One of my best friends recently got engaged! I was extremely happy for the both of them. I decided we could all use some social time before the wedding planning whirlwind commenced, so we all sat back to play games. We decided on The Battle of the Sexes. After quite a few rounds my girlfriend threw her hands up at her new fiance and yelled "How do you know all these things?!" His ingenious response was "Babe I'm a guy. I'm just smart like that." I gave him the biggest "surely you came from Jupiter" look while my dear friend responded with "Ya you're right. That's why I'm marrying you, because you'll take good care of me!" I had two responses warring with each other: full on puke or smack some sense into my friend.
Why is it that women are satisfied with sitting back and letting men take care of them. Everyone wants to feel a sense of security, and we females always want to be the damsel in distress. I get that. I'll even fess up to it myself. But why ladies? Wake up! There aren't enough strong males to go around rescuing us constantly. We've all got better and more important things to do. Has this partiality towards being cared for resulted in our comatose state that keeps us from being capable of caring for ourselves?
In Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication on the Rights of Woman," she argues the following: "Men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society." Need I say more? Instead of women pursuing meaningful things that could help us to truly flourish in life, we have become entranced by the ooey gooey mush men seem content to drown us in. After the romance dies, what are we left with? Would women feel so weak and stripped of power after breakups if we feed our hungry human states with intellect and other meaningful food in addition to the adorations of our counterparts?
I agree with you, women need to find other ways to fulfill their time instead of focusing on other needs others. For example it is important for women to find power within themselves and not look to man to fulfill this requirement. Like you said what happens when the romance is gone, it is up to both individuals within the relationship to find the qualities they love about one another to keep the love and romance going. This responsibility doesn’t fall onto one individual the duty should be shared amongst the couple.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree as well. The worst is when young girls feel this way. My friend's 13 year old sister and her boyfriend broke up after dating a few weeks and she completely crumbled thinking that she wasn't good enough. At first I rolled my eyes thinking, "Honey you have no idea what you're talking about you're too young." But then I thought about how sad it actually was. At 13, obviously you make things into a bigger deal than what they really are, but this poor girl actually placed her sense of worth on this relationship at that young of an age and was distraught over being worthless because it ended. I feel like this should never happen, not even at an older age. As a society, we're so obsessed with looking for others and impressing others and we forget about creating ourselves so that we have something to fall back on if/when things fall apart. Why do we all rush into finding people to fall for when we haven't even established ourselves? I wonder if this has something to do with the divorce rates being sky high...?
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