WOMEN! Geez...

My new friend has invited me out this weekend to meet her best friend of 20 years. It is supposed to be a girls' night out, to comfort her friend.

You see, her friend has been dating a local guy for four months. His wife had left him (for the FOURTH time) alone, and he had decided that she wasn't coming back, he was going to start a new life without her. For four months it was idyllic - and then the almost-ex-wife came back home. The guy dumped my friend's friend, and she is angry and hurt. My common sense and attitude about men is requested to help her recover her self-respect.

This happens all the time to me. We got this property on the cheap because after over 12 years of marriage, with loans and mortgages taken out in both their names, the male partner in the marriage came home one day and said he was bored and felt tied down, and was leaving - loaded up his motorcycle, and left. Two years later, the woman who was left to sell the house, pay the debts, and raise the kids told me sadly, "I still love him, and I'd take him back in a minute." WTF??

Sorry, I simply don't get it.

There's a reason some pathetic guy leaves a woman who would spoil him rotten and takes back a woman who leaves him for another man - four times. There's a reason some snickering airhead dumps his responsibilities in his wife's lap, abandons his kids, and lets everyone suffer for his own selfishness. And that reason is - we put up with it. Women put up with that crap. (Some men do, too.) In "love", most women are not rational, are not sensible - we revert to what they call 'the weaker sex' and let a man take advantage of us, abuse us, define the parameters of every relationship. We believe in the love songs and the chick flicks, we get all doe-eyed and cry at the slightest hint of warmth or affection. Women send each other sappy emails that they don't send their men friends, to remind each other that we are 'the weaker sex'. We live down to the Hollywood ideal of simple-mindedness and male supremacy. We buy into the 'separate but equal' crap that is used to limit us, handicap us, make us even feel proud of our 'weakness' and 'spiritual rib dependency'. We cheer a woman who stands out from the pack and makes a difference "for all women" - and by doing so, we lessen the effectiveness of all women to make a difference, by working in equal partnership with men. And it is there we fail each other, fail our relationships, fail ourselves. We hold no man accountable for his actions, because he simply can't help himself - and because we don't want to be thought of as a bitch. Men may draw the lines between male and female acceptable behavior, but women all too eagerly color them in.

Most women (and men) can't handle a rational, equal parnership. Men say what they "won't do" in the relationship - change a dirty diaper, cook, clean up after themselves - and women take up the slack. Men say what they won't accept in a woman - yet expect a woman to accept all of their faults anf foibles, simply for the joy of sharing their company. When a man meets a woman who is confident, sure of herself, and who makes her own decisions, they call her a ball-buster, and don't even try to work with her, have an equal partnership with her - or they try to minimize her, put her in her place, make her lesser than she is in her own eyes, or otherwise intimidate her - so that they can feel better about themselves. Many men are intimidated by women who know who they are and what they want to accomplish, or are afraid of what 'the guys might say' if they have a truly equal partnership with a woman. Some women, to avoid being thought of as a bitch, turn into manipulative, simpering whores, getting all that they want from men be being so dependent, so clingy, so artificially and disgustingly 'feminine', that the man feels bound to 'protect' her, 'help' her, 'care for' her so that he can feel good about himself and his (pathetically insecure) manhood. (There are even webpages now where such women can locate a "sugar daddy" to give them all that they want, as long as they play that role.) Other women think that if they lie, cheat, steal, and harm others enough, they can be 'just like a man' and gain their respect. Both are wrong, and both hurt women everywhere by buying into this manipulation and perpetuating the male faith in the myths.

It would be nice if we could throw out all those simpering love songs, whiny desperate country songs about 'mah mah-yun dun lef me agayun' and chick flicks, and slap each other around with some heavy doses of self-respect occasionally. Then women might realize their true worth - and men would either have to meet us on equal terms or be nullified as we pass them by, intent on our own goals and purposes. A simple dose of self-respect on both sides would not harelip us, and might even bring us to more real, more concrete, more believable and permanent relationships. But until women realize that they are their own worst enemies, not only enemies of themselves but enemies of women in general, by refusing to be individuals with individual goals, hopes, desires and dreams, they will never be "a success for women everywhere" - nor a success in their own personal lives. Once we come to the realization that we are all individual people, with individual rights as well as individual responsibilites, maybe we will stop excusing each other's behavior as "he's just a man' or 'she's just a woman' and start appreciating each other for our individuality (and kicking the irresponsible airheads, who use their own and other people's sexes as excuses for their behavior, to the curb where they belong).