By Grace Stark
Thursday, December 31, 2015
It reads like the final scene from a great romance:
Risking it all, our heroine leaves everything she knows to be with the man she
loves. He’s not just any man, but a man worthy of our daring heroine, one who
truly knows and understands her, who has promised—before God and man—to love
her unconditionally.
There was a time we valued such endings; when our heroes
and heroines ventured out boldly in the name of love, and we cheered them on in
their adventures and sacrifices to obtain the true happiness found in being
with loved ones. But somewhere in the intervening years, third-wave feminism
reared its ugly head, telling us our heroine has made the wrong decision. Now,
instead of cheers, she meets boos and whisperings of “traitor.”
Online women’s publication Verily recently published a refreshing perspective on the delicate
balance between love and career that women like me face in “What It’s Really
Like to Quit Your Job to Accommodate Your Husband’s Career.” In the article, career-driven
young woman Ashley Dobson is like our nameless heroine, telling us the story of
her decision to give up her position as the publisher of a D.C. news site to
follow her husband to Germany, where his career was taking him for the
foreseeable future.
Since I’m a fellow job-quitter and husband-follower, the
article certainly struck a chord with me. Rather than stifling my professional
aspirations, I’ve found the move actually gave me the freedom to focus on what
I wanted out of my career, and challenged me to think creatively about how to
achieve my goals. Besides, third-wave feminism notwithstanding, I’m still a
sucker for romance (the real stuff, not Nicholas Sparks-style garbage), and
there is arguably nothing more romantic and downright adventurous than putting
everything on the line to be with the one you love.
Woman Seeks
Happiness, ‘Friends’ Condemn Her
While Dobson acknowledges that many friends were
supportive, she naturally encountered others who thought her decision was
“anti-woman.” These unfortunate individuals (otherwise known as third-wave
feminists) viewed Dobson’s choice as a “step backward for women.” No matter
that Dobson made the decision of her own free will, or that giving up
everything to move to a foreign country probably sounds like the adventure of a
lifetime to many people.
No, to a feminist, Dobson is a traitor to womankind, and
refusing to let her hard-won publisher’s desk chain her down thousands of miles
away from her husband means she’s committed the cardinal sin of championing
love over status and power. As if we needed any more proof that the feminist
cause and its affiliates hate romance than Slate’s mind-numbingly ridiculous
“Down with Spooning” article.
Dobson’s choice was full of courage, adventure, promise,
and, like any good love story worth its salt, sacrifice. After all, Dobson
mentions the great happiness her husband has found in his new laufbahn; ostensibly, that’s the reason
she chose to give up her own job versus pursuing the alternate scenario. It is
clear Dobson loves her job, but from her actions, it’s clear that she loves
being with her husband (and contributing to her husband’s happiness) even more.
No wonder it’s a choice that rankles the same people who hold the patently
un-romantic view that all relations between the sexes are a power struggle.
The choice third-wave feminists would have Dobson make
elevates the selfish pursuit of power and the confines of comfort above all
else. Instead, like a classic heroine, Dobson jumped into the great unknown: a
new life in a new country, with only the man she loves by her side. Remind
me—who’s the liberated one here?
Family Always
Needs You More than Anyone Else Does
While we’re on the subject of liberation, let’s discuss
that other often-used, greatly misunderstood third-wave feminist buzzword,
“empowerment.” Dobson’s story is an excellent reminder that sometimes the
boldest, most empowering thing anyone can do is to walk away from the familiar,
have a little faith, and trust enough in her own capability and resourcefulness
to believe that she’ll be able to figure things out along the way.
I bet that’s exactly why Dobson says she quit her “job,”
and not her “career,” because it’s the same reason I use that terminology for
myself. Don’t you dare call me a feminist (unless it’s of the Anthony or
Stanton variety), but I’m of the mind there’s nothing a smart, capable woman
can’t accomplish once she puts her mind to it; even more so when she’s been
blessed with a stellar partner and fellow adventurer.
Back when I was still grappling with my own decision to
quit my job and follow my husband across the world, a colleague gave me an
excellent piece of brutally honest advice: she told me that I was replaceable
where I worked then, and that I would be replaceable wherever I worked in the
future. As cold as that sounds, her point was well-taken: Your career owes you
nothing.
Although she didn’t say it, the corollary was also clear:
You are only irreplaceable to the ones who love you. Not to speak for
Dobson—whom I’ve never met—but I’m willing to bet that, like me, she chose to
take her chances on finding happiness and fulfillment by boldly choosing the
adventurous path that led her into the loving arms of her husband, instead of
the plastic arms of her deskchair. That’s no step backward for womankind. It’s
a step forward for our heroine, and romantics and adventurers like her
everywhere.
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