Women; where do ya draw the line?
Go see Kate. Kate, honey, you're gonna love 40 when come the permissions to say, "I love ya and I'm too dam old to carry that for you -- I know ya can do it yourself!" [and it gets better from there...]I dunno—what Kate described as her life is a utopian dream, with only the material she selected for herself. I felt, while reading that, much of the puzzlement and close-to-anger I feel while watching the new Showtime series, Out of Order, of people who piss in their perfect lives and then spend an hour moaning about it.
Posted by on 07/26/03 at 03:25 PMThank you, Bill! You hit it right on the head.
Go read Moody Mama’s post about her life while trying to raise a couple of kids, work nights, and have a husband overseas. THAT’S a tough life. Sitting on one’s ass in front of a computer all the time with healthy kids and a military husband who is safely at home every night, choosing not to work, and living in Hawaii....that’s not a hardship. She’s describing boredom.
Posted by Da Goddess on 07/27/03 at 06:40 PMShe’s describing alcoholism!
Her entire rant is utter shit.Posted by Tracy on 07/28/03 at 02:43 AMHey ya’ll—I think there’s something you’re responding to that is *yours,* not Kate’s. There’s a lot of energy behind those remarks of yours ...
My take, (which is mine alone, ahem), on Kate’s predicament is that she is taking what she *believes to be* others’ expectations of her as her measure of success. “If they’re happy (ie don’t need anything else right now) I’m doing ok.” That’s two layers of messy boundaries and an absurdity: 1) others’ expectations are none of my business (the same as their opinion of me) 2) *My* standards of what I believe to be a good mother/partner/housekeeper/professional/blogger are the only standards that have meaning or carry satisfaction. The absurdity is expecting that *any* human will quit asking for things once s/he has found someone who will do anything for them. That doesn’t make them bad—it is just a part of what drives humanity forward. [ Unless one takes the Buddhist POV in which *desire* is the root of all dissatisfaction… ]
Kate is just working thru that realization, as we all have to at one time or another. My impression is that in her professional life she has been accustomed to being the cause of responses—not the responder. Exchanging those activities requires a lot of shifting of perspective. It is a great deal of *perceived* power loss when looked at from the traditional American POV.
What she seems (again, to *me*) to be asking for is something only she can give herself; a clear job definition with concrete goals, and milestones along the way. “Others’ satisfaction” is unclear, not measurable, and ever changing based on things no one outside *them* [including Kate] has control over.
Posted by Claire on 07/28/03 at 08:48 AMI certainly agree about the boundary problems there.
Look, anyone can get overwhelmed by hir life from time to time, and you have a toolkit of things you can do about it, short term and long term (a concept that was conspicuously missing from Kate’s post). I am somewhat offended (unreasonably, I know, in the circumstances) by slopping all over _me_ in the process. If I had seen any sense of awareness that Kate was something more than a victim here, I would probably have been more inclined to be sympathetic.
But, stuck 150 miles at a minimum from any of the people I love, living in a cramped hotel room and trying to do several difficult jobs simultaneously in not very supportive or congenial circumstances, my sympathy for self-manufactured problems is at a low ebb right now.
Posted by on 07/28/03 at 12:17 PMI really enjoyed your comments on Kate’s post. But I felt that despite your intelligent way of looking at things, you just fell into the same old male-bashing, just in a gentler way. You talk about “enligthenment” but it still seems that you want *men* to change.
Which seems like a cop-out.
Of course, I’m biased. But I ain’t changin ;)
Posted by michael heraghty on 07/29/03 at 08:11 AM“enlightenment”, even. Okay, I *will* change. From now on, I’ll spell check. A little. If I’m not too tired. ;)
Posted by michael heraghty on 07/29/03 at 08:12 AMI have even less sympathy for people in Moody Mama’s predicament. Everyone knows, or should know by now, that children are expensive to raise. They require Herculean amounts of fundage, time, energy, patience, all the things I never had and never will have.
It just amazes me that despite a lack of resources people will continue to pop out children. With nary a care as to how these children are going to be fed, clothed and educated. They don’t manage themselves.
Posted by on 07/29/03 at 11:31 AMMichael, there is *nothing* I would want you to change - except the part where you comment on a post I didn’t write.
I re-read it all and couldn’t find the word “enlightenment” anywhere. [ or “enligthenment”, even ] And I invite you to show me anywhere I suggested that men/males were responsible for Kate’s situation, perceptions, or attitudes?
Just that part where you keep up with the plot . . .
Posted by Claire on 07/29/03 at 01:07 PMTracy, Da Goddess—go be cruel somewhere else.
Joni, are you purposely being off-point, or don’t you get it? Ah. Now that I read your posts on your own blog - [Blogathon 6:56pm and “The Goddess and The Serpent” 7.28] which you think Kate, a long-time customer, linker, and donor to your blogathon, might actually read herself, I have a clearer picture.
In your blog posts, you are sooo supportive. When I compare them to the off-point petty cruelty you wrote about Kate here, where I assume you believe she never reads, I see that you are just being *you,* again.
Joni, you are a creep. Go away.
Isn’t it interesting that the three women who responded here are being pointlessly cruel; and not even to me but to a person who isn’t here. And of the two men: one doesn’t see through his issues well enough to read clearly, and one (1) had the insight to see his part in his original dismissive comment, and the balls to elaborate on the point. Kate seems to have touched *everyone’s* sore spots…
[I’ve always admired that, among other things, about you, Bill. Your Insight and Balls—good blog title, don’tcha think? *g*]
Nevertheless; Kate’s “problem” is no more “self-manufactured” than yours, or mine. Our feelings about any given situation spring from our perception of it. Our perceptions are malleable—susceptible to changes. By us.
Posted by Claire on 07/30/03 at 08:31 AMGosh, and I thought I was the one who couldn’t see through his issues…
>Nevertheless; Kate’s “problem” is no more “self-manufactured” than yours, or mine. Our feelings about any given situation spring from our perception of it. Our perceptions are malleable—susceptible to changes. By us.>
I still say she doesn’t actually _have_ a problem; she’s just gotten everything a person could ask for out of life. Her life is exactly what she made it, so she feels she has to whine about it. I still can’t work up sympathy, sorry.
On the other hand, I might be able to work up _some_ degree of sympathy for simply being overwhelmed. That’s very understandable to me.
The boundary problems you point out certainly do contribute in Kate’s world. It’s very obvious: Kate’s children and husband almost certainly _do_ make exactly the kind of inappropriate-boundary demands she has trained them to make of her. Other things being equal, people have the kinds of relationships they make. All relationships are slow sculpture, as Theodore Sturgeon so memorably called it, and Kate is the sculptor, the hand and the mallet.
Posted by on 07/30/03 at 12:24 PMThere’s something else. I don’t say it’s the case here; I’ve only seen a few hundred words of Kate’s mind-product and I’m very aware that there’s a big difference between a momentary and passing feeling of being overwhelmed and a life situation . . . But: there are lots and oppressively lots of co-dependent patterns for which one’s most rewarding role requires one to position oneself as a victim, even though that’s the way you set it up. Your strokes come on one side from the sympathy generated by people whose role in the pattern is to say “poor dear” and on the other side by being morally superior to the people who put upon one.
If this is a moment of discouragement on Kate’s part, This Too, Shall Pass; if it’s a life-pattern, well, that’s been covered above. I have no way to distinguish at this level of information.
Posted by on 07/30/03 at 06:12 PMOk, now you’re just getting silly. To say of Kate that “she’s just gotten everything a person could ask for out of life. “ assumes that we know something about her. That statement rather makes a caricature of her and attempts to invalidate what she has to say. Not hardly useful, methinks.
No one’s life is “exactly what she made it,” or both of us, and everyone else, would have no worries whatsoever. I think there is no doubt that Kate’s statement was one of “overwhelm,” and now we’re just arguing about *our own* issues and using her words as a projective instrument. My respect for parts of Sturgeon aside—to say that someone is “the sculptor, the hand, and the mallet” is a tad solipsistic, don’cha think? “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” [and, yes. I know that wasn’t original to Lennon]
If you’d like to continue the discussion in terms of identifying co-dependant tendencies in the culture and self, and discussing coping mechanisms that are helpful, please, consider yourself invited to write up a post and I’ll put it at the top of the queue. We’ll see what and who turn up.
Posted by Claire on 08/02/03 at 06:37 AM>If you’d like to continue the discussion in terms of identifying co-dependant tendencies in the culture and self, and discussing coping mechanisms that are helpful, please, consider yourself invited to write up a post and I’ll put it at the top of the queue. We’ll see what and who turn up.>
You don’t ask for the itty-bitty ones, do you?
The most effective coping mechanism I’ve found for co-dependent relationships is “don’t.” When you smell it, turn around and walk quietly away. All the other coping strategies involve, at the very least, a great deal of work, all of it uphill, and with no guarantee of success. Most difficult, of course, when you suddenly realize it’s you that stench is coming from.
Second most difficult is when you realize that you’ve been doing ordinary stuff and have been roped in as an enabler (usually) to someone else’s codependency. It is possible to live with this but you have to stay clear on the fact that you are pursuing your own goals for your own purposes. P.S. People will with the kindliest of manipulative intentions assure you that you are co-ing. Treat it as an amber light, pay attention, but keep your eye on your goals. Whether or not to continue in a relationship is a matter for your evaluation of your goals and your strategies.
In fact there is only one thing I’ve found that militates against co-dependency. Nearly everything in our culture models us as co-dependent, so we naturally tend to go there if we’re not watching. But I’ve found that the Key to Absolutely Everything works for this, too:
BE PRESENT
Posted by on 08/02/03 at 08:52 AMNo, you’re dropping the concrete context of the interaction and slopping over into abstractions-- which are, I agree, not hardly useful.
We have some statements from Kate herself and we’re entitled to make judgments based on her representations. Kate’s statements about her own life contains descriptions of conditions and a mixed lot of “satisfied with” and “irritated with” personal evaluations. That’s data. Moreover, that’s the data she intended us to have when she made the statement. My point was simply that there’s not enough to make a full evalutation, but I don’t see anything here that merits the extreme reaction except if you think it was a transient emotion and not a critical overall evaluation of her life. I can have a degree of sympathy with a transient feeling of being overwhelmed—but it’s not going to be to be the same as if she got run over by a bus and they discovered she had N-stage cancer when they took her to the hospital. Kate’s narrative simply doesn’t have any indicator that she’s an actual victim whether or circumstance of malevolence.
You seem to have missed the fact that there was an element left out of “the sculptor, the hand, and the mallet,” needed to make up slow sculpture.
Posted by on 08/02/03 at 09:01 AM
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