It’s a conflict as old as motorcycle club culture itself: when your club brother gets with the girl of his dreams, he brings her around the club, and the battle begins. For whatever reason, she’s not happy with the club, with the life. At best, they’re disagreeing about the new direction of their life together, and at worst, she wants him out. How do you handle transforming relationships in motorcycle clubs?
The problem with this issue is that everyone looks at it from a very surface level; he’s wondering, why isn’t she happy? She’s wondering why he doesn’t understand? And the club is thinking she’ll either adjust or not.
But consider this: a popular girl (like cheerleader popular) meets a biker, they fall in love and get married. She knows nothing about the life, nothing about the club that he’s worked his way up through the ranks in; now he’s an officer and has responsibilities. Meanwhile, she’s trying to figure out how to get her happy ever after, because she assumed, he’d leave the club – that it was just a hobby anyway, and they would live out her dream Disney fantasy white picket fence and all, but he’s always out with the boys, or their in her house and now there are rooms that are off limits, The other wives are never around, and she’s finding it difficult to make friends because of the club’s reputation, her life, home, and relationship are all spiraling out of her control, now it’s either he loves me enough to leave the club, or I leave him.
The above is based on a real-life situation; I helped someone with one time, so I can tell you, what works, she needs 3 things, firstly she needs a woman to explain to her what club life and the culture is all about, because right now she doesn’t understand his commitment to the club because she thinks it’s a boy’s hobby, so everything he says falls flat. Secondly, she needs access to the other girls in the club asap, because, while not all women need to be surrounded by others, some have a deep need for it, and right now she’s struggling to fulfill that need. She needs to grieve the dream life she’s holding on to so tightly and realize that what she has is different; (only time will tell if she considers it better or worse).
You can’t control the outcome, but you can help ease her suffering, and by extension his, instead of standing back and watching, hoping they don’t implode their relationship. One of the biggest issues is women coming into the life with zero knowledge of it. It’s the education gap raising its head once again.
When there’s a girl in your club who dislikes either the life or the club, we must look at the situation, and if there is any way to help without interfering in their relationship. Too often, the words she hates the club are thrown around, but honestly, it is rarely the truth. It normally comes down to one of the following: control either the environment or the person, fear of losing a partner; that textbook fears he’s going to go out one day and not come back. Religious/social value systems, there are people out there who believe I can’t support the club because they have seen a behaviour they don’t approve of, or that society’s conditioning has taught them is wrong on some level.
The problem becomes: we internalize it; she thinks he’d leave if he loves me, and he thinks she’d accept this is important to me if she loved me. Let’s take a moment to break down the elephant in the room and why he should leave the club is so destructive to the individuals, the relationship and the club.
I know people who have left their clubs because it was their relationship or the club; I know club brothers that would tell you it’s not a choice, it’s the wife every time, and some couples survive it, some don’t.
On the surface, it seems like a logical argument, right? If it were just a hobby, it would be, but a club is so much more than that, and the outcome of the argument could rewrite key values and power dynamics within the couple itself. The club requires, commitment, dedicated, to ability to put the work in, to follow through, and patience – she likely admired those qualities in him when they met its part of the reason they got together, women crave safety with men and those qualities support that feeling of safety, but if he leaves because she threatened the relationship and pushed too hard, they unravel, because she just got him to break is biggest commitment, unconsciously this teaches her brain I can make him do anything if I push hard enough, and the one thing she hasn’t considered is that the power shift may also erode his commitment to her.
The value was weakened, so now the power balance in the relationship has shifted, the values have weakened, and the club – they accept his discussion and talk about him later, his status is now reduced because he was supposed to be loyal to the brotherhood, to put the club first, to be committed and all it took was one threat, to tear it down. He now has to fill the void left by the club and rebuild his life because leaving a club is like leaving a part of yourself behind.
There is no win in or out; it doesn’t matter; everyone leaves scarred, and no one is ever the same. Of course, there are always exceptions; she may not want to listen to you, and he may secretly want to leave the club. But I believe we should help people where we can, even if it’s only by explaining the weight of what she is really asking.
There are options for women who don’t want to be part of the life, like a citizen wife, for example, support him but not be involved, but for him, it’s in or out.
If you want to learn more about helping others inside motorcycle club culture, with loyalty, discipline, and structural intelligence, so you can stabilize your club, I am here for that.
Belinda Sharland