Women being stupid

I don't have a link for this one, but I'm sure if I searched, I'd come up with something. Not sexist or ignorant, but other women realizing that we do damn stupid things sometimes.

I'm a woman, and I'm not trying to insult other women. I'm merely speaking truth. Women can be stupid. I know, because I am one and I do stupid things.

That doesn't mean I'm not intelligent. In fact, some of the most highly intelligent women I know are the reason I'm writing about this today.

The other day I caught myself musing about the future. It's something I do often these days. I've been pondering a move to a larger centre, to another part of the country. Thoughts of an extended overseas journey have crossed my mind as well.

After about fifteen minutes of blissful daydreaming, I abruptly stopped and slapped myself (figuratively, though I have been known to literally do so). Why? Because I was basing my musings around the whims of men, my chances of starting a new relationship. On assauging this guilt I've been handed down, telling me a woman my age should be married and starting a family.

Women have been defining themselves by their relationships to men for, well, ever. Girlfriend, wife, mother, partner...feminists tried to raise our consciousness. It's more than fine for me to be a single woman approaching thirty. We're supposed to be independent and strong enough to follow our own path. Why then do so many of us still use these labels to determine our worth?

I thought I was a strong, independent woman, until I started looking at my track record. This Christmas, my 28th, was the first in 13 years I spent single. Yep. Since I was fifteen, there has been a boyfriend upon which I have based part of my identity. That's not healthy for anyone. All it creates is a war inside me between the need to be a part of a man's world and the need to be myself. Push come to shove, fear always wins.

Now, I made choices for myself during this time frame. I made the choice to move far from my high school boyfriend in order to pursue higher education. I left bad relationships and made risky career choices in order to prove that I could do anything. In the end, though, the serial monogamist took over.

Even while in healthy relationships, I would adjust my behaviour and dreams to meet or compliment my partner. I would occasionally seem helpless in order to make a man feel needed when I was perfectly capable of performing the task at hand (and better then he ever could). For the most part, I have no problems telling men they are wrong, and proving I am right, unless that man is my significant other.

I shake my head now, but I thought at the time that compromise was how relationships worked. My problem was that I was the only one compromising, and all I was compromising was myself. I'm not the only one, either.

I know incredibly intelligent and capable women that are stuck in relationships with absolute assholes. Yet, they stay because they "love" them. They are comfortable, there are kids to consider, they are afraid to leave, afraid to be alone...they are stupid. They define themselves by this relationship, letting it determine their self-worth. It's enough to drive me crazy!

At the same time, fear holds me back too, affecting my choices in other ways. If I chose to do this, to live here, to chase this dream, would he still love me? If I reach my full potential, will men be intimidated by me? Would I end up alone, eating ice cream and pickles, watching romantic comedies and singing Pat Benatar songs? Actually, it doesn't sound that bad.

It's not the man's fault. He has no idea what all this is about, because he has no problems (usually) defining himself outside of his relationship to you. Talk to him about all this, and he'll just look baffled. He doesn't spend his days in a fantasy land where princess charming swoops in and looks after his every need. He's probably dreaming about the girl in accounting giving him a blowjob in the mail room.

I resolved, at the end of my last relationship, to chase my own dreams, not attaching them to someone else, to someone else's expectations of me. Until yesterday, when I caught myself doing that very thing. Stupid me.

Why do I do this? As far as I can figure out, it's a cop out. By not trying to recognize and achieve my own dreams, I can't fail. If someone asks me, years from now, why I never tried, I can point proudly to the self-sacrifice I made in order to be a good girlfriend/wife/daughter/mother.

What a load of crap. I may be pre-programmed to feel this need for a man, this need to please others and sacrifice myself, but I'm rewriting the code. If you can't handle a confident, beautiful, intelligent woman who wants to chase her own dreams and is most likely smarter than you, you probably aren't worthy of her time in the first place.