Still DB'ing - Still Learning from WAW (6)

[asitis]

Zeus,

I hope you take this not as a criticism, but as a heads up on something I think you in no way intended.

I know you're struggling, and I know you put a wink after your statement, but I really need to point out that there are women on this forum who have been abused and have taken the reasonable path of seeking a D to escape that situation.

If you have ever worked w/ abuse survivors, you would know that many/most carry the physical and emotional scars of their abuse for the rest of their lives, often making it hard for them to enter into healthy Rs again. They also often carry around a great deal of guilt and shame, and we need to have a sensitivity that they may by hurt by statements like yours even if you didn't mean for it to come across in a hurtful way.

I think almost everyone on here wishes society didn't see D as so acceptable, although I think many we think are walking away too quickly have really wrestled more than we give them credit for and are feeling a lot of pain about their choice. I think most of us wish there were longer legal cooling off periods (although again I'd make exceptions in the case of abuse) to allow for everyone to go through the chaos of emotions that are set off with As, MLC, and feeling like they've had enough. So, I think you'll find most of us are sympathetic to your critique of our culture.

And, again, I know you aren't the type to want to cause pain to any of the women here. Having worked with abuse survivors, I'm just hyper sensitive to how easy it is for our words to unintentionally cause abuse survivors pain that decent people like us really feel bad about because we really didn't understand the impact of those words.