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Independent or Codependent?

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Church Ceiling South America

Photo attributed to Thenix

Even though women are independent nowadays, there is still a tendency to want to be rescued. You want to be ‘saved’ somehow from yourself, perhaps. The only person in your head who can do that is your partner. A man. We are slowly getting away from that, but then we go to the other extreme. We don’t need a man or anyone. We are perfect by ourselves. We need to be alone in order to really experience womanhood.

Both extremes are wrong, of course. Anything that isn’t in balance cannot be true. Balance is the direction that all of us strive towards. We cannot be if we are tipping towards one direction. You do not feel right somehow. That feeling of un-right will never disappear if you are in imbalance. I have gone towards both extremes in relationships. Being single for the longest time, not needing anyone, being independent. Being in a relationship, giving myself completely to the other person, being co-dependent.

Neither direction felt right, or good in anyway. I felt lost both ways. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong. I had to escape, run away to another country, in order to correct the imbalance. Then again, I didn’t have to travel 3000 miles to fix the imbalance. I just had to take care of my needs. My need as a female, and as a partner. I had to remember that all of us crave companionship. We need someone in our lives to call our own, who takes care of us, who we take care of. It is a human need.

It doesn’t mean that once you are in a relationship, you stop your own life. You stop doing yoga, or manicures. You stop going to coffee with friends. You stop dancing till the sun comes up. You stop eating tubs of ice-cream and watching romantic comedies. Whatever you need to do, in order to be you, you are going to keep on doing. That is hard to do sometimes when you are in a relationship. Relationships are fun, but they are also time-consuming. You had so much more free time as a single woman. You have to remember to make time for yourself. In whatever way works for you.

I am still working on that balance myself. I veer too much to one side or the other. I think it might be a life-long journey.

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Strip clubs

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Photo attributed to flickr user Lamerie

My girlfriends always berate me when I go to strip clubs with my guy and friends, because apparently, I am supporting an industry that degrades women and causes inequality in society. But of course this doesn’t extend to wearing short skirts, high heels, and making a fool of ourselves in male strip clubs.

I find that prostitution and strip clubs in general do not promote a skewed view of women, unless we as women let it happen. I have been friends with many women who worked as strippers to pay their university tabs, or mortgages off, and they found that this was one of the easiest ways to make a load of cash in the shortest amount of time. They deliberately chose this path, when they had degrees in finance or marketing, because working in those fields paid a miniscule fraction of the money they would make working in a strip club. A lot of them had normal side jobs, working as servers or tellers before this, but a little taste of the money that they made in this field, removed them completely from those ‘normal’ side jobs.

They were able to make enough money in a few years to make themselves self-sufficient and independent of any man on this planet. I didn’t think when I heard these stories that these women were lopsided in society in anyway. I would say, they were actually better off then some working women in society, as the working women didn’t make enough money to ever be self-sufficient or independent.

Of course, these are just few of the women that I knew, and they are just a fraction of the women who actually work in the industry. I just wanted to point out that there are two sides to every situation. We can’t just berate something or commend something without realizing there are those two sides.

Do you frequent strip clubs? What do you think of them and the women who work in them?

Criticism

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I have been noticing that every word that comes out of my mouth in the past few days has been dripping with sarcasm or laced with criticism. I was just wondering what is going on. Why am I being so critical of myself and of others?

I went home yesterday and the first thing my mother says to me, is that I came home late, and I don’t do any housework.

Suddenly, the light bulb went off. This is a learned behavior for me. Wow. Its funny because I always say that I will not be critical of my children, as critical as my parents are, because it results in you never liking yourself and always thinking you are never good enough.

But surely enough, after 28 years of listening to it, I am becoming the same. I criticize, but my criticisms are in my mind funny. I make it all into a joke. I joke about the fact that you look sloppy or fat. I joke that you are lazy or you smell. I never really noticed it until now, but suddenly I see it clearly.

If  I do not stop myself and actually notice all the critical comments I am about to make and turn them into a positive comment, I am on the path to destroying people’s self esteem and my self esteem as well.

Why not be nice to people? Is it that hard? Is it that hard to say something nice?

I found that I am also extra critical of men, and I give a lot of leeway to women. In my head, women are perfect, and men are useless and a burden.

Again, this all comes from my mother’s way of thinking. She thinks that exact thing all the time, as she had a bad time with my father when they were younger, although they are happily married at the moment.

So my goal in the future is to control my criticisms, especially towards the males in my life.

What do you think of criticism? Do you think it helps or hurts the person you are handing it out to? Let me know in the comments below.

Luv!

Why are you single?

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Every time I meet a new guy, he always asks me the same question, I cannot believe you are single, you are smart, and beautiful, why are you single? It baffles them that I would be single. They assume that I am picky and that is why I am single. If they only knew, I could write a book on all the men I have met and all the bad experiences I have had, with them. Some of them were losers, some of them were clingy, some of them were workaholics, and some of them were just plain odd.

I have this one guy who lives in India, who calls me at all hours of night, unaware of the time difference, he calls to say hello and see how I am doing. I have this other one who calls me just to have random, meaningless sex. Another one is so enamored with me that he wants to buy me things and take me out to dinner, and give me money. Is that what guys think a girl wants nowadays?

And the man I actually want to see, the man of my dreams, my ideal guy, the one who is perfect for me, is too busy with construction to actually see me. Bad timing. He is in construction and spring and summer time is construction’s boom time. I just caught him at the wrong time. We keep on postponing meeting up. At this rate we shall meet up in the winter of 2012. Maybe I should mark my calendar for that from now on. I am literally dying to see this man again, and he is too busy with work to make the time.

I am surprised by the number of men and women who want to marry rich. I know it is a common phenomenon among women to use their sexuality and allure as a female to snag a rich husband. But I am surprised at how many good-looking men use their looks and muscles to snag a rich female, someone who could take care of their needs, while they take care of her needs.

Are we getting lazy that we do not want to be independent anymore, or our needs getting too expensive? Is independence not a treasured commodity anymore? Why would I want someone else to take care of me? Why would I let myself get into that kind of situation where I am dependent on someone else for food and shelter?