Single and fine, thank you! ;-)
Someone judged me today - prejudged me, I mean. Yes, it was prejudice! This person barely knows me, but had me on a little pedestal straight away, you know: long-standing home educator, devoted mother, happy person, fairly eloquent, seems calm. Oooh, I must be someone wonderful. Then I was asked about my marital status and Whooooosh! I felt the pedestal being whipped away from under my feet even as I spoke the reply. Dear me, you could see the thought process on her face: "So.. if you were married years ago and now aren't, then who...? and who....? and how...?" as she looked with mild panic at my two younger children. Then the warmth in her voice when she'd adressed me previously dropped to chill factor and she made her excuses and walked away!
It's quite amazing - this person still doesn't really know me from Adam and yet I'm now far, far less worth knowing, in her eyes, than I was before. I don't understand this marriage-status thing. What's that all about? I'm sorry, but I tried marriage for 10 years and it sucked. It just basically meant that I had another person to cook and clean for, who did very little in return except mess me about, keep housekeeping money from me, make decisions which concerned me without consulting me and yet expected to be consulted in every little decision I made, and demanded sex twice a day, regardless of how I felt or whether I was free from my mothering duties to provide it! Oh and who criticised me almost constantly, even though I never criticised him! Well, I once asked him to move his van away from the front of the house because it was blocking the daylight out of the house again - not that there was much daylight around in the house we used to live in - and apparently that was so horrendously awkward and hyper-critical of me that he's still recounting the 'shocking' incident at family parties even now, 10 years after we separated.
I mean, in all honesty, why would I want to do that again? As a single woman I can devote myself 100% to my children. I can be completely responsive to them and live a thoroughly relaxed life with them, without that empty pointless hopeful feeling I used to get, along the lines of: "Oh great, their other parent has come home - I can kick back and have some time to myself! Maybe even a bath? I could eat a meal with two hands instead of one!" Nope, it's all for me to manage and that's the way I like it, nowadays. My children are much better for it too. They know I'm here for them whenever they need me, not spending my precious time and energy on massaging someone's male ego instead.
So why is it deemed 'better' to be married? It's just not, in my experience. It's.. just.. not! There, Mrs Prejudice, put that in your pipe and smoke it ;-)
Yesterday someone gave me some pics they'd taken of me and some of my brood. I love these pics, because they show us as a complete family (minus Lyddie, sadly, who was sulking in her room at the time, and wouldn't join in the photo!)
Hehe, we're a scruffy bunch, aren't we? Can't think why she bothered with the pedestal in the first place! (I can't be the only one who hates being put on pedestals - they tend to be extremely flimsy things, I find.)
It's quite amazing - this person still doesn't really know me from Adam and yet I'm now far, far less worth knowing, in her eyes, than I was before. I don't understand this marriage-status thing. What's that all about? I'm sorry, but I tried marriage for 10 years and it sucked. It just basically meant that I had another person to cook and clean for, who did very little in return except mess me about, keep housekeeping money from me, make decisions which concerned me without consulting me and yet expected to be consulted in every little decision I made, and demanded sex twice a day, regardless of how I felt or whether I was free from my mothering duties to provide it! Oh and who criticised me almost constantly, even though I never criticised him! Well, I once asked him to move his van away from the front of the house because it was blocking the daylight out of the house again - not that there was much daylight around in the house we used to live in - and apparently that was so horrendously awkward and hyper-critical of me that he's still recounting the 'shocking' incident at family parties even now, 10 years after we separated.
I mean, in all honesty, why would I want to do that again? As a single woman I can devote myself 100% to my children. I can be completely responsive to them and live a thoroughly relaxed life with them, without that empty pointless hopeful feeling I used to get, along the lines of: "Oh great, their other parent has come home - I can kick back and have some time to myself! Maybe even a bath? I could eat a meal with two hands instead of one!" Nope, it's all for me to manage and that's the way I like it, nowadays. My children are much better for it too. They know I'm here for them whenever they need me, not spending my precious time and energy on massaging someone's male ego instead.
So why is it deemed 'better' to be married? It's just not, in my experience. It's.. just.. not! There, Mrs Prejudice, put that in your pipe and smoke it ;-)
Yesterday someone gave me some pics they'd taken of me and some of my brood. I love these pics, because they show us as a complete family (minus Lyddie, sadly, who was sulking in her room at the time, and wouldn't join in the photo!)
Hehe, we're a scruffy bunch, aren't we? Can't think why she bothered with the pedestal in the first place! (I can't be the only one who hates being put on pedestals - they tend to be extremely flimsy things, I find.)
posted by Gill at
17:38
20 Comments:
I would never admit to conforming to the ideals of others but must confess I no longer wear jogging pants! the only others I ever saw here wearing them were well erm oh blimey Oh dodos I am walking straight in here eyes wide open
BANG
LOL! Ooh I wear them sometimes. Does this mean I'm unknowingly commiting yet another horrendous faux pas?
Sigh... *gets list out, ticks another one off...* ;-)
Elaine, like the song said, we ain't never gonna be respectable!
xx
Respectable isn't something you'd ever want to aspire to either I hope ;-)
People's perceptions are very funny I find - I like the looks on people's faces when they try to decide if all my children have the same father - age gap you know, clearly the result of a second marriage ;-)
Love the photo of you all :0)
Tbh I don't understand it either.
LOL Tech, you should make up a really exciting story about the rivalry between 'all their fathers'.. pistols at dawn, etc.
OK, maybe not! ;-)
Thanks Mrs 4kids, you're very kind :-)
Gah! Why do people find it so difficult to live and let live???
I sometimes catch a flash of panic in people's eyes when they figure out our family structure. Most of the time it's absolutley fine but sometimes there is that rigid smile and closing down of conversation. Ho hum...
Clare, I dunno... but we'd have a solution to world peace if we could work it out!
Allie, yes it was exactly like that! Rigid smile and all ;-)
I bought a book last year called 'Not Married - Not Bothered!' - I haven't read it yet, I just liked the title, it's so me! The week before I bought it I had encountered several people who had assumed I was married because I had a child, and even dared to express their sympathy that I was still single, and that "Mr Right will find you sooner or later"...bleurgh! Some people just don't get it - I for one have spent the happiest years of my life being single, and long may it continue!
Thanks Ann - yes, long may it continue!
I'll look out for that book :-)
Oh! Just two days ago, at our homeschool nature group, someone asked me, very clumsily, "so do they .... are they .... and how ...." All while gesturing at the children*.
Myself, I love being single. I have no desire to entangle myself with a partner again -- certainly not for the purposes of having children together! I am both a single mother by choice as well as a single mother of children who have a father they see once a week. Being an 'only' parent is so much better/easier/less stressful etc. I hope to have more kids, but it'll most definitely be on my own.
Hmmm, guess I've de-lurked ;-)
*currently aged 18, 8, 5
Hi Beth, nice to see you here. And nice to meet a kindred spirit! xx
O, yes, It's great to hear all these things said. I do agree with it, of course, I'm not really hankering after a man so as not to be single, I just like a bit of company, you know... And I do like being single, god, yes, thanks for reminding me.
As for the pedestal bit, I think I had that gradually removed when people who thought they knew me were just seeing the housewife that Brendan tried to turn me into, with the big house, new 4x4 new clothes, ect, etc etc. Now I know who my friends are, thankfully.
How do you make a living? You seem to be well off. I could use some tips.
(If you find the question rude just erase the comment)
Benefits, writing, Cosmic Supply Company and just making good use of what we have, Leo. Poverty is a state of mind! So is wealth.
Hey Gill! Made time to do some blog reading and where better to go than one of your blogs ;) (creating a pedestal here, in case you hadn't noticed).
Isn't it genuinely wonderful when people perceive you as 'well off', regardless of your financial position? Hey, and I happened to notice that you and I have similar sources of income, up to and including the CSC :). I like it how they always supplement their deliveries with a free smile that seems to stick on your face for ages.
I’ve recently been thinking about this whole ‘people like us vs people like you’ business and am trying to catch my thoughts in a blogpost. It might be a while before I finish it, because it’s a highly confusing issue.
For instance this thing about snubbing (consciously) single parents.
My sister is and has for the last 20 years been a single parent and I am and have been for the past 28 years a married woman and a parent for nearly 18.
We recently discovered that a certain person we both know had done the rigid smile and look down her nose thing to my sister and then the next day she’d given me a verbal list of all the shortcomings of her husband of nearly 20 years, complaining about him non-stop, saying what a bad example he was for their children!
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
I was reading the comments on your main blog on the summer holidays subject and there again I was amazed by the way people somehow manage to turn that into an ‘us and them’ issue. It makes me sad, at times. Because I’m sure if we’d sit down and talk with people like Nobbie (?) without stating our home ed position and talk about natural inquisitiveness of children we’d be agreeing on many points.
But there seem to be these invisible lines in society and once you cross them you’ve left the field of mutual agreeable conversation and entered that of opposite parties, offense and defence. There’s no more open listening to and learning from each other, there’s only this need to catch the other one out, to score, to better them. Such a shame.
I realise this comment probably ‘belongs’ on your philosophical blog, but wheyhey... I’m crossing lines :).
Hi Mieke, and thanks for such a lovely comment :-) I don't mind a pedestal from you, because I have you on one too, so we'll wobble on them together, LOL
It's always great to come across fellow CSCers - if only so we can keep reminding each other how it works! Don't you find it easy to forget? I do sometimes.
You're dead right with the alienation and 'us -v- them' thing I think and I totally agree with you about Nobby's comment. It's been on my mind a lot this evening. There were a lot of ways I could have answered but in the end, I just thought: there's something going on there, in his life, which has presumably led him to my blog and touched a painful nerve with him. I don't know what that something is (family interest in HEing?) and so I don't feel well-placed to get into a debate with him about it. But yes, we've all got so much in common and should focus on that.
Blind prejudice, "You think you're better than us" came out in comments on that post too didn't it? Amazing how much emotion that one post triggered in people! But the 'better than' thing is what I felt to be on the receiving end of from the lady who inspired this post here and I've been wondering whether it's generally based on fear, or whether there's more to it than that.
Anywhere you comment is fine, of course! Lines are there for crossing :-)
As we started this exchange here, I might as well continue here. It feels like a nice little quiet corner, or rather a bench in the sunshine by the riverside... and I like it on this side of the line LOL.
If you want to switch to email let me know.
About CSC, I think whoever is in charge there has a special sense of humour. Yes, I do sometimes forget how it works. But then they always manage to remind me. I think they’ve got me chipped, or something. Because I sometimes get these sudden jolts, flashes of awareness. Synchronicity seems to be one of their tools... For instance, I’m sure it’s that kind of humour that led Nobby to your weblog...
Fascinating though, how it works.
About blind prejudice... Fear, I think, is a large factor. And a lot of other emotions, based on fear.
I suppose if you’re insecure in one way or another it feels very ‘safe’ to have an outspoken opinion. And then to build your own little turret from where you defend that opinion.
The alternative for having an opinion is expressing your personal feelings.
The difference is that with the first you are mainly saying something about the other person, whereas when you express your feelings you are saying something about yourself.
There seems to be a tendency nowadays to have an opinion about anything and everything. Every online newspaper allows readers to voice theirs, you bump into polls wherever you go, you can’t watch television for more than ten minutes without being confronted with a pile of opinions... I think it causes an increasing amount of labelling, of thinking within boxes, and leaves extremely little space for putting things into perspective, for seeing the individual, unique persons that are all around us.
It isn’t always easy to express your personal feelings in a world where everybody seems to have outspoken opinions (and is rated by them). Self-esteem and self-confidence are useful tools, because you certainly do expose yourself, make yourself vulnerable in a way.
When in discussions we all dare to communicate it that ‘open’ way, we are creating space for empathy and understanding, for peaceful coexistence. It’s a way of saying ‘yes’ to the other parties. Yes, I’m listening, yes, I respect your feelings.
By positioning opinions next to each other you’ll soon have fights over the available space, you enter into offence and defense. The message you’re sending out to the other person is more of a ‘no’.
I apologize if it sounds as if I’m preaching... I’m very much aware of the fact that most of this is already part of your life, of your way of living. I feel that for me this is a way of practising to see if I can get my message across in English. I’ve written about in Dutch, extensively, but I’m still struggling to find the correct English terminology for it all.
Obviously, this ground has already been covered by people such as Faber & Mazlish, Gordon, Rosenberg, et al, but I’ve read most of their books in Dutch and I’ve built most of my living experience up in Dutch. So I’m grateful to you - and to CSC ;)) - for giving me this chance and the space to practice and learn... To work on my PIP (personal integration programme).
"The difference is that with the first you are mainly saying something about the other person, whereas when you express your feelings you are saying something about yourself."
Yes, I find it difficult sometimes not to slip from one to the other.
For example, I have more faith in natural than conventional medicine, as is pretty well documented by now! And I seem to have upset a few readers who happen to work in the medical industry, along the way. That wasn't my intention - I actually do respect their career choices, on the assumption they were acting in good faith when they made them. Some have taken it better than others though, so I suppose personal sensitivity plays a part too.
Maybe I should keep my opinions to myself, or try to stop forming them in case they turn into prejudice. It's definitely easier not to think! If only I could find the off switch to my brain, LOL.
I suppose I've got a lot more to learn still about the difference between opinions and feelings and how to express them. Then again, is it feasible to always stay friends with everyone?
Your English seems perfectly fluent to me, Mieke!
Thank you, Gill! The more relaxed I feel, the more fluent my English will get. And I do feel very comfortable here ::)).
One of the main reasons it that when I read your posts I never for one second have the impression that your communications are a one way system. Yes, I can see you have thought hard and deep about certain things and your choices / your way of living is based on that. But in your comments, for instance, I always find you very 'listening' and respectful. And that, my dear, is my opinion LOL!!
"Then again, is it feasible to always stay friends with everyone?"
Not if it means I'd have to stop being who I am...
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