My Son Asked My Wife to Marry Him. What I Said to Him Surprised Me: I Hope I Don't Break my Son Forever and Always

This is my son Jonny Danger. Yes, I gave him the middle name of Danger. This is Christmas of 2017. In California, you will note that "Winter" consists of sunny days around 60 degrees. This is the most California looking picture I have ever taken in my entire life.

Anyway, I love my son. I am a full-time stay at home parent, so I have seen this dude grow from a gross alien-looking baby thing at birth to this wonderfully smart and beautiful 4-year-old boy in the picture.

Yesterday he walked up to my wife (pictured below) and asked:
"Mama, will you marry me?"
My wife laughed and replied:
"Jonny, why do you want to marry mama?"
Without skipping a beat he answered:
"Well, I can't find anyone who wants to marry me around here. So, you are my only option"
I know, I know. Cute, smart and logical. The three things I adore most about my son.

I was fairly sure my wife would not run away and elope with my son. But I did read Oedipus Rex in the 11th grade. And my son is much younger and thinner than I am... But, I digress,

My response was "Why don't you want to marry Daddy?"

Now, everybody laughed. Jonny acted like it was the most absurd thing he had ever heard. The question itself was so preposterous that no sane person would ever ask it. My wife laughed as she as we were now all having fun and games as a family. Hell, even my 1-year-old Nate (pictured below) faked a laugh as he is known to do when the rest of the family laughs. He hates to be left out of anything, understanding of a joke be damned. My retort, at least in the very beginning, brought me pride. Because the question was smart, funny and made my son think about his assumptions. Even if only for a few seconds and if only in a way that a 4-year-old can question anything on a meaningful level. That pride quickly faded (as pride tends to) and I was left a little bit confused. Especially as the conversation progressed.
Jonny screamed through his laughter:
"I can't marry you, you're my daddy!"
"Why can't you marry your daddy?"
all he answered with was "You are so weird dad" and then Jonny, my son, rolled his 4-year-old eyes and walked into his room to play with toys.

The questions "why did you ask this question?" followed by "Would it be OK for him to ask his daddy to marry him?" both entered my brain. It turned what would be a rather playful and happy moment in my family life into a self-reflecting moment.

The hardest thing for any person to do is to escape their own perspectives. It is embedded into the essence of humanity to see the world through our own eyes and base everything on our own experiences and beliefs. Breaking out of this way of thinking is essential to becoming a fully functioning person in a pluralistic society. The tool that does the breaking is empathy. The ability to see, feel and understand someone else's perspective. The task of empathy seems easy and many people will be quick to say that they are empathetic. But, to really put your own bias and perspective aside and to really understand another person's perspective is a skill that must be practiced. And one that is very hard to master.

Again, I digress.

So, I initially answered myself with the reason I asked this question is that I have tried my hardest to raise my children on 3 main principles:

1. Other people's bodies are their own. We must always ask before we touch another person's body.
2. Egalitarianism. We treat everyone the same and with respect.
3. Gender roles and sexual norms of society should not

Now, I do have to convey these themes at a level that a toddler can understand. For example whenever my toddler hits someone else - and that is, like I dunno, ALL THE TIME. I say "hands are not for hitting Jonny. We ask before we touch". The idea being that as he hears this over and over again and he grows up hearing this over and over again that he will internalize it. I hope this will help him learn about things like consent and bodily autonomy. Or when he does learn those things they won't sound foreign to him.

I have this almost unacceptable level of pure fear that my son will grow up to rape women or serially sexually assault people. I wonder all the time about how people like Bill O'Riley, Donald Trump, and Harvey Weinstein grew up. How their parents raised them. It strikes fear into me that such smart, capable men terrorized women and treated women like their property instead of their equals.

Now, this post was about my son marrying my wife. But the previous paragraphs are just important asides to show that I do think about how and what I say to my children. I worry about what I say as a father and how it will cement the kinds of humans they will blossom into.

So, again, why did I ask why I was not the marrying type.

Some of you will think like my wife did. That I was subverting expectations. We hate gender roles in this house, as my wife is the one climbing the corporate ladder and I am the homebody. So, The easy answer is that I wanted my son to know that if he fell in love with a man instead of a woman that it was OK. Another reason I rationalize was that I wanted to discuss with my son that the end goal of relationships is not to be married. That sometimes relationships with people don't progress that far and that we shouldn't look for relationships with the intention of marriage. That the relationship itself is the point and that marriage is something that can happen, but by no means should or needs to.

None of that is the truth, however. After reflecting on the moment, much longer than any sane person should I might add, I came to the conclusion that I asked that question because I was jealous. I was jealous that I was not chosen to be the spouse of my 4-year-old because I was male and my wife was female. OH, THE STRENGTH OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES. But, I was the one deserving of the honor. I was, after all, the one who raised Jonny since day 1. When my wife was on deployment to Afganistan I held him as he cried for his mother. I changed his diaper, cleaned up his puke and bandaged all of his bloody cuts and bruises. I kissed his skinned knees, not his mother. I should reap the reward for the time I put into the relationship.

The short story: I couldn't escape my own perspective. My experiences created my bias and I wanted my 4-year-old son, in a moment of perfectly normal toddler innocence, to choose me over my wife.

I wrote this post because that nagging fact has been causing me guilt all day. I did laundry, cooked dinner, read nighttime stories and tucked my sleeping kids into bed. I had to get it off my chest and I didn't want to wake my sleeping wife. I mean she has to work a full day tomorrow. But, I had to say something to someone. So, I did. To myself. On the internet. Because I am really a stable genius.

I know my son will never remember this interaction. My wife already forgot it too. Well, until she read this post in the near future. The most I can hope is that we avoid nuclear war long enough for my son to grow up and read this one day. Hopefully not to his therapist because I have broken him forever and always. But, I am glad I did. Because now I can refocus on being the parent my children need me to be tomorrow. And hopefully, I can escape my own perspective to be a better husband, a better human and most important: a better father.