Permission to Hate the Holidays

I actually think that there is some kind of “vaccine” or antidote for some of us (again: very important: only some of us! Please don’t deem this applicable to the vast majority of chumps!). There is a way for some of us (again: some of us!) to prevent sparkly people becoming our life partners, but this may mean accepting not having one (like for me) and for others that may mean undoing brainwashing. Our entire culture brainwashes us from girlhood to find things that are associated with narcissistic personality disorder, attractive in partners – we are basically gaslit all of our life: a certain type of quick charm, certain confidence, certain outgoing men in well-paid leadership positions, strong career aspirations, high salaries – all of those things are actually associated with narcissistic personality disorder, lower empathy (than e.g. middle management) and thus also with cheating cause kibbles.

I didn’t even understand the concepts of narcissistic personality disorder before this year – and you need to understand it to exclude it/reject it. I’ve encountered it many, many times in my life, but I simply didn’t understand it and knew zilch about it. I still can’t fathom some of it – I get it rationally, but not emotionally, cause it’s like someone who is not human (the “skein” part, I guess).

I didn’t understand for the longest time why with my particular disability, I was purely attracting sparkly abusers. It’s not that my picker was off, because I simply accepted anyone who was interested in me and the others were not interested in me. I now understand how that works and understand that that will not change, meaning the option for me to be in a straight relationship that is healthy is extremely low.

You can also take the example of my aunt again. She met husband no.1, father of my three cousins, while they were both students. He dropped out. She graduated and became very successful in her career, in the field of patriarchal religious pedagogy ironically, in which she came to hold a leadership position. My uncle was never successful in any career, and he had an unsuccessful recording studio, which she funded 100% and de facto, which suited her very well, became a stay at home dad. Prior to their divorce, he ironically (given her profession and teachings!) took care of all household labor, all cooking and all childcare. She came from a wealthy background, grew up with cooks and nannies and couldn’t even boil an egg. She was never the maternal type (see also the quote I posted earlier), yet having no kids would have been egregious in her line of work. If she had looked at the studies and what they say, which is that on average the wife’s salary percentage of overall household income that made men the most satisfied with the relationship was 40%. Keeping that in mind, if she had looked at that rationally and we are talking of a much older generation here, she would have understood that the good-looking (my mom’s view) confident extremely charming success-less musician, who is happy to do all the childcare and all the household chores… was likely to turn out a mirage. As he did- screwing around left, right and center, mostly with younger women.

Similarly if I had looked at my own situation with my last FW as an outsider, detached, and it wasn’t me living it, I would have been able to deduct this to likely be an abusive situation in which the man is abusing a disabled woman (just like without the trauma bonds and gaslighting as outsiders we can see much more). Because the only thing that had changed from my previous situation in which I was alone involuntarily, was that I had become older, which decreases a straight woman’s attractiveness to men unfortunately, and I had suddenly more money due to a severance package.

And here are the parallels between me and my aunt: I was so relieved, because I just wanted to be safe and finally (!) not alone and not have to face the world without a family, as a disabled woman, in the same way my aunt was relieved, because she wasn’t interested in housework or childcare, but felt the need to have kids to advance in her career. She could have also deducted what would happen. After the divorce, he started being the purely fun dad and only saw his kids infrequently and not overnight. She paid him alimony. Husband no.2 was the same guy but less good-looking. Same non-career (musician with no success and yes, you guessed it, she funded him a recording studio!), also did all cooking and household labor, except for some childcare, which she now did, but resented. The fact that husband no.1 had been the SAHD and that they had been closer to their dad also played a part in why my cousins believed him and not her until that fateful Christmas.