moments later, he’s out. You stay awake for hours, wishing anything came as easily to you as sleep does to him.
***
“If I’d known we were having kids, I think I would have made different financial decisions,” you tell him. “The idea of becoming a mom while having so much student debt is absurd.”
He says he understands. He says that once you get married and start a family, he’ll talk to his parents about your debt.
You almost say no, that’s not what you meant. But isn’t it?
You’re not sleeping well. When you meditate, your thoughts aren’t behind glass. Talking to yourself like a meditation guide isn’t soothing anymore, but you can’t stop doing it.
You breathe in. You breathe out. You tell yourself to be grateful.
You’re showing up late for work, which doesn’t matter. Your boss hardly takes notice of you as long as everything gets done.
It’s a good place for working mothers, with feminism built into its mission statement. Most of the employees are women, even in the higher-up positions you aspired to when you began working there. But you’ve come to realize that those women, in shining heels and stiff dresses they’d probably call good investments, aren’t internal promotions. They come from outside partnerships and consultancies, and they’re tasked with fundraising because of their proximity to people with funds. They give you slight title changes and small raises, but you know you’ve hit a dead end. There’s a reason they talk about feminism, but not class or race. One day, you look around and realize everyone in the office is white. You feel ashamed for not noticing before. The Vice President catches your eye and waves you over. She asks you to sort through resumes for her new assistant. She lists a few private, prestigious universities, including your boyfriend’s, and says she only wants to see candidates from those schools. When you come across an applicant who graduated from your college, you throw their resume in the trash.
You think about money all the time. And when you’re not thinking about money, you’re thinking about motherhood. You think about all the love you will need to give. Not just in hugs and kisses but in structure and discipline and relearning third grade math and navigating their budding sexuality and enduring their cruelty.
You tell your boyfriend that you’ve been having a hard time.
“I’ve noticed you talk about motherhood like it’s a form of oppression,” he says. “Aren’t there some women who find it empowering?”
“Yes,” you admit.
“Maybe you could try thinking of it like that.”
“I’ll try,” you say.
He takes your hand and asks, “You don’t want to be lonely when you’re old, right?”
“I think our major difference is you’re thinking about everything a child will give you, and I’m fixating on everything I’ll have to give them.”
He lets go of your hand.
“I think about providing for my child.”
“I know. I didn’t mean it like that. But, I mean, I keep thinking about how we’ll figure out daycare. If we move somewhere with more space, the long commute. Changing habits, becoming a role model. No phones at the dinner table. All the chores. We could keep the cleaning service, but should we? Shouldn’t we teach our children to clean up after themselves?”
“I grew up with a maid, and I know how to clean.”
You almost laugh. You can’t tell if he’s serious.
Then he tells you he’s having a hard time, too. Your anxiety is hard on him. He was so excited for this next step, whenever it came, and now he doesn’t know what to think. You can tell you’re in for a long discussion.
For the first time, you miss your old apartment. Four girls sharing one bathroom. In that cramped space, everything became a group activity: texting boys, cooking meals, selecting a TV show. You miss how you never felt alone, even when you wanted to. You miss the many roads that flowed from that point and how certain you felt walking down this one.
***
Before you walk into the party, your boyfriend says, “I’m tired of fighting. Let’s just try to have fun, okay?”
“Fine,” you say, and he sighs.
He lightens up once you’re inside. It’s harder for you. You nurse a whiskey and hover near him. He strikes up a conversation with a college friend and his new girlfriend, who is 22. She is pretty and loud and confident. You wonder if she has any debt.
You’ve done the math. The fastest way to pay off your loans is to have a baby with your feminist boyfriend and accept his parent’s money. $46,382 for a baby. Now you’re quietly calculating what kind of salary you’d need to save that amount in four years.
But you start paying attention to the conversation. You realize, for the first time in as long as you’ve known him, your feminist boyfriend is talking about money.
“Surf the price waves,” he’s saying. “Stocks only go up in the long term.”
You look at your boyfriend.
“You buy stocks?” you ask. “Like, outside your 401K?”
“Of course,” he smiles.
He turns back to his friend, and they resume the casual review of their investments. The more he talks, the more you feel like crying. Why didn’t he speak about these things with you? The two of them go on until they’re interrupted by the 22-year-old girlfriend.
“How do you even get stocks?” she asks. “I don’t know any of this stuff.”
The college friend laughs, “Regretting that fine arts degree yet?”
But your feminist boyfriend takes out his phone and begins explaining how to invest. He drafts an email with helpful articles and resources to send her. He is patient and clear and not at all condescending.
“Another thing,” he tells her, “You should get a new job every 2-3 years. That’s the best way to increase your salary. And then you can invest more.”
The college friend leaves to get another drink while his girlfriend listens attentively. After the email is sent and received, she lists what she’d do if she got rich: open an art gallery, adopt an Irish wolfhound, move to Tulum.
She turns to you and asks, “What about you?”
What would you want, if you knew you could have anything?
You’ve been looking to your feminist boyfriend for answers, but he won’t have them. All he wants is a spotless home he doesn’t have to clean and a child to visit him when he’s old.
“I don’t know,” you lie.
And you wonder how many times you’ll have to learn the same lesson. You need to ask for what you want.
You squeeze your feminist boyfriend’s hand. He looks relieved. Maybe he’s daring to hope the fight is over for good. And in a way, you realize, it is.
“Could you forward that email to me, too?” you ask.
***
He calls you 16 years later. You marvel at the name on the screen. You are too surprised to feel anything else, though you don’t feel much about him anymore.
You almost let the call go to voicemail, but curiosity gets the better of you.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” he says in a thin, hollow voice.
When he doesn’t say more, you ask, “How are you?”
“I have cancer.”
Then he is sobbing, and you don’t know whether to feel angry or honored. Angry because how dare he. Does he think, like a child with object impermanence, that you only exist when his attention is turned towards you? As if the story of your life began when you met him, ended with the relationship, and is now resurrected? And honored because it’s the first boy you ever loved and, in this moment, after all this time, it’s you he called.
“Oh, God,” he says. “How am I going to tell my wife?”
You talk him down. You use your meditation guide voice. He grows calmer, his breathing turning labored and then only slightly shaky. There’s a long silence.
You haven’t forgotten how he wasted your time, but you choose to remember how he expanded your world. You still go back to those restaurants and museums when you attend conferences in the city. You don’t miss your old life, but you don’t regret that it was yours.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know who to call.”
“That’s okay.”
You wonder if he’ll ask about your life. Did you get that PhD? Pay off your debt? Buy a four-bedroom house?
He posts regularly on the social media platforms where you follow one another. But you’re only on them to monitor your daughter. You post nothing. To learn about you, he’ll have to ask.
“Thank you,” he repeats, “I’m sorry. I’ll get going. Thank you.”
“Good-bye, then,” you say. “Good luck. I’ll be rooting for you.”
A year later, you see on social media that he’s thrown a cancer free party, complete with banners and balloons and a vegan chocolate cake.
He never contacts you again.
