On domestic labo(u)r and taking care of each other

It's very weird going from the person in your relationship who has more of their shit together to the one who has... less

I received a reader request to write something this week about self-care, and specifically how Lynette and I take care of each other. (Thanks, Gabrielle!) I thought this would be a great opportunity to dig into a particular aspect of our relationship dynamic that I’ve wanted to explore further for awhile now.

When I first met Lynette, as I wrote in the cruise story, one of the many things that attracted me to her was that she was an adult. By that point I’d dated boys/bois pretty much exclusively, Peter Pan queers who refused to grow up, people who were great fun to date but miserable to live with. When Lynette offered herself up as my big strong butch, it was overpoweringly sexy, and so comforting, the possibility that I might be the one to be taken care of for a change. In my last couple serious romantic relationships I’d been the one who found the places for us to live and the stuff to furnish them, who cooked, who planned, who executive managed the minutiae of our lives. And I always got tired of it, of feeling more like someone’s mother than their lover.