(ThySistas.com) I ask this question in terms of what type of car they’re driving. At first mention, it may sound silly or juvenile, but hear me out.
I was with family during the Thanksgiving holiday and an interesting topic of equality in marriage arose. Let me give you some background information:
My cousin recently graduated law school and is studying to take the bar exam. She drives a 2016 Honda Civic, which she purchased brand new and is almost finished paying off.
Her husband works as a manager in the finance department of a Fortune 500 company. He recently (like in the last two years) got a brand new BMW. He previously owned a Honda Accord, but as it began to break down and his income began to increase, he told his wife that if he was going to have a car payment, it had to be “for something I really want.”
I can understand that. So, you may be asking, What’s the problem?
Well, apparently, like finances, disagreements and all other things that can be disruptive, this new car started to play a major (and unwanted) role in their marriage.
The BMW kind of went to the husband’s head (so my cousin says), causing him to act in a manner she felt was being superior. He’d say things like “my car” and wouldn’t allow her to drive it at first. He, like any man I’m sure, was very possessive, careful and proud of his “new baby.”
So now the wife (who was in law school at this time) begins to feel some sort of way about this new car and its negative imapact on her husband’s attitude. Here we have a law student who dramatically decreased her income to pursue her degree and is still driving around her hail-damaged Honda Civic. And her husband who’s now making enough money to swap his Honda for beamer. She thought the car had opened his eyes to some sorta’ false sense of success and status, but soon enough, she realized he wasn’t the only one.
Not too long after having the BMW, people began to bring the fact that she didn’t have a BMW or “equal type of car” to her attention.
Case in point:
When meeting her husband at his job for lunch one day, the VP of Finance (and her hubby’s boss) approached her in the parking lot.
“Is this your car?” he asked. My cousin nodded yes.
“Aren’t you a princess?” he questioned. “Shouldn’t you be driving a car worthy of a princess?” And he pointed to one of the many luxury cars lining the parking lot. My cousin said she laughed it off, telling him one day after law school she would upgrade.
But secretly, this, along with so many other comments, was subconsciously eating away at her. Now everywhere she went she’d notice how wives had “equal” cars to their husbands. The “level” of her friends’ cars paralleled their husbands just like all the women’s in her neighborhood. When her husband met with the owner of the new house they were about to rent, he noticed the BMW and commented, “Oh, very nice car. So, your wife must have C-Class coupe, right?”
My cousins are on the verge of welcoming a new addition to their family. And as family and friends talked about her needing a larger car now for the children, even I noticed that everyone automatically assumed that her husband would be getting her a Lexus LX or a BMW X3.
As a matter of fact, each time one of her law buddies visits, she asks my cousin’s husband when is he getting her a luxury car—automatically assuming that now that he’s “riding in luxury,” my cousin should be as well.
The entire wife-husband equality concept is very interesting to me. I had to ask my cousin, “Is the kind of car you drive in relation to your husband’s really that big of a deal?”
She admitted that she initially wouldn’t have thought so if people and circumstances didn’t constantly make a mountain out of that ‘car-hill’. But she also explained how this has opened her eyes to equality in marriage.
“You predominantly see this equality among wealthy white couples,” she explained. In the “upper echelon” of society, if a white man is driving a Mercedes Benz, his wife is pushing the same—just in a different color. Or his wife is driving a car that reflects the “status” of her husband’s. Their vehicles show an equal, united front. The husband is not on a certain “level” driving a Benz while the wife rolls around in a Ford Focus.
And more than “oh, look at my fancy cars and my wealth,” ensuring that the wife has an equal-status vehicle demonstrates how the husband views his wife. If driving a Range Rover equates luxury and class to him, he wants to make sure his wife has (and represents) the same.
Equality.
My cousin has always said she’s grateful for her car, despite its seemingly “lower” status. And to remind us that one man’s trash is always another man’s treasure, she told me how once she stopped in Taco Bell and the cashier was overcome with joy, telling her how my cousin’s hail-damaged, 5-year-old Honda civic was her dream car.
Sure, she could’ve easily used that situation as another reason why people view the status of her car unequally compared to her husband’s, but she instead chose to be humbled.
Is this equal-cars-in-marriage notion too deep, sistas? Are cars just cars, and it doesn’t matter what you and the hubby drive, just as long as you’re mobile? Or can it truly signify more than that, especially the higher up you go in income?
I’m curious to see if other women have dealt with this issue, because although at first mention it seemed ridiculous to me, as time has passed I can really see how this theory coupled with others’ “not equal” reinforcements can play on a woman’s psyche.
Staff Writer; Shala Marks
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