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I had been seeing this pattern/situation happening more than once amongst couples I know.
A man is married to a woman that he loves, adores and desires. He is totally into her and is attracted to her completely. The wife however, suffers with a lot of insecurities that she is incapable of hiding/keeping to herself. She continuously says things like: "I'm fat, I'm ugly, I know you don't want me, why do you even need me in such state, look at my fat ass..." She also constantly compares herself to other women trying to provoke him to say that he finds someone else across the room more attractive than her. Poor husband tries to reassure her that in fact she is beautiful and he doesn't want anyone else and that for him she is the most desireable woman...but she still continues to sing to the same tune. The sad thing is that the wife really is a very attractive woman!
Guess what happens when something gets drilled into your head over and over and over? Don't you start believing it eventually?
Finally after hearing this for years, the husband starts to believe his wife's lies and starts contemplating that maybe she is right, maybe she really isn't as attractive as he thought she is. Starts looking at other women or worse.
The point of my rambling is that women really need to keep their insecurities to themselves. It's very unattractive for a man to see this lack of confidence. There is no reason to manipulate him into constant reassurance, it's not fair.
I don't think we should be walking around all cocky and full of ourselves, but I'm observing that self-confidence is extremely appealing to people around you, and especially your significant others.
Okay, the preaching is over.
Women like that tend to be bottomless pits. No amount of reassurance will ever make them feel secure. Often that's because they aren't content with the attention of just one man. They want constant reassurance from all men, so even though their husbands may be showering them with constant praise and compliments, it's not enough. They want to hear it from other men, because in their minds, they already "won" their husbands over and they feel their husbands are going to give them a biased answer.
Women like that tend to be bottomless pits. No amount of reassurance will ever make them feel secure. Often that's because they aren't content with the attention of just one man. They want constant reassurance from all men, so even though their husbands may be showering them with constant praise and compliments, it's not enough. They want to hear it from other men, because in their minds, they already "won" their husbands over and they feel their husbands are going to give them a biased answer.
Also tend to be pretty unfaithful because the seeking of praise/assurance often results in having sex.
I wouldn't say they need to keep their insecurities to themselves. What is a marriage if you can't share your deepest feelings?
Yes, but somethings should be resolved by a certain age. It's extremely unattractive if a 25+ old woman is walking around trying to milk sympathy (oh yea, they put it to use) over whatever insecurity.
However, not much is going to change because women are too sheltered and too coddled in society for women as a whole to do anything about it. For example, this is why you never herd the term "WOMAN UP!" As in, lady, pull up your boot straps and quit crying!
Women like that tend to be bottomless pits. No amount of reassurance will ever make them feel secure. Often that's because they aren't content with the attention of just one man. They want constant reassurance from all men, so even though their husbands may be showering them with constant praise and compliments, it's not enough. They want to hear it from other men, because in their minds, they already "won" their husbands over and they feel their husbands are going to give them a biased answer.
I had been seeing this pattern/situation happening more than once amongst couples I know.
A man is married to a woman that he loves, adores and desires. He is totally into her and is attracted to her completely. The wife however, suffers with a lot of insecurities that she is incapable of hiding/keeping to herself. She continuously says things like: "I'm fat, I'm ugly, I know you don't want me, why do you even need me in such state, look at my fat ass..." She also constantly compares herself to other women trying to provoke him to say that he finds someone else across the room more attractive than her. Poor husband tries to reassure her that in fact she is beautiful and he doesn't want anyone else and that for him she is the most desireable woman...but she still continues to sing to the same tune. The sad thing is that the wife really is a very attractive woman!
Guess what happens when something gets drilled into your head over and over and over? Don't you start believing it eventually?
Finally after hearing this for years, the husband starts to believe his wife's lies and starts contemplating that maybe she is right, maybe she really isn't as attractive as he thought she is. Starts looking at other women or worse.
The point of my rambling is that women really need to keep their insecurities to themselves. It's very unattractive for a man to see this lack of confidence. There is no reason to manipulate him into constant reassurance, it's not fair.
I don't think we should be walking around all cocky and full of ourselves, but I'm observing that self-confidence is extremely appealing to people around you, and especially your significant others.
Okay, the preaching is over.
I agree 100% with everything you said. Great post. Not easy to follow in real life though. I am guilty of doing some of these things.Most women have so many insecurities including myself.
Last edited by KylieEve; 06-19-2010 at 08:17 PM..
Reason: .
Having a growing girl, this is something that resonates very deeply with me. The free spirit, the endless curiosity, the friendliness, the being herself, the boundless energy of a non-self-conscious 7 years old, - and I just want to bottle it up and remove all the social conditioning/expectations that she is bound to meet in 5 years or so. How can I help her to preserve her spirit and not to turn into a self-hating young woman? There is a book where the author, a mother of one girl, explores why girls turn from being free spirits into worrying worts, - and what to do to counter-stand the societal pressures:
"It's no news that many self-assured, spirited girls lose their exuberance and confidence during adolescence. Mackoff, a family therapist, hopes to counteract this effect by arming parents with the means to help younger girls (preschool through age 12) develop and maintain confidence as they grow. The author, who conducts "Growing a Girl" parenting workshops, claims that the "biggest difference between girls and boys is how we treat them."
^ ^^ It all starts from the moment a baby is born. From "oh she is so pretty" for a girl baby; "oh he is so rough, good for him" for a boy baby and frowning when the girl baby makes the same swinging rough movements. The funny (and sad) experiment was with a group of kids filmed running around in the same black suits and hats. Without reference to a gender, the viewers either felt uncomfortable in deciding whether to cheer or to frown at the rough play, or they assumed kids' genders (erroneously in majority of cases) and based their reactions on their assumption.
If a toddler in a blue sweat suit hurls a plate of spaghetti across the restaurant, the public around is more likely to cheer, "What a good baseball player is growing!" If the mother corrects them, that it is a girl, the smiles disappear and frowns appear - "a girl is not supposed to act this way".
And so on and so on in life.
It's US the public who conditions the girls. It's US who tirn them into humans with low self esteem.
So the advise for a woman, that she should "hide her self-esteem" from her husband, or boyfriend, or relatives, or the world, - does not sit well with me. A woman should not have the low self-esteem to start with. And hiding emotions is not good, neither, - we, the society, don't require from men to hide their emotions.
A woman should not have the low self-esteem to start with. And hiding emotions is not good, neither, - we, the society, don't require from men to hide their emotions.
I agreed with most of your post this is the only part I disagree with (as I mentioned to you). Men are generally expected to keep their insecurities to themselves and share them only with their gf or wife. Thye display acceptable emotions to the world and the rest get dumped en masse when they get home.
I agree that women are attcked from birth and expected to grow into co-dependent submissive insecure trophies. But, maybe in another generation or two that conditioning will change.
It wasn't til I was in my early 30s I started to see all this crap. I really bought into it for a while. I think there are already enough misogynists out there without validation like this--and coming from a woman to boot. Sorry, MM, I love your posts normally but this one was like making a touchdown for the other team.
I don't suppose you'll ever see the inherent problem in this.
Let me paraphrase:
"MM, your observation, if you really believe it, shouldn't have been voiced because it's less like you've noticed a human foible more notably dominant among women and are trying to understand or explore it and more like you just helped our enemies!"
Yeah -- enemies. That's how it reads to me. So while I'll never deny the abundance of misogynists out there JUST as I'll never deny the absolute wealth of misandrists out there, the fact that half the population of the planet is on an "opposing team" based on gender says more about you than it does about them.
It says you may not be so enlightened or discerning as you believe.
"But it's different -- men really ARE this way and DO this stuff!"
Your they'll stray no matter what example is a fine one: Men, ultimately, are all cheaters.
"Not ALL of them, but enough!"
Yep, enough of them that it's a prevailing factor in your evaluation of men at large -- odds are good he's a cheater. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but it's coming with the slow inevitability of a storm system.
Indeed; I'm pretty sure the misogynists feel the same about women. (Women are all [insert bad quality here])
I was only fifteen years old when I learned this lesson. Like all kids I was pretty sure I really understood not only how things worked but how things should be. Further, I really tended to think a lot, albeit coloured with emotions and angst. No one understood me... would probably fail if they even bothered to take the time to try and understand poor, beleagured me...
One day I noticed a friend seemed down and I tried to talk to her about it only to be rebuffed: "You couldn't understand anyway," she told me indignantly. "You couldn't possibly understand the depths of my feelings."
Inside my own skin I rose up sharply, hackles erect. How DARE she! How dare she suggest that I was somehow incapable of understanding her alleged depths! Oh, if she wanted to understand depths of feeling then she needed to change her tune right quick -- I was the one with TRUE depth of feeling, I was the one who took the time and effort to understand and she could never even hope to scratch the surface of MY....
I stopped dead in my mental tracks, mid-thought, because it occurred to me that what I was feeling was precisely what she felt about her own depth of emotion, her own "true" understanding of the world around her and how it worked. She was as convinced of my own inability as she was of her own REAL ability based on nothing more than the fact that she was the one feeling her own emotions.
Being convinced you or your gender "have it worse", believing you've got your finger on the pulse of how things really happen more than anyone else, is a lot like watching a person who is in pain, experiencing some pain yourself and then trying to decide who had it worse.
There is no Pain-O-Meter where yours registered a Nine while theirs only registered a Four and there is no Soci-O-Meter where your indignation is more valid than theirs.
To resent Max's Mama for questioning something she has observed because it "wins one for the other team" suggests you need to step off the race where it's women vs men and step into the race we call Human.
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