It’s a meme as old as time… the Nagging Wife Guitar Meme (tm)!
If you are, somehow, unaware of the type of meme I’m talking about, a quick google search for “wife guitar meme” will demonstrate what I mean. Basically, they are any meme where a husband is hiding his gear purchases from his wife. Something like this:
Of course, these are frustrating for a number of reasons, but to me, a lot of this comes down to folks’ lack of education on healthy relationships and the ways that gender stereotypes, sexual and relationship scripts, and expectations play into that.
If you grew up in the United States, there’s a pretty good chance that no one ever taught you what a healthy relationship looks like because comprehensive sexuality education was likely not something you learned in school.
So, what DOES a healthy relationship look like? Aside from, of course, a healthy, mutually beneficial, and consensual sexual relationship— a healthy relationship’s characteristics are very similar to what you’d expect out of a good friendship.
Here are 7 Things to Look for in a Healthy Relationship:
1) Trust
In order to have hard conversations, important to long-term relationships (like, for example, a marriage), you need to be able to trust the other person. You also need to trust that the other person isn’t going to betray you, by, say, buying loads of gear behind your back when you’d both agreed to pay off your credit cards or save money for a downpayment on a house.
2) Honesty
This goes along with honesty. You need the ability to be open and honest about your needs and interests, and of course, that includes not buying large amounts of gear behind someone’s back. But, if you had discussed it first, that would be another conversation.
3) Communication
That’s why communication is important. You need to be able to regularly talk with your partner in a way that is kind and respectful. Having honesty and trust as a baseline for that communication is an important first step. Conversations around financial transparency can come from there.
4) Compromise
Just because you are communicating in an honest, trusting way does not mean you will never disagree. There will be conflict and learning how to handle disagreements in a healthy way that meets both of your needs is a really important skill. Are you frequently disagreeing about how much money to spend on gear? You’re going to have to come up with an agreement or compromise that works for both of you.
5) Equity
There should be balance in your relationship. There should be equity in decision-making, shared responsibilities, and power between both partners in a way that is agreed-upon and feels healthy and comfortable. It’s especially important to be conscious of this if one person earns a lot more money than the other person or if there are age, race, or other power imbalances.
6) Mutual respect
Do you respect your partner? If you are sharing these memes, it seems to me like the answer is probably, “no” (even though you would probably say that you do and that it was “just a joke”). Sharing memes about hiding large financial transactions that paint THEM in a negative light is not respectful (let alone actually hiding said transactions in the first place).
7) Individuality
Both of you should be 100% allowed and encouraged to have your own interests and hobbies. And you should be able to spend an agreed-upon and equitable amount on those hobbies. It’s also a great idea to have separate friends that you hang out with, besides just hanging out with each other. Of course, you care about each other and should spend an agreed-upon amount of time doing things together. But not EVERYTHING. And of course, I would hope that you would respect the interests and hobbies of your partner— and hopefully, they would respect yours.
I will note that there are PLENTY of memes about wives hiding their purchases as well, which is not okay either. All of the above is important regardless of the gender of the person engaging in the behavior or the sexuality of the folks in the relationship. Though, of course, if you were in a poly relationship, the conversations would be with multiple people.
For traditional monogamous heterosexual couples, which I presume most of the sharers of such memes are in, all of these characteristics are bound up in and tied to the binary nature of our gender socialization, and related heterosexual relationship scripts. So, because we are taught that cis men and cis women have very different characteristics (so, for example, cis men are supposed to be stoic, while cis women are supposed to be overly emotional), AND the fact that these characteristics are often considered to be complimentary, it upholds a power imbalance between the genders and gender becomes adversarial or “us” vs. “them”. The “Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” business is not real and it NOT helpful. (here’s more detail about the reasons why adversarial sexual beliefs are a problem: one, two, three)
Why would you possibly want to be in an adversarial relationship with your partner? That seems TERRIBLE. Your relationship should not be a war and your partner should not be your enemy.
I will add, and I think this is an important point, two additional issues with these memes:
They assume that ALL wives a) do not play music and b) would not be supportive of your gear-buying.
They assume that you were somehow forced to marry someone who did not support your gear-buying habit.
Of course, none of these assumptions are true. First, if you share these memes, it makes cis women feel like they are assumed not to be musicians or that they are viewed as “nags”. Both are really problematic stereotypes and definitely do not help create a space where cis women feel included.
Second, if you chose to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t support your hobbies… it seems like that’s on YOU. If you had chosen to have any conversation about finances before you got married, this likely would never have happened, right? No one forced you to marry this person that you now seem to despise. That was your choice.
In closing, please stop sharing these memes and if you do, consider reevaluating your relationship. See a therapist individually and go to couples counseling if you are having a hard time. I’m not saying you need to get a divorce, but you probably have some things to work out for yourself, and as a couple, to be happier and healthier in your relationship, and a therapist might help.
If you need help, you can search therapists in your area, and select by the type of insurance you have in Psychology Today's Therapist Finder. Zencare and BetterHelp are other resources. If you have additional questions about finding a therapist, I am happy to do my best to help, with the disclaimer that I am a social psychologist and NOT a therapist. I cannot provide you with treatment, but I can help you find someone who can.
(Honestly, I will actually do this even if it is unrelated to memes! Please, everyone, see a therapist! ♥️)