Half of all couples divorce, and many unmarried heterosexual couples separate after the birth of their children. I immediately cool my ardor. If I had a miracle solution to avoid this massacre, I would probably have started another extremely lucrative business.
I read Mona Chollet’s book “Reinventing Love: How Patriarchy Sabotages Heterosexual Relationships.” She doesn’t have a miracle solution either.
However, it offers theoretical tools that put words to a deep feeling and an idea shared by quite a few people. Equality between men and women contributes to the success of heterosexual couples… If success is defined as a state of happiness, appeasement and satisfaction of the two entities that make up the couple. In other words, the absence of suffering, resentment and animosity.
As some of the greatest inequalities between men and women are found in the intimacy of heterosexual couples, the couple is political and love becomes a revolutionary tool. In her podcast “Le Cœur sur la table”, Victoire Tuaillon rightly chants it: “Loving yourself is one of the ways to make a revolution.”
Mona Chollet suggests deconstructing the roles assigned to women as a starting point. The idea is to unravel our roles to free ourselves from them and be better equipped to approach the relationship as a couple. A bit in the same way that Titiou Lecoq deconstructs the aspects linked to finances, the mental load, the distribution of household and educational tasks in his book “The Couple and the Money”, Mona Chollet dwells on the emotional and sentimental aspects. Elements that directly affect perception and self-esteem.
You obviously have to read the book to understand in depth. I venture to summarize this way: romantic books and films have instilled in women since the dawn of time that the grail consists of existing in the eyes and heart of a man in order to form a relationship with him. To achieve this, the instructions, relayed by any self-respecting romance, are simple: 1) make yourself very small and vulnerable, please don’t shine too much; 2) accept the game of competition in the good girl market; 3) revere the feelings and emotions of men and above all not hesitate to develop empathy and understanding for male violence; 4) to be the sole guardian of the temple of marital love; 5) accept and cultivate a position of emotional dependence.
As an alternative, Chollet invites us to become aware of these injunctions; to develop self-love; to cultivate confidence in one’s capacity for sentimental and financial autonomy; to reject all forms of violence (she reminds us that love is concrete actions, not just words); to invest in friendly relations as well as all forms of female solidarity. These proposals probably constitute some of the most precious elements of our kit when entering into a heterosexual couple.
I close by borrowing Bell Hooks’ words of hope from her book “All About Love”: “Even in the face of the greatest obstacle, the quest for love continues… We long for love, we search for it – even when we have lost hope that it can actually be found.”
Your opinion deserves more than a comment? Submit an article!
Your voice deserves to be heard. Expand your views here.
