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I was listening to a radio show the other day when a 55 year old woman called in to get advice about her crumbling marriage. She had been with her husband since she was a teenager, and he decided that he didn’t love her anymore and was leaving. Now, he probably made the decision months ago to leave, but because many men tend to be poor communicators when it comes to letting a partner know how they feel when things aren’t working, he never directly told her that anything was wrong. Instead, he probably dropped clues here and there about his unhappiness, expecting her to be a mind reader and probably started treating her badly in the hopes that he wouldn’t have to be the bad guy and breakup 35 year relationship, thinking that she would end it because of his bad behavior. But what he doesn’t understand is that he is her family and she’s in the relationship for the long haul. Not only that, she built her entire life around him because she was taught and truly believed that’s what women were supposed to do. She wanted to work it out with her husband, but it was clear based on what this woman said on the show, that her husband was already checked out of the relationship and probably on to the next one. Instead of getting a little bit of sympathy from the radio host, this 55 year old woman was castigated and given some harsh words simply for hoping that her marriage wouldn’t fall apart. I wanted to strangle that radio host, I felt so bad for this woman. She’s been with her husband her entire life and doesn’t know how to live without him, that’s a scary place to be.
What I find to be so interesting about relationships is that women somehow have been convinced to believe that when men cause a relationship to destruct that they are making objective determinations about life and the relationship itself, and that a woman’s perspective is subjective and emotional and just have to accept things the way they are. I love men, don’t get me wrong, but why should we possibly believe that men, who almost never ask for relationship advice and hardly ever go back to heal the old painful wounds that shape how the relate to women, are totally objective in the decisions they make about relationships?
This is just crazy to me.
Of course I understand that you can’t make a man stay in a relationship when he wants to go, but sometimes his decision to leave is based on his lack of capacity to work through the hard things, and it would be easier for him to just leave and never confront the hurtful places.But in the meanwhile, this woman’s reality sucks, and as hard as it may be, and no matter how badly she wants to punish and hurt him for leaving her, she will somehow have to figure out a way to find peace and move on with her life.
What advice would you have given to this woman? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
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