The Cringey Phrase Married People Use (That Drives Single People Crazy)
Why do married people say that — and seem proud to do so?
Polina Zimmerman | Pexels When I lived on the East Coast, I had a very smart friend I’ll call Carrie, who had a PhD and a faculty position at a prestigious university. She was married to a man I’ll call Tom, who was similarly credentialed and also was on the faculty of an esteemed university. I liked Carrie — and Tom. But there was something she said more than a few times that made me cringe and left me bewildered.
In discussing something she may have liked to do, but wasn’t going to, she would say of her spouse, “Tom won’t let me.”
Even more cringey and befuddling, she seemed proud to say that.
I was thinking about that today when I read a profile in the Washington Post about Jim VandeHei, who was a White House reporter, then a media entrepreneur, co-founded the influential publication Politico, then sold it for $525 million, and then co-founded Axios. Jim, we are told, loves exercise, especially hot yoga at CorePower Yoga. He thought about becoming an instructor and asked his wife Autumn what she thought. Here’s what we learned:
“(VandeHei recently asked Autumn how she’d feel about him becoming a CorePower instructor. She rejected the idea. “I have to draw the line,” she says.)”
In this example, it is the wife telling the husband what he’s not allowed to do, whereas in the previous one, the husband was doing the forbidding. In both instances, though, the stories seemed to be told with something closer to pride than what I might expect — embarrassment.
Why are married people declaring that their spouses won't let them do something?
I’m still trying to figure out why a married person would declare that their spouse would not let them do something they wanted to do. I don’t know why they would admit to being controlled like that and seem to be proud of it, rather than embarrassed.
When Carrie told me that Tom wouldn’t let her do this or that, it was always in a conversation with just the two of us. She’s married; I’ve always been single. Did it have something to do with that?
Tirachard Kumtanom / Pexels
In the VandeHei profile, though, Autumn was declaring her power over Jim’s life choices in an interview that she knew would be published in the Washington Post, and probably read by tens of thousands of people of all marital and romantic relationship statuses.
I don’t know why married people would admit to being controlled like that and seem to be proud of it, rather than embarrassed.
Why aren’t people like Carrie and Autumn instead boasting about how equal they are in their marriage, how their spouse is not the least bit controlling, and how they haven’t lost any of their freedom by being married? I might expect that even if it weren’t true.
In Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, I describe the freedom the single at heart has and cherishes. In response, some married readers insist that they have freedom, too. I understand that reaction. I don’t understand boasting about a lack of freedom.
I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time, but I have never been able to answer my question about why married people do this. I think they see it as a sign of marital status or some such, but really, I don’t know.
Bella DePaulo (PhD, Harvard) is the author of the award-winning Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. She has been writing the “Living Single” blog for Psychology Today since 2008 and her TEDx talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single,” has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.