Double Standards Suck

I am losing the domestic war.

If you’re not married, if you’re not living with someone day in and day out with nowhere else for you to go but where you and this other person share a living space, then you have no idea what I mean by domestic war. You won’t understand the daily battles fought over whose turn it is to do the dishes, or why a neat pile to one party is a mess to the other, or how important… no, vital control of the TV remote is to having a quiet and happy home. You don’t know about the thermostat skirmishes won or lost due to the availability and proximity of a blanket to the couch and you will have no understanding of how, by letting your significant other win even a small victory over something so trivial as who is going to get up from their comfortable seat and close the window, can lead to your downfall and thus to your imminent pussyfication.

And it is more and more imminent for me every day.

This became quite clear to me last night when I was sitting on the couch watching football and HoBiscuit decided to join me. And by join me, I mean that she literally crawled over me, inserted herself between me and the arm of the couch that I was sitting against, pushed, twisted and squirmed until she fit there with her head on me and her legs over the arm of the couch, and then kneaded my stomach with the back of her head until she was comfortable.

And then she began to talk.

Now guys, think back to your youth when you used to think your father was an idiot. Remember how, when your mother was talking or telling him to do something, he never seemed to actually hear what she was saying? And later on, he always asked you what your mother had said because he couldn’t remember? Well, I don’t think it was because your father was stupid, I think it was more like a survival instinct because as soon as HoBiscuit started talking to me, I couldn’t hear her anymore.

It was like magic.

One second she’s yammering away about something unimportant to me, like maybe how she hates work or how she saw this great dress on sale or something, and the next moment I can’t hear a word she’s saying but I can hear Al Michaels saying the Cowboys are kicking the Saints’ asses.

Like I said; magic.

Anywaste, at some point HoBiscuit stopped talking and started napping, on my stomach remember, and it began to get a little uncomfortable for me. Not wanting to startle her, I gently tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to go lay down somewhere else because even though this might have been a comfortable position for her it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me. Without even shifting her weight HoBiscuit said, “But I’m so comfortable and you’re such a nice pillow that I think I’ll stay right where I am.”

Which got me thinking.

You see, if she had been sitting on the couch enjoying one of her favorite TV shows and I had come along and pushed and prodded my way onto the couch as she had, and then used her body as a pillow like she had with my body, and then started talking to her about things that were not important to her like she had just done to me then I don’t think she would have been quite as understanding and complacent as I had been. And then, to top it all off, if her body felt as uncomfortable as mine was feeling at that moment with her head on my stomach, and she asked me to get off of her and I didn’t get off her, I believe she would not have been pleased and we might have even had a fight of some sort with her calling me insensitive and uncaring or something. In other words, she believed she could get away with this type of behavior while at the same time I could not.

Basically, she was perpetuating a double standard.

I believed that this was wrong. In fact, I felt so strongly about this that I even mentioned my whole reasoning to her. I explained, at great length, my position that she shouldn’t be able to get away with this type of behavior and what made her believe she could get away with it when I could not. And do you know what she did? She opened one eye, looked up at me from my very pained belly and said, “Because I’m cute and you love me.” And then she went back to sleep.

Point. Set. Match.