I always felt so bad for my husband at my family events. My family is very traditional and conservative, so every event is de facto segregated by gender. The women are all in the kitchen, and the men are all in the living room or on the front porch (depending on the weather).

Acceptable topics of conversation among the men: livestock, farm equipment, and neighbors whose land is adjacent to my grandfather’s farm. My husband is a suburban guy who had been on a horse before he met me.

We were both glad when my cousins’ kids got old enough that he could play games with them. (And video games when they hit their teens.) He got bonus points with my mom and aunts for “taking care of the kids” even though he was just trying to escape the boredom of talking to the adults.