For All the Men

I'm Sorry

I should be taking a break, but I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, like I shouldn’t be, listening to therapy reels, like I shouldn’t be, and one came up that completely changed my perspective, so of course I have to write about it.

I am emotional. I won’t apologize for it. I feel emotionally complicated, so sometimes my blogs come across more from a woman’s perspective than from a man’s, especially when it talks about narcissism and how I have been hurt by men. For that, I cannot apologize. My life has been one way, and I can only write what I know. Perhaps it was because I was conceived directly after the miscarriage of my sister, another thing that nobody in our family ever talks about, that I got more estrogen than the average guy. Who knows? I don’t care. Whether or not that is the case, I am who I am, and I will not apologize for it.

I will, however, apologize for making men out to be the bad guy in the conversation. That was never my intent! The video I watched was basically how guys are traumatized from childhood too in order to act a certain way, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Parents try their best, but as many lessons as we give little girls with baby dolls, and as many days as we give two teenagers a sack of flour to “take care of as a baby,” nothing prepares them for an actual, breathing, crying thing that has needs and wants, emotional and physical, on top of everything else they have to do to keep up society’s standards of cleanliness of a house and the emotional need to have friends their age every once in a while so they don’t devolve into pure baby talk, and at least one person if not both have to work at least one full-time job to care for the new family!

It's been “the American way” for the mother to stay at home raising the child most of the time while the father goes to work to provide for the family, but that was when one income was enough to provide for the family, and that is no longer the case. No wonder children’s needs aren’t met and then grow up to be adults who haven’t learned how to regulate their emotions in a healthy way and turn to the few coping mechanisms that they learned about in school (aka the ones to “stay away from”). Men are just as much victims in this as women are. Men are taught to go after the girl, even if she says no, instead of “no means no”. That message is changing, but it takes a while to see the affect, and that’s if it trumps what is taught by their parents! 

Corporate America is leeching out every ounce of soul a person has, and that has become the standard work environment for most places now. No wonder people go home angry and tired and don’t want to cook, clean, take care of children, learn how to emotionally ask what is wrong and take care of that instead of just getting them to SHUT UP NOW. Babies don’t cry because they want to be the loudest, most obnoxious creatures on earth. Two year olds don’t get distracted on purpose. Teenagers don’t lash out because they want to hurt the people who raised them. It feels good, and if they don’t know any different, they think being mean is fun and makes them popular. They don’t care about the impact of it until they are a single 35 year old who can’t make any friends because they are too sarcastic, sassy, etc. And if they have found a husband, it’s not going to be a healthy relationship unless they put in some serious work to change themselves.

I was worried about the kind of women being raised in this country after my post last night about being in an abusive relationship in the past. But really, it’s not just the women I am worried about. It’s everybody. How are we raising young men who think it is okay that their word is law in their household, and that their own spouse doesn’t get a voice? How is it okay that after years, a woman’s voice is silenced in her own house? Does anybody think anything’s wrong with that????