HA! A feminist historian! Just what I was looking for!

I shall peruse your luscious offerings and then come back to, in no particular order, pester you with questions and shower you with compliments.

Sincerely, with all due respect and regards, etc.
meeeeeeeeee

lol

Part A: dates, and “relationships,” should be more relaxed/pleasant than ordeal-like. Part B: it’s OK to be in them for you (as opposed to in service to the other person).

I remember that I believed these things in the 8th grade and disagreed with the nun (yes!) who was called into our public school to teach sex education to girls. She said dating was to find out who you’d like to marry. I had never been on a date but I suspected the purpose of them was to go do something interesting and fun with an interesting and fun person.

Since my mid thirties, however, I’ve had recurrent trouble with men who (a) think one should have sex to serve and please them; (b) are not sure one should have it to please oneself, unless that can benefit them with some kind of visual show; (c) are convinced women want them and that they can therefore get away with various types of poor behavior and not be frozen out.

Eventually this shook my sense of reality that I went to see a therapist, who reminded me of ideas (A) and (B) (in the second paragraph). Even though these ideas had once seemed obvious to me, it was amazing to me by that point to have someone confirm that they really weren’t “too selfish.”

Recently I’ve realized that although part of the reason I try to understand these people and figure out what is going on is that I’m the guest in the culture, another part has to do with my earliest (pre feminist, pre 1967 or so) upbringing.

According to that upbringing, managing an ordeal-like relationship was part of one’s job in the same way as managing events like awkward yet necessary work related social events (e.g. job candidate dinners with colleagues who hate each other) is part of my job now.

So, girls: dates, and “relationships,” should be more relaxed/pleasant than ordeal-like, and it’s OK to be in them for you (as opposed to in service to the other person).

Corollary: beware of advice about how you should “work on” relationships and how they are “work.” Also beware of advice about how you need to compromise more, and how the burden of “communication” is on you.

My friendships don’t seem like work and struggle, they seem like pleasure and growth; my better relationships with men have felt like that too; I would really beware of all the warnings about the “work” of a relationship just because romance is involved; I think these are a trap.

(Perhaps that advice was actually invented by men who are telling themselves there is “work” in a relationship because what they are learning is, women are actual people, not dolls or something … ?)