The Wife

I had a short conversation with my brother yesterday about people in Northwest Wisconsin calling their wife "The Wife" or "The Old Lady" or any other nomenclature besides their actual name. Then today one of my favorite authors wrote about calling your wife "the bride" and he shared similar discontent with the idea.

Other terms I hear too often: the ball and chain, the old hag, the boss, etc.

It's most likely universal in thought, however, the titles used to label one's wife seem to vary across regions. Whenever someone asks me what "the wife" does or where she is, my skin crawls. They could rephrase by saying, "what does your wife do?" instead of "what does the wife do?" and it would make all the difference. Since it irritates me so much, I quickly snap back and say, "her name is Liz." They usually look at me confused, but yes, she does have a name. If you don't know her name, that's fine, but do not call her the anything.

The reason this bothers me so much is because I feel like it's a subconscious attempt to dehumanize the most important human being in my life: Liz. She's not a convenient label or below any man. She's an equal and she's unique and distinctive. Her name represents her. A convenient title assumes she's like "everyone" else or that all women or all wives are the same. They're not. As a result of my feeling this way, I take special notice to how other men treat and talk to their wife. I get a horrible feeling that this type of creating a label for their wife (or wives in general) is a sneaky way to disrespect them. I'm sure most people won't admit to that, though.