There are people who seem to want to use you for a mirror. They want to reflect their faults. Hence they are not cold, you are. They are not always searching for fault, you are. And unless you pay particular attention, you wind up caught in their fantasy world.
This doesn't happen without resistance when you care. In most cases, you are listening with a third of an ear, or reading while playing scrabble, answering email, and cooking dinner. So they get over by your disconnect.
Because what they think isn't important to you, they get the chance to attribute and then to carry their 'findings' around like a flag. And suddenly, you find yourself stressed out because your apathy has created the monster.
Getting rid of these people, or at least putting them into 'containment' is necessary for your equilibrium.
Cutting down contact, redirecting, and letting them expose themselves in non-charged ways does have an effect.
As soon as you find yourself 'defending' or explaining, cut off. The next confrontation is set for pointlessness. The same intense nit-picking or 'whatever you say I take the other side' mentality, will become over obvious when it's one of those current event things in which their opinion is worthless. That they advocate with intensity proves that they are not discussing that issue, they are attacking you.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Stopping Mid Word
It's happened to you. You're deep in conversation with someone, actually thinking they are listening, when they turn to call to someone else, not just a wave or word, but turn to them as if you don't exist.
Yes, it's usually the stupider folk who do this, and you really should ask yourself, 'what the ras me a talk to this idiot for?' but of course, at the time, you are just stunned.
No matter how many times it has happened to me, I am always stunned by it. Not just the rudeness, but the fact that the person is simply far too stupid to follow conversation.
Now it is going to happen to you; most often you'll be talking to a male person whom you wrongly attributed with intelligence. It happens. As soon as he turns to someone else, stop talking. Stop speaking mid word. Stop talking, and very quietly start walking away.
If he calls to you, smile your best and say, "I finished what I had to say."
And don't ever waste your time engaging in conversation with people who have not the capacity.
Yes, it's usually the stupider folk who do this, and you really should ask yourself, 'what the ras me a talk to this idiot for?' but of course, at the time, you are just stunned.
No matter how many times it has happened to me, I am always stunned by it. Not just the rudeness, but the fact that the person is simply far too stupid to follow conversation.
Now it is going to happen to you; most often you'll be talking to a male person whom you wrongly attributed with intelligence. It happens. As soon as he turns to someone else, stop talking. Stop speaking mid word. Stop talking, and very quietly start walking away.
If he calls to you, smile your best and say, "I finished what I had to say."
And don't ever waste your time engaging in conversation with people who have not the capacity.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Life Is Not Fair
Okay, I'm going to call her Pricilla, but that's not her name. I was her best friend. She was not my best friend. I was her best friend because no one else could tolerate someone as intrinsically selfish, self-centred as her.
This is not to infer that I was her best friend every day in the week. No. If anyone came along that she wanted to impress, I was dropped. Only when there was no one else would I be recycled.
Anyway, she decided to marry a rich older man from Primary school. She added reasons as she got older,
She loved money, so it was no surprise she wanted a rich man; an older man so that "When I'm Forty, he'll be over Sixty and I'll still look good to him."
She married the older man, the rich older man. I loved my shoes more than she loved him. In fact she was so uninterested in him that she never cared where he was, when, so there was no questions. If he came home at six or ten, she never asked him where he was. She asked him about his business, about anything.
Her conversations concerned spending his money. She had a helper and a cook, and had him send her to school so she could get a job he arranged for her with one of his big friends. She lived at her job because she never wanted to go home, unless she was having a dinner or party.
After about seven years, he wanted children, and she decided okay; I'll give him two and done. So she gave him two. He had to hire a nanny, because she was busy and didn't want her mother to move in.
Pris didn't want her mother there either, which is why she suggested it.
She was as interested in her kids as she was in her husband. However, just as with her husband, she was able to emulate the 'perfect' wife and mother.
Her husband adored her, her kids worshipped her, and she lived her life as if she were absolutely free.
Her kids went to school, then extra lessons and tennis, piano, swimming, whatever could keep them away from the house until five, so could provoke her husband hiring a chauffeur.
By the time Pris was forty, her husband was a tired sixty three, who had retired, but she found him part time work somewhere making him believe that he couldn't just stay home.
Her kids were packed off to University as they graduated High School, getting a very brief vacation, because it was important they get used to the new environment and prepare in advance.
Now unlike all you wives you worship your husband, and work at your marriage, unlike you parents who wrap your existence in your children, Pris was interested in Pris and nothing else.
Which is why she is held up as a goddess to other wives and mothers.
This is not to infer that I was her best friend every day in the week. No. If anyone came along that she wanted to impress, I was dropped. Only when there was no one else would I be recycled.
Anyway, she decided to marry a rich older man from Primary school. She added reasons as she got older,
She loved money, so it was no surprise she wanted a rich man; an older man so that "When I'm Forty, he'll be over Sixty and I'll still look good to him."
She married the older man, the rich older man. I loved my shoes more than she loved him. In fact she was so uninterested in him that she never cared where he was, when, so there was no questions. If he came home at six or ten, she never asked him where he was. She asked him about his business, about anything.
Her conversations concerned spending his money. She had a helper and a cook, and had him send her to school so she could get a job he arranged for her with one of his big friends. She lived at her job because she never wanted to go home, unless she was having a dinner or party.
After about seven years, he wanted children, and she decided okay; I'll give him two and done. So she gave him two. He had to hire a nanny, because she was busy and didn't want her mother to move in.
Pris didn't want her mother there either, which is why she suggested it.
She was as interested in her kids as she was in her husband. However, just as with her husband, she was able to emulate the 'perfect' wife and mother.
Her husband adored her, her kids worshipped her, and she lived her life as if she were absolutely free.
Her kids went to school, then extra lessons and tennis, piano, swimming, whatever could keep them away from the house until five, so could provoke her husband hiring a chauffeur.
By the time Pris was forty, her husband was a tired sixty three, who had retired, but she found him part time work somewhere making him believe that he couldn't just stay home.
Her kids were packed off to University as they graduated High School, getting a very brief vacation, because it was important they get used to the new environment and prepare in advance.
Now unlike all you wives you worship your husband, and work at your marriage, unlike you parents who wrap your existence in your children, Pris was interested in Pris and nothing else.
Which is why she is held up as a goddess to other wives and mothers.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Baggage
It is really sad to see people so weighed down by the 'baggage' of their past that they no longer really exist as an individual.
In a way I am incredibly lucky not to be carting around a trailer of exs and twisted kids and half dead relatives so that anyone who thinks of inviting me for coffee has to consider my menagerie.
I was amazed by this chap who, ex-wife, handicapped child, thought he could make another stab at living, but ex-wife and handicapped child put paid to that.
No woman is going to deal with him; not with one phone in case his old mother calls, another for his handicapped child, and those that try find themselves alone when he 'has' to go to who summons him.
In a way I am incredibly lucky not to be carting around a trailer of exs and twisted kids and half dead relatives so that anyone who thinks of inviting me for coffee has to consider my menagerie.
I was amazed by this chap who, ex-wife, handicapped child, thought he could make another stab at living, but ex-wife and handicapped child put paid to that.
No woman is going to deal with him; not with one phone in case his old mother calls, another for his handicapped child, and those that try find themselves alone when he 'has' to go to who summons him.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Is it only me?
Some years ago I saw this guy and thought he was 'all that'. Then I saw his girlfriend. Her thighs were thicker than my waist, and I was like...wow....I need to change my glasses as a matter of emergency. But my opinion of the guy went down. Not just his appearance, his intelligence, his character, I mean, the guy went from Tyr Anasazi to Chris Rock.
The other day, the same thing happened again, proving I haven't changed. I thought this guy was all that, saw his girlfriend, and like, I don't even want to hear what he has to say.
It's not judging a guy by how he looks. It is judging him as to how his girlfriend looks. Which of course, brings me to the fact that women judge other women, are more interested in other women then they will admit.
I've always known that the 'Other Woman' isn't going after the guy, she's judging herself against the wife. If I can take him I am better than the wife. And many of us have seen the gal dump the guy when the wife does, or when she find out the wife has someone else on the side.
This is the danger, of course, of the anorexic model, who makes other women feel fat, the danger of thinking that if our breasts were bigger, our bellies flatter, our hair dyed we will be 'better women'.
The other day, the same thing happened again, proving I haven't changed. I thought this guy was all that, saw his girlfriend, and like, I don't even want to hear what he has to say.
It's not judging a guy by how he looks. It is judging him as to how his girlfriend looks. Which of course, brings me to the fact that women judge other women, are more interested in other women then they will admit.
I've always known that the 'Other Woman' isn't going after the guy, she's judging herself against the wife. If I can take him I am better than the wife. And many of us have seen the gal dump the guy when the wife does, or when she find out the wife has someone else on the side.
This is the danger, of course, of the anorexic model, who makes other women feel fat, the danger of thinking that if our breasts were bigger, our bellies flatter, our hair dyed we will be 'better women'.
Two Becomes One
We're all taught that we 'need' a man to 'fulfill' us. We are taught to see ourselves as half a circle. We have lives but they are directed towards this 'goal'. We meet someone, we fall in love, we join with them, and it isn't long before we are not half a circle, we are swallowed up in his circle.
Relationships are very rarely equal. In marriage, and near-marriages, one person, usually the woman, becomes the adjunct, at best, subsumed as usual, destroyed as worst, by the man they 'love'.
There are moments when one realises it, but 'for the sake of the marriage', puts aside 'selfish' goals, and erodes more of her personhood. Sometimes one can define 'Stockholm Syndrome', other times, the identification with the abuser, as Bettleheim documented.
In the best cases it is usually like having a 'parent' who 'looks after us' and 'forms our character.'
We try to stay in the relationship as long as we can, as if there's a benefit in losing our identity. And lose it we do.
Those who were always followers, not particularly opinionated or ambitious can go from parents to husband quite comfortably. Those who broke those parental bonds and became whole suffer the worst when they marry and have to return to the constraints of having please others and displease ourselves.
It is only after; when the marriage breaks down, or when the other person proves to be so much less that we no longer respect nor need to please, that we recapture our essence. That the We becomes Me, and the Us returns to I.
Relationships are very rarely equal. In marriage, and near-marriages, one person, usually the woman, becomes the adjunct, at best, subsumed as usual, destroyed as worst, by the man they 'love'.
There are moments when one realises it, but 'for the sake of the marriage', puts aside 'selfish' goals, and erodes more of her personhood. Sometimes one can define 'Stockholm Syndrome', other times, the identification with the abuser, as Bettleheim documented.
In the best cases it is usually like having a 'parent' who 'looks after us' and 'forms our character.'
We try to stay in the relationship as long as we can, as if there's a benefit in losing our identity. And lose it we do.
Those who were always followers, not particularly opinionated or ambitious can go from parents to husband quite comfortably. Those who broke those parental bonds and became whole suffer the worst when they marry and have to return to the constraints of having please others and displease ourselves.
It is only after; when the marriage breaks down, or when the other person proves to be so much less that we no longer respect nor need to please, that we recapture our essence. That the We becomes Me, and the Us returns to I.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Feminism
And you know in 1970 we thought we won. Yeah. We really thought we had done it.
Well, we didn't.
Women are bigger sex objects in 2010 then they ever were. Not just objects, self-selling objects.
The so-called singers spend more time exposing themselves, so that hearing a song on the radio is like yawn, then seeing the slut tearing out herself on a video and realising, this is why the song sells.
Actresses; can't sleep with enough people. Not merely other people's husbands but wives as well, and we're supposed to, respect them?
On the street, tits are dangling like cow udders, pants so tight you can tell who shaves and who doesn't, and bathing suits are made out of dental floss.
And women expect to be...respected?
Gloria Steinem prophesied that a black man would be President before a White Woman.
Yeah.
If a woman is businesslike she's too cold. If she's warm and open, she's not professional, if she has more degrees than a thermometer but isn't married; well you see her problem.
So a woman gets some big post that used have MAN written all over it, and to get over, she has to adopt the cutesy sweetsy persona so that she isn't 'threatening.' If she doesn't she is 'threatening'...and getting rid of her is priority one.
We thought our daughters would enter the world with the interest and ability and opportunity we had to fight for. They enter as either anorexic sticks or bloated cows, and their interest is pretty - husband - money - things - baby.
It might as well be 1910.
Well, we didn't.
Women are bigger sex objects in 2010 then they ever were. Not just objects, self-selling objects.
The so-called singers spend more time exposing themselves, so that hearing a song on the radio is like yawn, then seeing the slut tearing out herself on a video and realising, this is why the song sells.
Actresses; can't sleep with enough people. Not merely other people's husbands but wives as well, and we're supposed to, respect them?
On the street, tits are dangling like cow udders, pants so tight you can tell who shaves and who doesn't, and bathing suits are made out of dental floss.
And women expect to be...respected?
Gloria Steinem prophesied that a black man would be President before a White Woman.
Yeah.
If a woman is businesslike she's too cold. If she's warm and open, she's not professional, if she has more degrees than a thermometer but isn't married; well you see her problem.
So a woman gets some big post that used have MAN written all over it, and to get over, she has to adopt the cutesy sweetsy persona so that she isn't 'threatening.' If she doesn't she is 'threatening'...and getting rid of her is priority one.
We thought our daughters would enter the world with the interest and ability and opportunity we had to fight for. They enter as either anorexic sticks or bloated cows, and their interest is pretty - husband - money - things - baby.
It might as well be 1910.
What it means
A schmata is a Yiddish word meaning rag. I'm using it to contain all the disconnected thoughts I want to share with the world. Or myself, depending on how this blog takes off.
My first schmata concerns feminism.
My first schmata concerns feminism.
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