This is a huge deal for women, the hugest deal all. It’s not that we piss away our power. It’s that by pissing away our power we piss away our lives.
I know all about this, and yet I do it too. Like, just last night.
I was talking to my husband while he was driving home. Catching up on our day. All fine. But it was getting late, which is when I get hungry and irritable, which is when the last thing I need is stress. Still, I brought up my ideas for a project we’re working on, where I knew he’d have ideas different from mine, and we’d have disagreement at best.
Nevertheless I persisted, hoping, I guess, that he’d only very gently disagree, or not disagree at all, or perhaps even discern that this was my hungry, vulnerable time of day and not get into any of this with me at all.
That he’d take care of me.
I gave all my power to him to take care of me, and he dropped the ball.
From one point of view, he didn’t take care of me. The fucking bastard!
But this assumes he can tell when I’ve slid from the happy, casual, coping mode of the earlier stage of our conversation to the no-longer-able-to cope, starving-to-death stage I was in when I also brought up my ideas for our project.
So from another point of view,
I didn’t know what I needed,
I didn’t pay attention to my needs,
I was hoping someone else would take my needs more seriously than I did, and
I wasn’t willing to act IN THE MOMENT WHEN IT COUNTED to get my needs met.
After all, who’s the world’s leading expert on what I need?
Me.
Who’s the world’s leading expert on what you need?
You.
Now let’s face it. The downside of our taking our needs seriously is huge. A terrible burden.
If I’m responsible for getting my needs met, I have no one else to blame if they don’t get met. A bummer.
Plus I have to show respect to my needs. I have to self-validate. A bummer.
Plus I have to figure out what I need. And in real time! A bummer.
Plus I have to say something to get my needs met. A bummer.
Plus I have to craft something to say that shows just a minimum of finesse so I don’t come across like a clueless bitch. Yet another bummer.
You can see why it’s so much easier to just piss away our power, let our needs fly by time after time, and spend our emotional energy in blame and suffering instead of actually using our power to get our needs met and be happy.
So I guess there’s a really strong case to be made for pissing away our power and leading shitty lives. Certainly, for millions of women, it’s so often seemed like the easiest path.