The older I get, the more I find heterosexual couples so…weird. It’s not that men and women are inherently different in irreconcilable ways, is that they’re socialized to believe they are, and it shows in how male/female couples interact. There is this awkward, unnecessary communication barrier between them based on their perceived gender differences. This obviously doesn’t apply to all heterosexual couples; I’m sure there are plenty with great communication and so on. But the large majority of the ones I’ve encountered in the past few years just don’t. It’s uncomfortable to watch.
They have all these weird notions about each other’s genders, and it’s so out of place for me. Like, women will let their husbands get away with not doing housework because “men are helpless” and men will talk about how their wives are “just hormonal” when they come to them with a legitimate grievance that needs to be talked about, and so on and so forth. Just a lot of back and forth that seems perfectly normal to them, but to an outsider who doesn’t experience this kind of heteronormative behavior often it’s like…
i’d like to share my hypothesis that this exact phenomenon is why straight writers struggle to write gay relationships (or project heteronormative constructs onto those relationships). they literally just don’t understand a relationship where one person doesn’t treat the other like they’re part of an alien species.
