For those not in the know, tradwives are a loose community of usually extreme Christian women that make housekeeping and parenthood their entire personalities. On the far end of the spectrum they work sunup to sundown baking bread from scratch, raising chickens, cleaning house, and instructing their children. There are a LOT of them on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter, mostly saying how much joy they get from submitting to their husbands and denouncing feminists as unhappy monsters.
One former tradwife is Jennifer Gage, whose story was recently told in Business Insider. Gage made sure her life looked perfect on the outside, but the abuse in her marriage eventually drove her away. Her husband refused to allow her a bank account after they got in a fight, and she was kept off the legal documents of a contracting company she helped run. Eventually, she found out her husband was cheating on her. It's worth quoting one paragraph in total.
I was always thinking, “How can I make Jake love me?” So I never ate; I kept myself at 106 pounds. I was so hyper-focused on looking perfect. I would go to culinary classes. I never planned on being a chef or owning a restaurant — I just wanted him to have the perfect food.
Gage learned what a lot of tradwives eventually do: there is no amount of perfect that will keep the men in their lives faithful. You cannot be thin enough, pretty enough, a good enough cook, a perfect enough mother, or anything else enough. They are throwing their best into the wrong hole like someone trying to serve wine through the anus.
The entire tradwife lifestyle is based on rigid hierarchies rooted in oppressive religion. Men do important man things, and women care for the cave. In theory, this allows men to focus on their world-changing work and protects women from the dangers of that world.
Obviously, this does not work. All these groups overlap with philosophies like Gothardism where godly submission to these gender roles supposedly offers complete protection from tragedy. Unfortunately, tragedy is a democracy and does not care if your wife is willing to slaughter her own chickens so you can cosplay as a puritan pioneer. Gage found that out the hard way when she developed an intestinal tumor, and her husband grew angry with her.
Shit happening is the only thing more certain than death and taxes. When it does happen, and this magic spell of gender roles doesn’t prevent it, it causes cognitive dissonance and rage. Clearly, someone was not conforming hard enough or God would not have allowed this misery.
Since the man is always the leader and head of household, there are two options. One, he can blame his family for everything. Two, he can break down. Both lead them into extramarital relationships.
No matter what these communities say, humans desire partnership and emotional intimacy. Men need the space to cry, worry, and be scared. This can’t be accomplished if you are pretending to be a distant force third only to God and church leaders in majesty. The men in these relationships are supposed to be mighty protectors. How can they be if they need to lean on their wives for strength? The whole point of their relationship is that she never has to worry about things, and if she does, you are a failure.
Having a romantic partner that you treat as a king would a subject is deeply boring and very unfulfilling. So men in these situations turn to other women for a space to be human in. They seek out people that they can have a normal emotional bond with. It’s pretty clear these men desperately desire what the rest of us take for granted: a relationship where people are free to be themselves instead of caricatures of masculinity always under the eye of some draconian judgment.
Of course, none of these men want to change their marriages. They want to still maintain control over their wives, even when their actions make them unhappy. Easier to live a double life of lies, keeping the tradwife as a holiness trophy and the side piece as emotional support booty.
My heart goes out to the tradwives, toxic as I find them. In video after video, I see them treating this lifestyle as a cheat code to safety and security. Fear is omnipresent in their proselytizing. They think they are free of it because they have chosen to let their husbands rule them.
But to quote a famous song, rulers make bad lovers. That security is an illusion. No man is pious enough or powerful enough to prevent all adversity, and God is not going to declare you free of pain in this life no matter how awesome your sourdough bread is. Tradwives follow their instructions to be pretty and perfect, thinking it will keep their husbands dedicated and their lives shielded from harm.
It won’t because men are lying about wanting pretty, perfect, and obedient. Like all humans, they need real connection as equals, a person they can fail with, and sometimes to not be in control. Tradwives are chasing a dream thought up by people who think that absolute power will make them stop being afraid. It won’t.
That’s why men cheat on their tradwives. Because the whole thing does not work and never will.
