My mum recently broke up with her boyfriend of 11 years, a man I view as my father. Two months later, she rekindled her relationship with her childhood sweetheart whom I had never met until she brought him home.
At first, I felt happy for her; who doesn’t love a high-school romance? But soon I began to feel uncomfortable. My mum is a strong-willed woman who has always stood on equal grounds with her partners, never submitting to the ideology that a woman should cook and clean for her spouse without receiving respect in return. But within the first days of her boyfriend coming to stay, she was cooking extravagant breakfasts in bed while he peacefully snoozed and she began running to the store at his every request.
