Sandbox Romants: Wooing and Problems

I meet women w/some desperate need to validate their life through timely marriage and optimal wedding far, far too much.

ditto.

i never do! i mean, i meet people who want to ~get married~, sure, but this kind of rom-com mindset, no. unless they're all too afraid of offending me to say it?

I even had one say to me, "Oh, you're divorced? Well, at least you got married." I backed out of that conversation very soon afterwards.

Maybe I should go into the consulting business teaching people how to say no. I'm really really good at it!

My workshops will start with the beginning intro to to the Human Beinz "Nobody But Me"
and then I prance onstage and teach everyone how to say no by offering them outrageous things and having them practice their no skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtJoGdujYo

I'm really really good at it!

I've said this before but I learned how to say no politely but firmly from a French lady. It's quite liberating.

See even though I've tried not to be, the joke's on me and I am totally one of those women, only it has stealth-neurosis powers and didn't spring until a couple of years ago and then SURPRISE!

So I p much took the B0lick article at face-value where perhaps I shouldn't have; I'm glad to have this counterpoint. Thanks, rrrob!

LL: Would attend all sessions of that class, with pressures increasing from "Would you like to clean rat's cages for minimum wage on Mars?" to "If you were a good woman, you would know that your behavior is inappropriate and I expect you to change that if you really love me." That would be the advanced skill level, presumably.

I expect you to change that if you really love me

LOL/sad

I meet women w/some desperate need to validate their life through timely marriage and optimal wedding far, far too much.

― M. White, Wednesday, November 30, 2011 6:41 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

as a single woman in her 30s i have people (male and female) project this desire on me all the time and it really angers me.

i don't have any desire for marriage or children. at all. but people are completely clouded by the fact that is what i am supposed to want and don't listen to the actual words that come out of my mouth on this subject.

I'm sorry, did you say something?

<3 <3 <3

Exactly, Laurel -- first you refuse things that are easy to refuse (would you like to smell my foot? would you like a bite of this heavily mayonnaised chipped ham sandwich with mold on it?), and it gets more and more challenging based on the questionnaire you filled out at the beginning of the seminar.

To be fair, I also have no trouble agreeing to things and am not a negative person at all -- in fact, I'm pretty game, for the most part! I just feel very little pressure to acquiesce when I don't wish to do something, either in the work sphere or the personal sphere. If I do acquiesce after refusing initially it's because I probably didn't really want to say no in the first place ;)

at thanksgiving, me and my cousins (all in our early 30s) were actually seated at the kids table, in an entirely diff room. my aunt dropped her 7 year old kid off with us, saying 'ok, mommy's going to go hang out with the adults now'. when getting more food, my cousin reported that the "adults" were saying that we gotta start having kids soon.

i'm in the same boat as you, b_g, and i fear i'll be seated at the kids table till i'm 60!

It's fine to want to be married. It's fine to want kids. It's the neurotic desire to do it willy-nilly like it will 'fix' your life that freaks me out. As if not keeping up with the Joneses or not landing any husband, regardless of your long-term compatability, is some freakish loser thing to do. If the Joneses are your standard, you've lost already and marrying fools isn't exactly some rare achievement.

I'm perfectly fine with the kids table; they still have to serve me wine and I have less competition for th bottle. Plus the conversation isn't as inane.

Also, I have been kind enough to give my parents perfectly adorable grand-cats for years now and if that's not enough, I'm not sure what they'd think of any human grandchildren I might sire.

My mother's not happy with me for not having children, but she doesn't talk about it much. (My sister has three and my brother has two. Three of them are married--all of my grandnieces and grandnephews are in their mid to late twenties--so she should even have great-grandchildren before she dies.)

I'm from a cadet branch so I really don't see the need. ;)

yes, i have produced a lovely grand-cat that my mother dotes upon with fancy cat food from wholefoods.

Wow. My mother actually refers to our dogs as her granddogs.

i kinda feel that the concept of marriage as a whole is probably on the outs anyway, anyone who seriously says "you're in your 30's, why aren't you married yet?" is almost definitely a sitcom character written by someone with a 1950's view of marriage

Or an older family member.

I'm perfectly fine with the kids table; they still have to serve me wine and I have less competition for th bottle. Plus the conversation isn't as inane.

i agree with this! i didn't mind it until the aunt came in w/her kid. probably because i've found her horribly condescending my own childhood.

Or a features editor at a women's magazine.

xp unless it applies to your aunt.

also the idea that i can't be considered an adult until i am married really bugs

My stepdad's family is 100% "girls aren't grown until they are married" and when I was in my late 20s, unmarried, and relegated to the kids' table, my mom threw a shit fit on my behalf, which I've always appreciated even though she was perpetrator #1 of the "when are you going to get married???!?????" pressure. (I chalk a little of that up to her just wanting me to settle down (as in quit being an irresponsible drunkard) and assuming that marriage was the only way than her necessarily believing I was an incomplete person when single.)

For clarification, I was referring to the way women are socialized to be compliant and not say no or hurt people's feelings

i was with you until this...

You were with me until I restated what I meant in one sentence? So you disagree with me? Or should I keep guessing here?

xp Yeah. Anyone who tries to speak about all women cannot be thinking very clearly. Lack of qualifiers is a boo-boo.

I… identifying an existing societal pressure is not the same as saying all women are a certain way? And I never said that?

we're constantly badgered about getting married- almost exclusively from wives/girlfriends of my friends (though i get it at work from the matronly members of staff too). Sometimes it's like a frenzy in group settings.

"Women are complaint and never say no or hurt people's feelings." (not what I said)

vs

"Women are socialized to be complaint and not say no or hurt people's feelings." (what I said)

So a woman who says 'no' when she doesn't want something is not very well-socialized, I suppose.

All of the women I met in my early twenties were happy with me for not wanting children, but they all figured that I didn't want them because I didn't want them Growing Up In A World With War, Pestilence, And Bill Clinton Getting Blowjobs From His Staffers. Phooey.

Is the sandbox making everyone bizarro?? Aimless, who in the world ever said that? Also you're combining/mixing up meanings of "socialized", and you know it.

i just think you're overgeneralizing a bit, jenny. it's not "women are socialized to be compliant" it's more "lots of people are generalized to be compliant, many of them women"

Remy and Aim: do you seriously want to argue that there is not a social norm for women that involves being agreeable and helpful and accommodating to others more than is expected for men? And that this expectation for women extends to how women are, in general, expected to react to wooing?

Maybe I'm not grokking where everyone is coming from here because I'm really surprised at both or you.

Dude. We are having a miscommunication. Let me try to draw a parallel.

I make this statement: "Men are socialized to hide their emotions."

What this means is that there is pressure in our society for men to hide their emotions, not cry in public, etc etc. This does not mean that no men cry or that men who cry are poorly socialized.

So when I say women are socialized to be compliant, I mean that there is pressure in our society for women to be agreeable or at least say no gently. One example: women who are not compliant are called bitches or harridans. This does not mean that all women are agreeable or that disagreeable women are poorly socialized.

Now, if you disagree that that such societal pressure exists, that's a different conversation.

i want to go back to giving unsolicited dating advice :(

Jesus McKinnon Christ. Saying that women face a particular pressure does not mean that men don't also face a similar pressure. That is a massive logical fallacy.

It might also be worth noting that the ppl in this thread who are saying "yes this pressure exists in a way that is specifically targeted at women" ARE WOMEN and the ppl saying "What? No! That doesn't happen" are men. Who do you suppose has more firsthand experience with this phenomenon?

Pyth, I understand that a certain amount of social pressure is placed on women to avoid social friction and that this pressure can sometimes include pressure to avoid friction through self-abnegation, but saying that is, imo, a far cry from what thejenny said.

But I don't see this as the social norm and I can't recall it ever being a general rule in my lifetime. I wasn't alive in 1900, but I can tell you that a substantial number of the women I've known had no trouble standing up fior themselves.

... as thejenny is doi9ng this moment.

You are making my head hurt.

It's gotten a lot better in the last few decades, but the pressure is still there.

I don't know, Christine. Aimless says it isn't and I'm arguing with him so… That's infallible logic.

Aimless, Remy, I am being sarcastic in my previous post, FYI.

^_^