OMG! I just got through reading your amazing thread. There are so many twists and turns and topics here my mind is spinning.
You are the living embodiment of Neitzche's words "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
First of all I got all fired up about the whole feminine/feminism part of your thread. Then the abuse story just had me in tears. WTG for finally standing up to him, and for pulling through all these years. And now we are talking about power and how giving it away is a way to keep it. There are so many pearls of absolute wisdom here - and like you say you were born to write.
I really think you did hate women because you hated your mum. You hated her for losing your Dad, for being powerless to get him back, for being reliant on his checks which never came, for not being able to keep everything going on her own, for needing a man so much you had to put up with horrible step-dads. I think you probably buried that one deep because she really was/is all you had.
I've always been a girly girl but I too hated women. Like being a girl, like looking like a girl, like using girlish power but never wanted to be a woman. And that manifested for me in not wanting to be a mother. Thank God I came to my senses on that one in time. When I got pregnant at the ripe old age of 38 my Dad said "what happened - I thought you were never going to have kids?" and I said "I finally grew up enough to stop defying my mother".
I do think the same dynamic works for men - I think there are many men out there - my H included - who are not happy being men. And I have often wondered what it is about me that stops me from attracting (and being attracted by) manly men. You know, the normal guys, not the Woody Allen types I seem to wind up with.
A lot of what has been said here runs counter to what I have been saying on my thread about me being the alpha rather than H. And I do have my doubts over it. Honeypot's comments have a lot of interest for me because she said she deliberately picked someone she could easily lead, and I know I did the same thing. For me I think it was a question of trust. I no longer wanted to put myself into the hands of a man. As BF has been saying to surrender to a man, BTDT got burned. So I picked one I wouldn't have to struggle with in order not to surrender. Unsatisfactory.
Like I say Corri, this thread is amazing. I'm going to cut and paste a lot of it for there are so many things worth learning by heart.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
