What is a Wife?

I've been contemplating this question lately. My current circumstances would indicate that a wife is someone who:

• cleans every room in the house
• does laundry weekly (folding, hanging and putting it all away)
• makes sure that no one runs out of toothpaste, deodorant, batteries, or any other item one might potentially run out of
• maintains the household finances, accounting for every dime spent
• checks homework, makes dentist and doctor appointments, takes care of the sick and makes lunches
• puts in a 12-hour working day (including commute), but who's job isn't interesting enough to merit discussion.

You'll notice there is nothing in that list that indicates a partnership or friendship, let alone romance. That is because in my capacity as wife (as I have defined it), none of those exist. I was a single mom for seven years, and my life as a single mom was much like my life now, minus one 43-year-old man-child and a big ass house that always needs cleaning. How did I let that happen? Why did I let that happen?

I'd love to blame this all on someone else, but *I* am at least partially (fully?) to blame. For many reasons, I honestly believed that my value in a marriage was so minimal I *had* to do all of these things in order to compete as wife material - that no one would have me if I didn't offer services above and beyond what normally would be expected. At some level, I believed that if I did more, if I made everything "perfect" (or darn close to it), I would become magically deserving of love. Guess what? That didn't work out too well for me.

In fact, I've dug myself a huge hole by setting the expectations far above what is reasonable. Try as I might to renegotiate, I am reminded that I am attempting a bait-and-switch - I advertised "goods" before marriage, I better damn well be delivering those goods after the marriage.

So here I sit, in a state of numbness. I muddle through the daily routine but have little emotional attachment to any of it. Each day is identical to the last - weeks and months morph into one big blur. I can't imagine living the next 40 years of my life this way - I won't live the next 40 years of my life this way. I've created this mess and now it's time to clean it up ... again ...