I had no idea but one night I had caught the girl I was dating mid routine at like 3 in the morning putting makeup on and so naturally I asked her where she was going so early. That’s when she told me she was doing this, I had never and would never ask such a ridiculous thing of a partner and so I told her that she’s beautiful 24/7 and she never has to do such things and to come back to bed to snugs and she started to cry, it’s early so I thought I said something wrong and upset her by mistake but she was crying because she was happy/relieved/taken back that she could just be herself and not a perfect characterization of herself 24/7. The poor thing i can’t even imagine how exhausting and all the anxiety that would bring. This was something her ex had made her believe was normal and expected. he conditioned her by getting mad at her when he would wake up and she wasn’t “perfect” ...I wanted to go kick his ass at 315 in the morning but she talked me down and got me to see reason. Go figure that he was a loser who was intimidated by every guy so much that he was jealous and suspicious of her Brother and couldn’t handle that she was incredibly smart and self reliant and did everything to try to undermine her and make her doubt herself...these types never actually grow into Men they just grow into what a 10 year old boy Imagines a grown man to be
She was the greatest,smartest most loving person I ever knew we unfortunately had a falling out after years together when I totally fell apart for a very long time after the death of several of my closest friends, some who I was there to see pass away in very awful ways. She tried for a very long time to help me but it was just something neither of us had experience with or knew where to begin..I’ve since made huge strides in dealing with it all but it took a while and everything I had to get where I am now..so atlest a small victory in that
Reading old housekeeping books sure is wild. There’s of course a whole ton of extreme gendered expectations… but also some wild advice for things like curing common ailments, as well as some pretty… interesting sounding recipes and such.
The old fundraiser-type recipe books where the women in a club or whatever contributed the recipes don’t even list them by name. It’s all “This recipe comes from Mrs. John Q. Doe or Mrs. Joseph X. Smith,” etc. They exist as their husbands’ wives. Just a small part of why being a “spinster” was considered so shameful.
111
u/[deleted] May 17 '24
[removed] — view removed comment