Tag Archives: overbearing people

family, marriage, musings

DINKs whose marriage might be about to sink…

First off, sorry about yesterday’s post. It’s a good one that took me some time to write, and it’s probably about 90% fine to share publicly. Anyone who wants to read it can send me a PM and I’ll give you the password. Actually, it’s 100% fine to share publicly… and I probably will at some point. Just not right now.

Now, for today’s topic. This morning, I read Carolyn Hax’s advice column in the Washington Post. Today’s letter was written by a 33 year old man whose wife, aged 26, has decided that she would like to have a baby. The man, who signed himself “Baby Rabies” explains that he’s looking out for his wife’s best interests. He claims that although they both have good, stable jobs and health insurance, she doesn’t realize how much work babies are and how expensive they can be. He worries that she will regret having a baby so “young” (since when is 26 too young for a baby?) He wants her to enjoy being DINKs (double income, no kids) for a couple of years longer, since they’ve only been married two years. He says her friends will have settled down and started having babies and she won’t be so “isolated”.

Apparently, the letter writer tried to tell his wife that his thinking is for her own good. She is upset because she thinks he’s “infantilizing” her. But he insists that she hasn’t considered the long term consequences of having a baby and what that will mean for their marriage.

Carolyn points out that yes, of course, this guy is infantilizing his wife. I would take it a step further, though. I have written about projection a few times in this blog. Many people don’t know what it is. I think this is an obvious case of projection. Letter writer is apprehensive, immature, and not ready to be a dad, but instead of owning up to that, he’s claiming that his wife isn’t ready because she’s “too young” and his statements indicate that he also thinks she’s immature, since he assumes she hasn’t considered how much “drudgery” is involved with caring for babies.

When I read this guy’s letter– a letter that is all about his opinions about his wife’s emotional and mental states– I hear a man who doesn’t want to become a father yet. But instead of simply admitting that HE doesn’t want to be a dad yet (or maybe even ever), he’s putting it all on his wife. And yes, he’s insulting and infantilizing her, because instead of hearing and understanding his wife’s thoughts about how SHE feels, he’s claiming that his opinions and impressions of her feelings are more relevant and correct.

I sure hope the two of them discussed their feelings about having children before they got married. If they didn’t, this marriage may soon wind up on the rocks. If I were “Baby Rabies'” wife, I would be very pissed off and offended by this guy’s overbearing attitude, especially regarding decisions about MY body. Moreover, if they aren’t on the same page about having a family, this is sure to be an issue that will cause a serious rift in their marriage. No matter what happens, they will probably end up deeply resenting each other.

However– that being said– I also think that Baby Rabies must have a say in their family plans. Clearly HE is not ready to be a parent. And ideally, he should be ready to have a baby before his wife gets pregnant. Since he wants to wait a couple of years and she doesn’t, she may want to consider– 1. whether or not she wants to wait, and 2. how long she’s willing to wait– for her husband to get on board with a pregnancy. I think that would be the wise thing to do. Unfortunately, when it comes to having a family, a lot of people don’t take the other person’s wishes into account. But then, maybe she’s like me and doesn’t find willing partners all that easily. 😉

As I have written many times before, Bill married his ex wife after she had already had a son. Bill was committed to treating the ex’s son as if he were his own, which, frankly, was a mistake, since Ex obviously considers her children to be solely her possessions. In the earliest months of their marriage, she got pregnant, claiming that the birth control failed. Bill was happy to be a dad, but they were not financially ready. Moreover, it’s clear to me that Ex’s birth control didn’t fail. She just unilaterally decided that she wanted to get pregnant and quit taking it. Meanwhile, Bill didn’t wear a condom (which he definitely should have, if he truly wasn’t ready for fatherhood). She did the same thing two years later. Then, when she married number three– sure enough, pregnant within two months and again three years after that. These were ALL her decisions alone, and it was unfair to Bill, and their kids (and their other fathers), although they could have chosen to wear condoms or abstained (but you’d think a man should be able to trust his wife when she says she’s using birth control).

I do think that men– prospective fathers– must have a say when it comes to family planning. I think that both parents should be fully prepared for the responsibility of starting a family and, as much as possible, ready to take it on, especially in this day and age, when everything regarding child raising is so expensive and complicated. It sounds to me like Baby Rabies simply isn’t ready to be a father yet. But instead of just admitting that he’s not ready, he’s putting everything on his wife, and being very insulting to her by claiming she doesn’t know how she feels or what she’s doing. That attitude is bound to piss her off.

Frankly, I think that the fact that he’s projecting his apprehension about having a baby onto his wife is a huge red flag, especially since he’s already seven years older than she is and probably thinks that means he’s “older and wiser”. Some women do like that– but a lot of smart, independent, modern women don’t. This ain’t The Sound of Music— we’re not “Sixteen Going On Seventeen”, needing someone telling us what to do. (as an aside, I’ve always liked that song, even though the lyrics are incredibly sexist and insulting– the melody is nice.)

Blecch… in the end, it turns out that Liesl is a lot less of a child than Rolf is.

I think Carolyn Hax did a good job with her advice to Baby Rabies. I completely agree with what she wrote. But talking about this with Bill this morning reminded me of a truth that has served us well. When I married Bill, I knew there was a good chance we’d never be parents. He’d had a vasectomy when he was with his ex wife. And I am about to digress for a moment, so please excuse the next two paragraphs–

In retrospect, having a vasectomy was a very smart thing for Bill to do, since Ex uses her children as weapons and she clearly wasn’t done having them, as she had claimed before Bill had the surgery. She has had children with each of her three husbands, and when she divorces them, she forces them to take her side and denies them access to their dads. She did it with her first ex husband, and she did it with Bill. Number three is still married to her, but it’s reportedly not a very happy marriage. We’ve heard that Bill’s daughters were forced to call their stepfather “Dad” because he got jealous when Older Daughter once referred to Bill as “Daddy” in front of number three’s baby. Ex reportedly said that she didn’t want her third marriage to fail, so the kids were expected to latch on to number three, forgetting that they already have a father who loves them (which they evidently weren’t able to do, despite appearances to the contrary).

Now– I’m not sure if number three actually felt better when the kids started calling him “Dad”. My guess is that he knew it was bullshit, and he’s likely been unfavorably compared to Bill a lot. Ex probably told him many times that he doesn’t measure up to Bill. I only say this because this is what narcissists do to keep their victims in line. Once you’ve been around them, you realize that they all have the same playbook. They aren’t faithful; they constantly look for supply; and they always have to keep their victims just a little bit insecure so they’ll fight for their position. It takes awhile before the victims realize that the position they’re in is not worth fighting for. I did notice, some time back, that number three had a picture on social media of all of the kids and he referred to them as “All my kids”… but we later heard that it was mostly a sham, done only for optics, and a lot of that stuff was put out solely to punish Bill.

When I married Bill, I knew that I might not become a mom in the usual way. Yes, there are a lot of ways a person can become a parent. We could have adopted a child, although our nomadic lifestyle would have made adoption a challenge. Bill did undergo a vasectomy reversal, which did not result in my getting pregnant (and we aren’t sure why). We could have resorted to getting fertility assistance, which we couldn’t afford and I didn’t really want to do. Also– moves all the time made that prospect difficult.

Eventually, I mostly made peace with the idea that I won’t be a mother. What it came down to is that I decided I would rather be Bill’s wife than be a mother. I don’t think I could find anyone else who is quite as perfect for me. I wouldn’t want to try. I would not trade my marriage to Bill for a baby, although I know that not everyone feels that way. What I have for him is real love. I never saw him as simply someone to fertilize my eggs. I also deeply appreciated that he was willing to have the reversal surgery. He was fine with not having more children, although I know he would have loved to have had a baby with me. I was so grateful that he was willing to try, though. It meant a lot.

I don’t know Baby Rabies’ wife. It sounds like she’s ready to be a mother and has given a lot of thought to the prospect. It’s possible that having a baby is non-negotiable to her, and not having one, or at least trying to have one, will be a dealbreaker. She may have to decide if motherhood, right now, is more important than her marriage. If she does get pregnant and her husband isn’t ready, that could end up being bad for their relationship.

Or… maybe Baby Rabies will fall into line, kind of like the guy who insists he doesn’t want a pet, but then falls in love. It’s hard to tell based only on his letter, which frankly makes him out to be a bit of an overbearing and insensitive jerk. But that letter was probably heavily edited to give us the biggest bang for the buck. He may not have come across as so heavy-handed in the original letter. For all we know, he’s really more of a worry wart, rather than someone who’s boorish and controlling. I can understand a man worrying and being apprehensive about being a father. That’s understandable. I have much less understanding for men who think they know their partners’ minds better than their partner does.

Anyway… this is an academic situation for me. I am not going to have children. Instead, I will have dogs. I may, at some point, have livestock again, too… although that is looking more and more doubtful, the older I get. Fortunately, I am not one of those women who feels compelled to have a baby. I thought it was very important, but it turns out it wasn’t– at least to me. For all the shit we’ve been through in our marriage, I love Bill more every day. I count myself lucky. Hopefully, Baby Rabies and his wife will come to a consensus soon.

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psychology, true crime

What makes someone an authority?

Yesterday’s debate about the legitimacy of Mary Kay Letourneau’s relationship with her ex husband and former student, Vili Fualaau, made me do some thinking. The two women on RfM who insisted that Letourneau was irredeemable and deserved no mercy were actively shutting down anyone else’s opinion, even going to the point of accusing commenters disagreeing with them of being “rape apologists”. After awhile, a man joined in the fray, also agreeing with the women. He left me a comment, even though I was “out” of the active discussion.

The man who left me a comment claims to be a victim of sexual abuse. In his comment to me, his very first question was “Were you a victim of sexual abuse?” He followed it with several statements about his experiences as a sexual abuse survivor, as if that made him some sort of expert on the subject.

I’m not sure what he was expecting my answer to be. My guess is that he assumed I have not been abused, and therefore could not relate to the experience. But, in fact, there is sexual abuse in my past. I have written about some of it in this blog. The rest, I prefer to keep private, because it’s really no one’s business. I also suspect that some of my memories of it may be repressed. I don’t remember anything truly awful happening to me on the level of rape, but for some reason, I’ve always had a very hard time trusting men. I’ll just leave it at that.

The other two commenters qualified themselves too, as they rabidly took anyone to task who didn’t cheer about Mary Kay Letourneau’s death from colon cancer. They seemed to be working as a tag team. Perhaps they know each other offline. One of them claimed the other has a law degree from a very prestigious university out west. Maybe she does, although one might wonder why she spends so much time on a message board for ex Mormons if she’s a brilliant lawyer.

On the other hand, I’m “overeducated” myself for my lot in life. Maybe people don’t believe that I did any time in graduate school. It’s not like I carry my diplomas in my purse. Either way, I only know about them what they post, just as most people only know about me what I post. There’s no proof of their claims about their credentials, although both women (I assume, based on their monikers?) are clearly very articulate and intelligent. Both are quick to argue with other posters with an air that they’re always right, regardless of the subject.

For whatever’s it’s worth, Rolling Stone magazine also agrees with them that Mary Kay Letourneau was a terrible person who was romanticized by the press. I can agree that the press did kind of make Mary Kay out to be more sympathetic than perhaps they should have, particularly back in the late 1990s, when this was hot news. There was even a made for TV movie done about her.

Penelope Ann Miller was a good casting choice. As to the movie itself, it’s been years since I saw it.

A couple of years ago, there was a documentary about Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. I remember watching it and thinking Mary Kay came off as less of a predator and more as someone with serious organic mental illness. However, given what she did, there is no doubt that legally, she was guilty of child rape, which is definitely wrong in the eyes of the law. For whatever reason, her victim didn’t see what she did as wrong, even if almost everyone else does.

I don’t personally know anyone involved in this case. I have no idea what any of them are like, other than what I’ve read about them. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I try to be open-minded as much as possible about most things. I often try to give people the benefit of the doubt, too, although I’m not always able to do that.

I can’t picture myself speaking to Vili Fualaau, who is now a grown man in his late 30s, insisting that he has no right to be sad about Mary Kay Letourneau’s death. I can’t see myself grabbing him by the lapels and shaking him, demanding that he see her the way that many other uninvolved people see her– simply as a child rapist. He was the main victim in this case, although others have rightly noted that others were also victimized– her ex husband, her children, her colleagues, and her other students, as well as extended family members who have had to live with the shame and notoriety of her crime.

But many of those same people who knew Mary Kay Letourneau privately also didn’t know her as simply a child rapist. Those people have the right to their feelings, whatever they may be. Ultimately, that was what I was trying to get at when I initially fell down the rabbit hole on RfM. I was not one of Mary Kay Letourneau’s victims. I don’t approve of what she did. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around how and why it happened. I don’t have all of the facts. But when it comes down to it, she was a human being who had loved ones, including the man she victimized when he was a child. What right do I have to judge him for the way he says he feels? And what right do other people have to judge me for how I feel? Feelings are just that.

I have written in this blog about one of the men who sexually abused me when I was growing up. When I think about it, there were a number of instances involving people besides him, although they varied in severity and regularity. The man I have written about is the one who stands out the most to me. What he did wasn’t on the same level of what Mary Kay Letourneau did, although it was clearly abuse. I didn’t see it as abuse at the time.

It wasn’t until I spoke to mental health professionals that I realized that what he did was sexual abuse. Some people might see that as a problem. No one wants to be an abuse victim. In some ways, making that realization made things somewhat worse for me. It became something I felt like I had to hide. I never told my parents the full extent of what happened. Even if I had done that, back when it was happening, I’m not sure they would have done anything. I suspect they might have even blamed me for it.

I don’t know what Vili Fualaau’s life is like. However, it doesn’t appear to me that his life was ruined. He has two daughters. He was married for about fourteen years, which is longer than some marriages last. From what I can tell, he hasn’t turned to a life of crime. He’s not, to my knowledge, a sex pest himself. In spite of being a victim of child rape, it looks like Vili is doing somewhat okay. But I really don’t know. I only know what’s he’s told everyone.

I remember watching Montel Williams back in the early 00s, when he had a talk show. One time, he did a show on child sexual abuse survivors. I remember he got very emotional and shouted something along the lines of, “These victims’ lives are RUINED!” It bothered me that he said that. It seemed like an awful lot of power to give to an abuser, as it also seemed to diminish the power of the abused. Who is he to say whose life is ruined? It’s not his experience. He’s not an authority on their lives!

My life hasn’t been ruined because of what I went through as a child. I don’t give my abuser that much power, or really, that much regard anymore. I don’t even hate him, even though according to the women on RfM, simply based on what he did, he was someone unworthy of any compassion or sympathy. What he did was wrong, but that didn’t make him a person without any value. He had some good qualities. One thing I remember about him was that he was an incredible gardener. Also, our dog, Rhonda, loved him and used to run to greet him when he’d come home from work every day.

So… I guess my point is, I’m not an authority on anyone’s experiences but my own. I am in charge of my thoughts and feelings. No one necessarily has the right to tell me that my opinions are *wrong*, because they’re just that– opinions– not facts. You may disagree or disapprove of my opinions, but I still have the right to them. Shouting me down, either literally or in written form, doesn’t make you “right”. It makes you an insufferable blowhard. My experiences as a sexual abuse survivor don’t make me an expert on sexual abuse as a whole. They only make me an expert on my own experiences. Likewise, I think Vili Fualaau is the best person to determine if his experiences with sexual abuse ruined his life. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t look like they have.

Sigh… I probably need to stop spending so much time on RfM, too.

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condescending twatbags

Overbearing people are hard to bear…

Yesterday, I was on RfM and noticed that someone had bumped up an old post of mine from 2011. It was a rant I posted about “overly helpful” people. In those days, I had frequent dealings with a woman I only knew online who rubbed me the wrong way on a regular basis. I knew her from a message board that is now defunct, but the drama followed me to Facebook. Finally, in 2014, I blocked her. That decision wasn’t without drama, either. I remember when I finally made the decision to banish her from my online world, I said to Bill, “You just wait. Sometime today, I’ll get an email from her.”

Sure enough, later that day I did get an email demanding to know why I had blocked her. I don’t know about you, but to me, when someone uses the block button on Facebook, it means they don’t want to talk to you or hear from you. As I recall, I ignored her message. In earlier times, I had patiently responded to her, even though she bugged the shit out of me. I had finally had enough of her passive aggressive digs and obnoxiously overbearing comments, and realized that responding to her would only prolong the pain.

I was kind of amused to read that thread, especially since I remembered how I was feeling that day in 2011. She had pushed me to my wit’s end. At that time, the message board we were on was still active and I hadn’t wanted to abandon it, because I liked most of the women there. We were also both admins on the board, so we kind of had to “work” together. A few sympathetic people commented. I noticed that the person who bumped that thread to 2020 had similar issues as mine, which was why the thread was reactivated. These were the behaviors I had observed from her that were making me nuts:

* Chiming in with a “more informed” opinion whenever I’d try to express an opinion.

* Usually having some kind of unsolicited “helpful advice” or “fake concern” for me.

* Playing “devil’s advocate” or presenting a contrary opinion to any given subject I raise.

* Was rarely just supportive, but instead seemed to feel the need to “one up” everybody else and be the “voice of reason”.

* Doesn’t seem to understand or care how condescending and annoying she is to others.

In 2012, that message board where I had regular dealings with that overbearing woman mercifully went kerfluey, and most everyone moved to Facebook. It wasn’t long before I needed to unfriend the woman who had irritated me so much. I just couldn’t take her shit anymore, especially since I tried very hard not to engage her. Fortunately, that wasn’t a big deal. She didn’t seem to notice that I’d unfriended her, probably because we had so many mutual friends. She did her thing. I did mine. It wasn’t until November 2014, when she went too far with her disrespect that I finally pushed the block button. She’s been blocked ever since, and I don’t miss her at all.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about people like that woman. Overbearing people… especially overbearing women… really and consistently grind my gears. I’m not sure why I react to them the way I do. It could be because some of my family members are overbearing, domineering, and disrespectful to me and treat me like I’m stupid when I know I’m not. It’s gotten to the point at which I can barely stand to be around them. So now, when someone is like that to me, I tend to react negatively. If the behavior doesn’t change very quickly, the negative reaction turns into outright contempt. I may be obnoxious and opinionated, but I try not to dictate to people what they should or should not be doing in their own lives, especially when whatever they’re doing doesn’t affect me personally. I don’t like overbearing behavior in men, either, but they seem to annoy me somewhat less than women do. I find controlling women very offensive.

This morning I was thinking of all of the women who have been in significant conflict with me over my lifetime and I’ve noticed that the vast majority of them were very controlling and dictatorial, and quite a few employ manipulative, passive aggressive methods to get others to do their bidding. When those ploys don’t work, they become openly hostile, aggressive, and rude. And… I tend to respond in kind, because I resent being told what to do by people who aren’t necessarily any more qualified than I am in knowing what to do.

Maybe I’m just as bad as they are, though. It’s no secret that I’m loud and opinionated, and my father used to criticize me a lot for being “arrogant” and “bitchy”. Personally, I don’t think I was that arrogant as much as I was strong-willed and independent. My dad was a control freak, and he passed that trait on to a couple of my sisters. As a child, I put up with it because I had to in order to survive. As an adult, to some extent, I don’t really have to put up with it anymore. But I have found that I now have an unusual sensitivity to it… and if a woman is particularly bossy or intrusive to me, it’s a fair bet we’ll eventually have a conflict. Most of the time, it’s not worth trying to work things out with this type of person, because they think they’re right and refuse to compromise.

I remember back in 2011, when I was having regular dealings with the woman who had prompted that thread on RfM, she was pushing me close to the end of my patience. After she’d left me a shaming, demeaning comment on some topic we were discussing, I wrote something along the lines of, “I’m sorry, but whether or not you realize it, some of your responses to me are very offensive and condescending. It’s upsetting to me, and I feel like you’ve provoked me to respond in kind.”

The thing is, I had really thought about this response before I posted it. I tried hard to be assertive rather than aggressive. I wanted to enforce my boundaries without making things worse. I hoped she could see my side. But she was offended anyway, and didn’t see where she’d done anything wrong. Sure enough, I got a nasty private message in which she spat, “What was the point of apologizing if you were just going to insult me?!”

I remember taking a deep breath and trying, once again, to respond in a way that would not offend her, yet make her realize that I didn’t appreciate her condescending tone toward me. It didn’t work, and the bullshit continued apace for a few more years, with her continuing to feel free to send me private messages and unsolicited emails. The funny thing is, I don’t remember ever inviting her to correspond with me in such a way. She simply felt emboldened to do so.

Finally, about three years later, we reached the straw that broke the camel’s back. She’d left a nasty little passive aggressive dig in a Facebook comment to me. A mutual friend had posted about legalizing marijuana and asked her friends what we thought of it. The conversation was going well until I mentioned that Bill had lived with “pot head roommates” in college and hadn’t liked the way marijuana had affected them. He doesn’t like smoke, and as someone who works with the government, he’s not allowed to use recreational drugs, anyway.

So the passive aggressive bitch writes, “He’s never lived with alcoholics? 😉 😉 “

It’s possible that her comment was completely innocuous, but usually winking smilies imply a hidden meaning… and I had a feeling she was, once again, subtly insulting me, while trying to appear friendly and innocent. And truthfully, by that point, I had become very sensitive to her communications. Like… it was at the point that almost anything she posted irritated me, no matter how inconsequential. But I got the impression that my “frenemy” was trying to imply that Bill is currently married to an alcoholic, and that’s worse than dealing with potheads.

You see, it’s not a secret that I come from a long line of drunks. I drink, too. Maybe I’m even an alcoholic by some people’s standards. However, I have never met this woman in person and we have certainly never hung out over alcoholic drinks. Maybe my personality is because I drink. Maybe it’s simply the way I am. I don’t see how she’d know, since we never met offline. She seemed to be making an assumption or even a declaration that I have a drinking problem, even though we’ve not met and she’s not a mental health professional.

This wasn’t the first time she’d commented on my drinking habits– alcoholic or not. For some reason, she was unusually concerned about what I drink, even when the beverages weren’t boozy. This same woman often used to lecture me because I used to drink a lot of Diet Pepsi. She said that wasn’t healthy, and would frequently offer me an unsolicited laundry list of why it wasn’t something I should be doing. She’s right that diet sodas are bad for one’s health. I have since given up diet sodas, though not because of her “advice”… and I actually rarely drink non-diet sodas now. I mostly stick to bubbly water, if anyone’s curious. But yes, I do enjoy alcohol, and I admit it. Seems like that’s my business and Bill’s, unless I do something that affects other people negatively.

In any case, I’m certain that she knew her comment was shitty, demeaning, and insulting. It might have been one thing if we were friends and she was legitimately concerned. We weren’t really friends, and she was being rude, yet cowardly, as she was trying not to appear like she was insulting me. I didn’t appreciate it, and decided it was finally time for me to drop kick her off my social media once and for all. Even if she hadn’t meant it as a dig, that’s still the way it came across, and I was so tired of fielding those kinds of comments from her. And then predictably sending me an email demanding to know why I’d blocked her– as if that was some kind of serious affront because, according to her, she never does anything wrong— pretty much made me decide that we don’t need to speak again. I might have reacted differently if her approach had been more respectful, but demanding to know why she’s not allowed to harass me in my space is not cool. Taken alone, that comment was easy to ignore. Taken with all of her other little barbs and subtle insults over the years, it was just too much.

The funny thing is, that happened about five years ago, and I have found that I have even less patience and tolerance for overbearing women. I just feel like I don’t have to take orders from people to whom I am not somehow beholden. In other words, if you’re not paying me to work, someone I live with or love, or someone who has the power to arrest me or do something else life altering, I don’t have to do what you tell me to do. I don’t have to accept abusive criticism, insults, or covert hostility. And if you feel entitled enough to issue orders, act holier-than-thou, be hostile, or otherwise act like a passive aggressive creep, you can just fuck right off. Life is too short to deal with people who can’t be straightforward and civilized.

Anyway… I rarely think about her anymore, which is a good thing. I just thought it was funny that thread from 2011 was revived and so many people seemed to relate to it in 2020. I’m surprised it didn’t get more attention when it was a current concern. Clearly, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

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