Having completed the Myers Briggs Personality Test, which I mentioned yesterday in my Blog, it has confirmed something I had known for 80 years, I have no wish whatsoever to control others. Knowing we are only on this earth once - why would I want to control the lives of others when I have enough of a problem controlling my own. No-one can live someone elses life - so let each of us have the freedom to make our own mistakes as long as it does no harm and hurts no one.
I suppose I realised long ago that not only was I as faulty as everyone else, but when it came to giving advice to those who ask, I could be wrong. I don't know all the answers. What is right for me may not be right for someone else - so I changed the words I had been using previously from ‘you should do this’ or ‘you must do this’ and began suggesting ‘here’s a thought’. After all it is up to the person who asked to make the final decision and deal with the consequences.
Unfortunately not everyone can resist the temptation to try to control those who are close to them, even when the time is long past to let them go. Even when the significant other becomes aware of being controlled, and breaks away, the controller still cannot let go - they thrive on it - and start contriving ways to continue controlling the situation. Anything just to prove they are still in control.
Of course I am excluding parent’s because they should control situations and try to improve the behaviour of their immature children, but also have to lnow when to relax the rules.
I have had two experiences with controlling husbands. It is not a problem for me now but I would be a fool if I did not remember the lesson and learn by it. By the time of the second I was strong enough to stand against the controller, but the first case occurred at a time when it was expected - and it was also a time when women were just coming out of the ‘little woman’ syndrome of the Victorian Age.
I soon felt confined by the unwritten rules laid down by others, which allowed men to control their wives behaviour, and gave men financial advantages such as more pay for equal work - after all, we were told, they are the breadwinners. But it kept us down.
Being, by law, under the control of my husband by law allowed him to show he could rule me, even going so far as to humiliate me by saying the law stated that in the event of disobedience he was allowed by law to chastise me with a stick, as long as it was no thicker than his little finger. It is diffucult now to imagine there ever was such a time but, syrprisingly, I can still see signs of it in our society today - men who feel to need to prove they are better than women, and want to control them. Oh, please, I want to say to them, come out of the dark ages. This is the 21st century not the 19th.
My moment to take control of my own life came after the break up of my second marriage when I began working to support myself and my daughter. In coming into contact with male colleagues I realised that I was at least equal to the majority of them, many of whom could not accept that a mere women could have a mind of her own. I also realised I was inferior to none. My views have not changed over the years.
We have moved on from the time when the husband was head of the household and the moral leader of his family. Women have become equal and educated since then - what a pity some men cannot accept it.
Did women ever wanted to be under their husband’s control? Those few women who had money in their own right, had more say in who they married and how their marriage should be conducted. They had their own income which allowed them to stand against their husband’s wishes when they did not agree with them, or when they tried to control them, because they could afford to leave.
But for most women the laws acted against them because the estate of the wives became their husband’s once they were married. Sort of ‘what’s yours is mine, and what’s mine’s my own.’ Keeping the power in men's hands!
Women today no longer want or need the old fashioned sort of master/slave relationship which once existed in marriage. They no longer need to be supported because their wages are now sufficient to live on. They want to be treated equally and be consulted on how things should be organised and especially within marriage.
What many younger women today do not realise or acknowledge is that women have fought and died for their equality. The Suffragettes went through force feeding and being manhandled, jailed and humiliated in order to gain the freedom and equality we enjoy today. So it is up to them to protect womens equality and prove they are equals, not by getting drunk ot having one night stands, but behaving with dignity. Getting drunk and having one night stands is what some men do, and most of us have little respect for them, whether they are male or female.
Our equality must be held to the central line in order for us to be respected. Men must be shown that women are willing to treat them as equals, although it has been said - once made equal woman becomes man‘s superior. Perhaps this is the truth - controlling men fear women and have the desperate need to control them - because of they need to rebel over the power their mothers once had over them. Most men love their mothers and are grateful for all they did for them. Some men do not.
There will, I suppose, always be some men who get a kick out of controlling women, whether by violence or by playing mind games, especially with the woman in their life. I don’t know who to be sorrier for the man or the woman but at least she has the power to break away should she wish, while he is tied to his desire to control others by one means or another. This is his goal in life.
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all. (Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, leader of Burma's democracy movement.)
In case any of you reading this think I hate men, let me put you right. I do not.
Neither am I what some men term sneeringly, a feminist. I am happily married to someone who is honest, good, strong, and is not a controlling misogynist.
But I do believe in equality but I guess those who are reading this and do not believe me are probably of the same variety I have been writing about.
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