Mojo is 42

[MJontheMend]

Wow! I just had a Eureka moment by simultaneously thinking about my problem, BF's problem and FlyLady. What BF needs is to find a woman who had a really good relationship with her father AND her mother growing up. That woman will like men AND she will like herself. When BF starts "doing nothing" and stops being "Daddy" she will simply switch over to "mothering" herself in order to self-validate her femininity.

So, obviously, my problem is that I had a good relationship with my father, so I like men but a bad relationship with my mother so I have a hard time liking myself or my feminine side. This is somewhat mitigated in my case by the fact that I grew up in a household of sisters to whom I am close but being the oldest sister I was the "little mother" to my sisters rather than someone who was mothered by an older sister. Therefore, the only way in which I am comfortable self-validating my femininity is in the maternal role. The reason why I find the FlyLady site so helpful (beyond the straightforward organizational help) is that FlyLady acts as a mother to all of her FlyBabies who join the site. She is basically teaching her followers how to mother themselves and that is a skill that I am in desperate need of.

It must be really obvious that I need this in real life. For instance, there is a very nice post office worker who I see most days because she usually does my mailing. Her manner and appearance is such that if I were a 65 year old man I would want to be married to her (She is probably just barely old enough to be my mother). When I got my new red valise to replace my ratty old catch-all, she said something like "That is so nice! Look how organized you are." and the next day she gave me a check protector thingee. I almost started crying.

When I need "rescuing" and feel like there is nobody to rescue me, I naturally try to become my own "Daddy" because that is who rescued me when I was young. If I can become my own "Mommy" when I need rescuing then I can rescue myself without forsaking my femininity. This is kind of what I was trying to do in a subconscious self-destructive manner when I fed myself cookies for comfort.