Moving Troubles

So, I'm having a problem. This is the first time I've blogged here in awhile. I don't know who else to go to about it, so I'm going to go to God. I guess I pulled away before my grandfather died in April, and his death only made it worse for me. I was classically pulling away, as God has seen so many other people do. Maybe I still am.
The topic of moving came up when my step-dad picked me up from work. In the car, he said, "So I hear you're planning on moving to Virginia in six months."
"Well, yes," I said, "but it's just a goal, one we logically probably won't be able to reach. In reality, it's probably going to be a year from now or something."
"You need to finish school before you move out. And before you get married. I don't understand why you guys are rushing into this, because marriage doesn't solve everything. In fact, it causes even more problems and it's not something you're ready for."
He'd started harping on me again, and even as he did it, I thought of the old story. You know, the one that goes, "We live in a cycle. When we're children, we believe that our parents magically know everything there is to know about anything. In our teenage and young adult stages, we begin to think they know absolutely nothing and we know better. When we're middle-aged, we start to realize maybe our parents knew more than we thought they did and we should give them some credit...and when we're old, we see our parents as geniuses again."
If that story is true, then I'm in the young adult stage where I think he doesn't know anything and he's trying to hold me back. I don't WANT to be like that, I really don't. I understand that, from age, he has more wisdom about life in general than I do, but what HE doesn't understand is that even if this is the biggest mistake of my life, I need to make it on my own. I need to figure things out for myself. Jesse and I need to be free to live our lives together as we see fit, rather than in the choke-hold of a well-meaning older couple who "just wants to see us do right by ourselves and each other." Fine, I get it - but let me live my life, because it's MY life, not yours.
"Who said anything about rushing into marriage?" I asked. "We're not trying to rush into that at all. We know we're not ready and we don't even have the money for it yet anyway." It especially annoys me that he goes on and on about how proud he is of my cousin Natalia, who's my age, about how she's getting married next year and wants to be a television news person and has the perfect personality for it and she's so beautiful. If she has her life so damn "together," then harp to people about her and leave me alone. I'm tired of hearing how every step I make without Mommy and Daddy is wrong. Life doesn't come with an instruction manual. They were rebellious too, and moved out long before I have. By the time Kenny was my age, he was already living with my mother - who had a kid from a previous relationship. Notice I say relationship, not marriage. People make mistakes and I have to be left alone to make them.
"You need to finish college," he insisted, "because I know how hard it is to try and make it without a degree out there. I'm speaking from experience."
"I understand that," I said. "But as far as I'm concerned, Ashworth can rot in hell. Yes, they refunded my money, and apologized for any inconvenience they caused, but as far as I'm concerned it was a little more than a minor freaking inconvenience. They told my fiance they couldn't refund us because I'd LIED and tried to IMPERSONATE him to get his account canceled, and they advised him to sue me. 'We apologize for any inconvenience' doesn't quite cut it."
Kenny argued, "They're a place of business. They're going to do whatever they can to keep money and try to get it out of you. And school was the only thing you had going for your life."
...Thanks. So my life is shit without school as a part of it? I don't care, I'm never going back to that school again. It shouldn't matter that they're a place of business, they shouldn't try to cheat me out of money and get me into legal trouble. Whatever happened to morality in the workplace? I guess ever since Enron, that's a thing of the past, like chivalry and a wife's rights.
"I'm going to go to school again," I told him. "Just not there. They didn't even have the program I wanted, I just joined so people would stop saying I was a loser who wasn't doing anything." I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to settle for unhappiness in a job just so people will shut the hell up.
"Well, you should stay here while you're going to school."
"I don't WANT to stay here. I HATE Arizona. I've hated it since I got here, and I'm excited. I'm almost 22 years old and I'm trying to move out of my parents' house - finally. That's a big deal for me and I'm excited about it even if you aren't."
He sighed and told me, "I just wish you weren't moving so far away. You're going to realize you're not anywhere near any of your family and want to come home...and there won't be anything you can really do about it." THEN he started harping about how Jess was going to turn into an alcoholic and I'm making mistakes I can't pedal back from - WITH the kids in the backseat. By the time we hit up Dairy Queen, I was pretty angry.
"I'm going to stay in the car." I thought they were just going to be in and out.
"So you don't want any ice cream?"
"No."
"...What the fuck ever." And he slammed the car door, only to come back out a moment later and say, "It's hot as hell in this car and almost a hundred degrees out here. Come inside."
I didn't pitch a fit, I just went inside. He kept asking me if I was sure I didn't want any ice cream, but if I did, I would have paid for it myself. I'm just trying to save money, and anyway, I had a BLT waiting in the car in a Styrofoam box, so I just didn't want any ice cream. It wasn't about having a temper tantrum. He tried to say something else when we got back into the car and I cut him off, because now it was about Jess. "If you have problems with him, talk to him."
"I've tried, but he doesn't know how to save money. It's a big problem."
"Well, I do. I'm a good saver, and he's a better manager of it than I am. We can play to our strengths and help each other out. I'm good at English and bad at math, and you're good at math and bad at English. Haven't we always helped each other out? It's like that."
Kenny didn't say anything else to me about it, but when we got home, he was talking to Jess outside. It wasn't brought up anymore until Jess came home from work around midnight, and we sat down outside for one of our late-night talks. The conversation turned to moving, because we're both excited that we can finally start actually planning this, and slowly turning it into a reality instead of some far-off dream. Jess told me I was going to have to get rid of a lot of my stuff, and I had anticipated that. I'm something of a pack-rat, but I'm not nearly as bad as some other people I've seen. I like to hold onto things that give me fond memories of days gone by. But he told me that he was going to be making a lot of decisions about MY possessions that I wasn't going to like, and I would just have to live with it.
"No," I said. "I'm not getting rid of things I've had longer than I've known you at your whim. And I'm not getting rid of whatever you want. It's my stuff, it's my decision what to keep and what to throw out."
"No it's not," he said. "I'm telling you, you don't know how small the places are that we're going to be living. We won't have room for storage. From experience, I know what's going to fit and what's not - so I have to tell you what you can keep and what you can't."
"No," I said again. "You can tell me what I can take with me because it will fit, but you cannot tell me what I'm throwing away. And when I go through my stuff, I want to do it alone. Without you. I don't want you pawing through my memories. It's like pawing through my journals. Too personal. I'm going to do all that alone."
"Speaking of your journals," he said, "we're not taking those with us either, and you have to realize that your parents aren't going to just keep things for you that we can't take with us. Everything you leave here is going to end up getting thrown away."
That wasn't necessarily true, and I argued that point too. "Listen, my journals matter more to me than any book I've ever owned that some other asshole has just written in. I'm taking every single one of them, even if I can't take any of my books." I mean, I can always buy more copies of books I like. I cannot buy more copies of my own personal writing, that's irreplaceable.
"Where are we going to keep it?" he countered.
"On a bookshelf."
"What bookshelf?"
"I have one in my room."
"They're going to let you keep that?"
"Yes, they said it was mine. Including the dresser. It's mine, I can take it."
"Well I'm sure we can find some place to keep a bookshelf. But you're taking ONLY what you can fit on that shelf, no more."
I understand that, because we're only limited to one moving truck and I have a lot more crap than Jess does. He wants to disassemble my sleigh bed and take it with us, at least until we can afford a bigger two-sleeper, but that will take up more room in the van. And when he talked about making decisions in life that I wasn't going to like, but I'd have to deal, I said I'd be doing the same thing and that was part of what a relationship was all about. Now we come to the reason why I'm writing all of this in here:
"No, you aren't."
"Yes, I am." I looked shocked for a second, because I was.
"No. You aren't," he repeated with more conviction.
"So...you're telling me that you're allowed to make decisions I won't like, and I'm not...and I have to live with it?"
"Yes," he said. "I don't want to use this term, but as the man in the relationship, I am the head of my family. You are my family, until we get married and have kids. As the head of my family, I'm also the head of my house. When we move, I am going to be the head of that house. Here's why. God says that the man is responsible for his family. You have it easy. My family has to abide by every decision I make, and God will judge me for it later."
"You don't rule me," I told him. This is the twenty-first century, and he was starting to make me feel like property.
"Yes I do. As the head of the house, I rule you. You don't have to like every decision I make, you don't even have to agree with it. But you do have to go along with it."
"You don't own me, and I don't have to go along with anything I don't like!" I was starting to get upset.
"I never said I own you," he told me. "But the Bible says that wives must submit to their husbands, and as my wife, that's what you'll do. And because I love you, I will make sure to hear your opinion on every decision I make, and I will always listen to your voice and your input...but I have the final say."
I was almost starting to cry, and I didn't know whether it was from rage, or sadness at the fact that he felt it was okay to tell me this. "So...all the blood, sweat and tears I put into my family...a family you won't have without MY egg and MY womb...only matters because you say it does and you love me? I only have a say in the relationship because you love me?"
He told me, "I never said that." But he had, as far as I heard.
I tried to say, "I don't think you're capable of making decisions like that right now," and he said, "Then don't be with me. If you can't trust me to take care of my family now, then you won't trust me when we're married and have kids."
I didn't say I didn't trust him, I just said I didn't think he was ready. But I am the master of myself, except for God. My husband is not the master of me. I have my own mind, thoughts, feelings, opinions...and they DON'T just matter because he says they do. If I don't want my daughter to do something and he wants her to, it shouldn't be okay for him to just overrule me because he has a penis and the Bible says boobs aren't as important. He said he has to love me unconditionally as Christ loves the church, and that's not easy for him either...but I don't think I'm getting the easy deal here. I'm all for the old-fashioned concept of the man being the head of the house, but I am not some little doormat slave bitch. I am an equal partner. I don't think he was trying to call me a doormat, but I think he WAS saying the only thing that makes me equal is his love, and according to the Bible, I'm not. When I said I had a problem, he told me to argue with God, not him. Am I the only one who thinks this is fucked up?