The Choice to be Single II: The Mind Adapts

As we train our minds to adapt to our circumstance, we can cause ourselves to repel men in order to prove ourselves not in need of them. Out of pain, comes the strength to go it alone, and some of us get really good at it. For me, I had a strong need to prove that I could make it without the help of anyone. Well……without any help from any man, that is.

I grew up as a shy, quiet girl in a family of many men, as a daddy’s girl whose father had seven brothers, as a momma’s girl whose mother had three brothers, as the youngest of seven with four brothers, a multitude of male cousins, and many nephews including some who were around my age and older. I was well protected. So when I got married at 17, I married a man who was also over protective of me and our children. When our marriage ended 14 years later (+2 more years until the divorce was final), I was pretty damaged from many of the things that I had gone through over the years. I was a very private person, so my family never knew what I went through, and everyone thought that we had the perfect marriage, until I could no longer live in my situation. It came to an ugly end.

The Cause

So once my marriage was over, I was emotionally devoid. I also needed to prove that I didn’t need the help of any man to make it in this life. I had been taken care of all of my life, and it was time for me to take care of myself. So I wanted nothing monetary from any man, and that included my ex-husband. I would take care of my own children without any alimony or child support. I had a family that had always stood by me, and I wanted to wash my hands completely of my ex-husband, but that did not affect his access to his children in any way. Once my anger calmed, our children was the one subject that we came together on.

The Effect

My journey to complete independence spilled over into my relationships with the men in my life. I wanted nothing monetary from them, and I needed us to be on equal footing, so that I never had to feel obligated to anyone. I never had to experience what my husband did when he tried to teach me a lesson for working outside of the home. When I decided to go to work after being home for 10 years raising our children, he did nothing for me anymore. It’s the same lesson that I have seen and heard that many men have done to their women who depended on them, when they (the men) didn’t get their way. Withhold money and the ability to use their vehicle.

So what lesson should a woman learn from a man like that? I learned to never depend on a man again, and to always have my own. That’s what I learned, and I taught my daughters to always have their own, no matter what. My focused goal in life was to become as independent as I possibly could for the rest of my life.

I had a hard time accepting money, gifts, and any kind of help from men, for many years. And I still have a bit of a hard time with it, but because I’m conscious of it, and I have softened a bit, when I realize that someone is genuinely trying to help me, I try to allow them to help me. For me, that is growth. So when you’re met with oppression and find your way out of it, you do what-ever you have to do, to never experience oppression again.

Once you get these kinds of thoughts in your head, you fight to never go back to your position of oppression, and your mind adapts to that thought process. It becomes a part of who you are, and you won’t let anything deviate you away from it. Normally, if you’ve come out of a bad relationship, you want no parts of another for a long time. The problem is, that long time can cause you to get use to going it alone, and on top of that, you lose the ability and the patience for tolerating men for any real length of time. You adapt yet another dividing factor that will prevent you from being able to be in, much less maintain, a relationship.

The Fix

For some of us, enough time will pass for us to soften and become conscious of our issues. If not, we become intolerant of allowing any man to share our time and space, and will prefer to dwell in our own independence; To remain the empowered women that we have fought so hard to become; To prove that we don’t need a man in order to be validated in this “man’s” world; To make sure that everyone knows, that we don’t need a man to make it.

For those of us who identify our lack of tolerance, as an issue that prevents man/woman harmony, for the sake of proving that we will never NEED the help of a man to make it in this life, we can make a conscious effort to make amends as we soften. These amends will not come easily, because the fight to overcome the causes of the pain, becomes engrained in our being. The women who learn to fight for their independence, become empowered by their independence. That fight becomes a part of who we are, and is not easily put aside. It will most definitely take a very patient man to love us through it, and to hang in there while we battle with our own strength and power to find a different cause to transport it to.

In closing, I would like to say to the men that love the women who have suffered through some life altering adversities, please be patient and remember this story. Having insight into our battles is actually a tool to give you a slight upper hand in knowing how to help her through it, to love her through it, to guide her through it. Some of us just don’t know how to relegate our strength and power, even when we want to be loved. It’s a hard thing to do, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to love, because it also leaves us vulnerable to the pain that made us fight so hard, to have a fortress around our hearts in the first place. Please be careful with such a fragile part of our strength. That just may be the key to beginning a beautiful, yet rocky, journey to the love affair of your life……..

~L.A.F.~

Originally written for Early Bird Nation Blogs

Part 3 will be posted tomorrow 10/17/16