| 50 plus und endlich allein |
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Ein Ratgeber für Frauen
| Author: | Britta Zangen | |
| Rights sold: | German | |
| Genre: | Guidebook | |
| Number of pages: | 207 | |
| Edition: | 3. | |
| Editor: | ||
| Series: | ||
| ISBN: | 13:978-3-936405-27-9 | |
| ISSN: | ||
| Publishing company: | Bücken & Sulzer, Overath | |
| The year of publishing: | 2005 | |
| Origin Country: | Germany | |
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Summary |
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Introduction [extract] […] It was not really difficult to trace the reason for my contentment. A coincidence helped me on fast. Very soon after I had finally been able to free myself from a ménage à trois after seven agonizing months, a friend of mine called me. Kindly, she asked how I was doing. To my own surprise I heard myself spontaneously saying: "Fine! Ever since there has not been a man in my life, all irritation has disappeared." I am convinced till this day that this was and is the truth. Saying so, I do not want to uphold that it is only the men's fault that so many women are unhappy in their relationships. As you will probably have read, it is preponderantly women who end partnerships, with or without a marriage license. Rather I would suggest that the underlying dissatisfaction of women is due to the way we try to live partnerships in the modern western world. Although new forms of living arrangements are being tried out everywhere, new role models are still missing, according to the opinion of the sociologist Rosemarie Nave-Herz. It is, thus, a new role model that I would like to offer to you. I would like to support you in thinking into other directions than the conventional ones. I would like to help undo your 'thought barrier' – these are the words that a woman friend used trying to put my intentions into words. As, therefore, I blame partnership as such rather than the sex of the partners, I believe that the problems in lesbian relationships are not altogether different and that men in the same situation could profit from my considerations, too. Nevertheless, I primarily turn to my own sex and – for reasons that will become clear little by little – primarily to women in middle life, women therefore in their best years. I do not mean this ironically. The actor Otto Sander is said to have spread the witticism that we left the good years behind us when we are in our best. I do not share his opinion because they truly are our best if we succeed in shaping them suitably, and if we succeed in freeing ourselves from the absurd youth-mania of our time. I will do my best to help you with this. So, if you are in your best years, if you already are or will soon be without a partner, and if you are ready to try out new ways of thinking, then you should stay with me a little longer. I would like to present a counter plan to you, namely, living alone. By this I do not simply mean alone in your apartment, I mean in principle and on purpose without any partner in your life. This way of living – consciously chosen – has augmented my contentment enormously. It is not the second best of all possible ways of living arrangements, but a truly positive alternative. Although it is not an option for everyone – let alone for young people – I am convinced that it can be a wonderful alternative for rather a large number of people in middle age, and particularly for women. Living on one's own has an unjustly negative image and is wrongly overloaded with prejudices. I would gladly like to do away with these for you in order to show you an acceptable path to a more contented life. Responsibility and happiness [complete chapter] I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross We can probably assume that you spent the last decades in the companionship of one or several partners. In principle, your attitude towards these years can bring you to consider a life without a partner for two reasons – as a play of the mind, so to say, as an initially harmless activity. Although both reasons are based on a feeling of 'enough is enough', there is an emotional difference between the two. Something can be enough when it was mostly good but sufficient, or when it was too much of the bad. You might want to object that one can hardly get enough of something that was good. But I would reply: oh yes, one can. Let me tell you a little about myself. From the age of 10 onwards riding and the almost daily encounter with horses became an essential part of my life. This changed in the year in which I turned 40 because my horse had grown old and I had to have him put down. As I was rightly known to be a committed horse woman, I was expected to get myself another horse immediately. Surprise was therefore paramount when I made it clear that I would never ride horses again and stuck to this decision. In all those years with all those different horses I had experienced almost everything that results from sharing one's life with horses – positively and negatively. I had been on tournaments, I had won prizes and been the last, I had hunted in dust and rain, I had roved through the woods for hours, I had fallen off umpteen times, I had groomed innumerable horses, saddled them, and scraped their hooves. With me on their backs horses had gone beautifully, had reared, bolted, and fallen onto me. And they had made me tremendously happy for countless hours. Indefinitely, I would have been able to tell amusing anecdotes about the peculiarities of horses and riders alike. There was nothing lacking in my collection. I could only have repeated the incidents. But for what? Thirty years were enough. It had often been truly wonderful, it had often been a burden. But now it was finally time for different things in my life – for all those things for which I had never had enough time when having to look after my horse daily. A human being can hardly be on Earth in order to endlessly repeat the same things – even if they are good. In a similar way, I had spent about 40 years with different men at my side. I was 11 years old, he was 13, when, on Sundays, we walked hand in hand to the local cinema in our town. Of course, it was not a sexual relationship, but we did consider ourselves as a couple. I was 13 when the same boy made me feel I would never be happy again for the rest of my life. In consequence, my mother bought me a dress with frills where I did not yet have breasts, as she believed the breasts of my rival to have been the reason for her success. At the end of my life with men I had just turned 53 when I saw myself forced to separate from my partner. At that moment I did not yet know that he would remain the last. In the 42 years between the first and the last I had been in relationships with men almost non-stop. Some of them had lasted very shortly, some a little longer, two really long, and once I had been married. I really do not know what I could still undergo with a man that I have not undergone yet, both in the negative and in the positive sense. I loved sometimes more sometimes less and was loved sometimes more sometimes less; I threatened to throw a rival down the stairs; I stood naked on a balcony in order not to be detected by the landlady of my boyfriend; I tried to warm up for – among other things – ice hockey, brands of vodka, car racing and Buddhism (in this order); I cheated in words and deeds and was cheated in words and deeds; I held the bucket for vomiting men and had to have the bucket held for me; I received slaps in the face and dealt them out; I was bored stiff in beds, faked orgasms, and lived out my most daring sexual fantasies; I tried living in joint and in separate apartments; I loved and hated them, cooked, cared for and caressed them, sympathised with and shouted at them, idolised and insulted them – in sum, there had been everything that couples commonly live through, which is why it was enough. A person does not have to endlessly repeat its experiences. By now I had become old enough to try out a new, a different path. I have been going on this path for several years now and I can recommend it without reservation. To pursue a new path – clearly, this is easier said than done; particularly so, if the new path is fraught with all kinds of prejudices. The main problem here could be that solitude somehow frightens us. From our early childhood onwards we are taught that a person is a social being who needs other people for his or her well-being. The Bible says: It is not good that the man should be alone. In principle, the idea is of course correct – so much so that it would be quite all right if the handing down of this conviction from one generation to the next merely said: a person – as social being – needs other people. Unfortunately though, this true contention is embellished with a particular story for us women; a story that will keep getting us into trouble for the rest of our lives. The philosophers Marit Rullmann and Werner Schlegel explain what happens in the following words: "The yellow press and the soup operas suggest to their mostly female consumers that it is solely the choice of the right partner which guarantees happiness." Thus, we have swiftly moved from the correct assumption that a human being needs other human beings to the assertion that the female half of human beings needs a man. When I was young, neither the yellow press nor soup operas were as widely spread as they are these days. Even so, the message conveyed to me by the people around me was the same. I am sure that you know the story with one or the other embellishment from the days of your youth, too: one day a handsome man on a white horse would come riding along – figuratively speaking – and henceforth he would create my happiness for me. Like the Prince in a fairytale. I would be able to recognise whether he was indeed Mr. Right from an infallible detail: For this man I would walk all the way to Rome – or at least be willing to do so. This readiness would be proof of my true love for him. I was not told how I would be able to detect whether the man was deeply in love with me, too. His love for me did not seem to have the same significance as mine for him. But if mine for him was 'the right one', i.e. 'the true one', then we would live together happily till the end of times. I would raise a few children and anything beyond this was never mentioned. The vision for my future thus presented to me very much reminded me of: And they all lived happily ever after. A more fatal message to young girls can hardly be imagined. Not long ago I was able to understand how big the influence of this message is on the lives of grown-up women, how long the influence lingers, and how long it takes us to free ourselves from it. A friend of mine told me that it had taken her to her mid-sixties before she was finally able to give up the idea that someone else – namely, her husband – was responsible for her happiness and consequently for her discontentment. I hold it to be a most important step on the way to a life of contentment to leave this notion behind you, and it makes no difference whether you have a partner or not. If you do not take it into your own hands to put your life on the track best suited to you, then it will be most difficult to achieve contentment. Another person will hardly present it to you on a silver tray; more than that: it is truly nobody else's task to do so. No one but you is responsible for shifting your life in this or that direction. When we were young we believed that our future life would be full of wonderful, exciting, pleasurable moments. The man on the white horse played a leading role in this for many of us. (By the way, the one in my dreams looked rather like a gypsy. Very sexy! The horse he rode was not white but black – also very sexy.) As soon as we were legally adults, the difficulties began. When now, in the midst of our lives, we look back, most of us have to affirm that the difficulties were numerous, certainly more numerous than we had expected them to be. A young friend of mine used to end the telephone accounts of her current problems with a sobbing "Why does this always only happen to me?" – to which I kept replying: "I am sorry to say this, but it does not only happen to you. That is life!" When we come to this point in our conversations these days, she cannot withhold laughing herself. So, remain aware of the fact that life is difficult and that this is so in one way or another for all human beings. I am sure it has already happened to you more than once that the accounts of the problems of other people have made you see your own problems in a different light. There is the friend who has been diagnosed breast cancer, the neighbor who has lost his job, the friend who has to cope with the loss of a beloved person, or the relative who is facing the separation from a long-time marriage partner. These accounts usually initiate two strong kinds of feelings in us: On the one hand, a certain feeling of relief that we have been spared, and on the other, the helpful insight that life is very hard for other people, too, and that all in all and in comparison we can be content with ours. Unfortunately, this recognition does not last long and soon we are back with self-pitying ourselves. Should you have a tendency to self-pity, I would like to urgently ask you to stop it now and – if possible – once and for all. It takes you nowhere. On the contrary, it throws you back again and again. You – and only you – are responsible for your well-being. This does not mean that other people have not treated and will not treat you badly in your life. We human beings are unfortunately not perfect. But this is true for all of us. If you try to be honest with yourself, there will have been moments in your life in which you treated other people not very nicely. Although other people do this and that to us, although they try to influence and to hinder us, we are alone responsible for what we do with our lives. Each and every one of us. How you deal with the difficulties on your life's path and with the disappointments which other people cause you is first and foremost your very own affair. Its needs two to whatever happens to us: a person who inflicts and a person who accepts being inflicted upon. And do not tell me or – more importantly – do not tell yourself that you are not responsible for what happens to you because you had such a dire upbringing. Fortunately, only very few people had such a grim childhood that it will necessarily influence the rest of their lives. For most of us our upbringing was sometimes good, sometimes bad. I do not think that there are parents who do not make mistakes in raising their children. But in the vast majority of cases they did so with the best of intentions. They thought right what they did. Although we like to believe so: we would not have done better. We would – perhaps – not have made the same mistakes, but with near certainty would we have made other mistakes. We do ourselves no favor if we stumble through life as adults and hold our upbringing responsible for its deficiencies. Of course, this is wonderfully useful! Unfortunately, it is not my fault that I am so unbearable because my mother or my father or my grandmother or my uncle made this or that mistake. But this is neither fair to your relatives nor does it help us on. At some point in our life we are old enough to take the responsibility for our life in our own hands. Everyone makes their own luck, they say, and some people are born under a lucky star. My father, however, believed that one's basic attitude is decisive in this. He used to say: the point is whether you consider the glass as half empty or as half full, and he was convinced that every human being is responsible for this basic attitude him- or herself. A man called Dale Carnegie has made millions with this conviction. Apparently, he successfully transmitted the message that we can learn to be happy to thousands upon thousands of people. He believed it to be purely a matter of willpower. It seems to me that it might be worth trying this out. The psychoanalyst Heribert Blaß sums up the problem as follows: the expectation that happiness comes from without is widely spread but wrong. Instead he advises (like Carnegie) to take your happiness into your own hands. I, too, am convinced that every human being contributes to a large extent to their own contentment and consequently discontentment. If we were able to free ourselves from the acquired certainty that we necessarily need a certain man for our happiness, that only this Mr. Right is able to make us happy, and if we stopped poisoning years of our lives hankering for him, then we would come a little nearer to the chance of contentment. Although this message has been instilled in us during our childhood and although it is daily reinforced on all sides, it is not so difficult to let go of the belief in this message. It is not difficult because – if you look at it closely – it very little resembles reality. Happiness and myth [extract] […] Laconic remarks about marriage which does not make us as happy as it is always stated are legion. Compilations of quotations and aphorisms could not fill their pages without them. But we do not only find them there. The TV-presenter Elke Heidenreich maintains in her usual dry tone: "We thought that matrimony would be more pleasant." In the supplement to my newspaper I found the following: some young starlet was quoted to have said: "Everyone wants to become famous, but when you are, you are not so sure about it anymore." To this the columnist had added: "Isn't that exactly the same with marrying?" A woman journalist formulates more drastically in an article on mentally ill women: "Women have been promised fulfilment in marriage and motherhood and what they got was an unpaid job as cleaning woman and nurse." Not only marriage, love – this alleged prerequisite for marriage – is also covered with sarcastic aphorisms. The philosopher Theodor W. Adorno is said to have remarked: "Love is the capability to recognise similarity in dissimilarity." The French writer La Rochefoucauld even maintains that "few people would fall in love if they had not heard of it". This is indeed a very interesting observation. Would we interpret a slight fluttering of the heart, a little tingling between our legs as love if we were not waiting for it constantly? And would we be waiting for it the whole time if words and images did not persistently suggest that it is one of the most important themes in life – particularly for the female human being? Another author, Irmtraud Morgner, writes "that love is the narrowing of consciousness glossed over by men." Funnily, science affirms this view: the research conducted by the neuroscientists Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki from London University has proved what we all have been thinking all along: being in love reduces our ability to think. In fact, those parts of our brain in charge of critical assessments are practically turned off. The psychiatrist Donatella Marazziti from the University of Pisa has found out that the mental state of people in love resembles those with cerebral disorder. Their condition can almost be called paranoid. This has not even remained a secret to the Catholic Church. It can annul marriages, if a marriage lacked legal validity from the start. One of the prerequisites for an annulment is when the 'I will' at the altar was not spoken in full possession of one's faculties. Worldly-wise persons point to the fact that hardly anybody is ever in full possession of their faculties when marrying. Of costs and benefits [extract] Changing husbands is only changing troubles. Kathleen Norris I come – both from my mother's and my father's side – from a line of businessmen and women. Therefore, I am accustomed to the idea that there should be a fair balance between costs and benefits. I recently found the same thought taken up in an article on the length of marriages. It said that with regard to love and partnership people are not only influenced by sentiments but also by calculation. If the costs of a marriage are higher than its benefits divorce is imminent. The author of the article seems to have had a certain problem with the view of love and partnership as calculation. Therefore, he put costs and benefits in inverted commas. I, however, think that it is high time to look at our partnerships rationally and to see whether there is a fair balance between give and take. I suspect that the greater discontentment of women in partnerships has its origin precisely here: all in all, they give more than they take. Now I would like to encourage you to make an analysis of the costs and benefits of your partnership. I do, of course, not mean a petty calculation of mutual services and contributions. As long as we have the feeling that our accounts are balanced, we feel good. This is the same in relationships with other people, like relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors. Only when we get the feeling that we frequently give more than we receive, only then do we feel unsatisfied in the relationship. Would you please make a list with three columns. In the first column you enter – either in deed or in thought – those hours in your life in which your partnership led to truly happy hours. In the second column you enter those hours with your partner that were neutral (I mean the hours, not the partner), and in the third those in which you were unhappy. When I shared this proposition with my wise, old mother, she dryly said to her partner at this point: "You had better not do this!" Time for change, time for liberation [extract] Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. Katherine Mansfield Time, then, to critically and self-critically think about notions acquired; time to do something about them; time to care for ourselves. Time to change, slowly and carefully, but surely. Alone at last; free at last; free from the obsessive blending with another person. The long years with the different partners were wonderful or okay or miserable, but now it is enough. The preponderant feeling a few weeks after being left on my own – and this, as you know, not voluntarily – was a feeling of relief and liberation. It felt as though a millstone had been lifted off my shoulders. Only when – for the first time after roughly 40 years with different men at my side – I was finally alone, I was able to admit to myself how burdensome all these years had been. The actress Brigitte Mira used exactly the same word in the same context. Looking back on her long life she said that she sometimes missed her five husbands terribly, but that they had all been a burden really. You must not think, though, that the men in my life were all so terrible. On the contrary, they were all very nice and very willing and very fond of me; I have no experience of violence. They were totally normal men in totally normal partnerships with me, and – as much as I can judge for myself – I, too, was perfectly normal. Only, a normal partnership is very taxing for most of us, a fact that for a long time we do not want to admit to ourselves because, on the one hand, it contradicts the ideal that was conveyed to us in our youth and is still being conveyed to us daily, and on the other hand because we would probably have to change something fundamentally in our lives. That is frightening. When we were young, the suppression of an unsparing awareness was an essential protection. How else would we have been able to survive all those years in partnerships?! I was past 50 and involuntarily left alone when I began to perceive how wonderful it is to be alone. It was at this point that I asked my mother: "Why did I not understand this earlier in life?" – to which she curtly and conclusively replied: "That is biology!" Right she is – and that in more than one sense. While it is normal when young to attempt many times over to find happiness with a partner, so little is this normal when a woman has reached middle age. Not even much-invoked Nature can be named as witness in this context: why would she have presented us with the menopause – yes, presented us! – if that did not mean anything?! If we were supposed to go on as before despite the changes in our body?! Allow me to express a saucy idea: as we have now finished the nest-building phase, for what reason do we still need a nest-building partner? Not so terribly long ago I would have had to face serious danger for such an heretic thought. But at the beginning of the 21st century you and I simply dare to think into new directions without prejudices. Do not get me wrong: if you are still content and happy will your nest-building partner – how wonderful! By all means, stick to what you have; why should anyone change something that renders her content. But if you are not or if the two of you have started going your different ways, then there are now surely other things more important in life waiting for you; that, too, biology tells you. And if you have made that clear to yourself then you should be able to free yourself from the wide-spread contention that any man is better than none; this may be correct for the nest-building period, now it is truly not anymore. Now you are in an age in which there is no convincing reason to get together with any old man. Problems when alone [extract] […] I made my masterwork at a conference in Chicago. The conference finished at 4:00 pm on the last day, so that the predominantly North American participants flew home on the same day and I was left behind alone. What should I do with the evening? I decided to tackle the overdue visit to a top restaurant singly. I asked the receptionist to recommend such a place to me and reserved a table by telephone. The young woman's polite enquiry about "the number of my company" set my heart flickering unsteadily. In the evening I dressed up as much as my travel wardrobe would allow. Aside: it is incredibly important that you are well and suitably attired. This does not only apply to a visit in a restaurant, but to every public appearance. The right clothes – i.e. in which you feel comfortable and which you find suitable for the occasion – are most important for your confidence, particularly in situations which you consider queasy. At this point my mother would laugh out loud in disbelief. Her daughter of all people advises other women to dress up?! I have to tell you that I am notoriously known for my sloppy way of dressing. Even so, I would advise you to dress up at public events which fill you with unease. First, you must have gained the self-assurance necessary not to give a d… about the opinions of others. Only when you have become quite indifferent to what people think about you, only then are you – as far as I am concerned – welcome to face the public far from home in an unwashed, un-made-up look. Returning to Chicago, I alighted a taxi elegantly attired in front of the restaurant. Yes, it has to be a taxi because that makes quite a different impression from arriving on foot. You realise, don't you, that you have to stage your appearance in every respect. Should you tend to hold yourself badly (like I do) keep straightening yourself up to your full length – that too helps. Concentrate on two things: do not give way to anybody voluntarily, and strictly prevent yourself from smiling in that silly, female way that we have accustomed ourselves to from early childhood, particularly in critical situations. Do not fear to appear arrogant; in this situation this is much better than appearing simpleminded, panicky, or shy. Don't act the beautiful naive (if you are, don't let out). Make believe that it is your daily bread to frequent the big world. Once public appearances on your own do truly not bother you anymore, you can of course stop the show. But until that happens, it is advisable to erect a facade. Advantages when alone [extract] […] It is not a good basis for an independent life to constantly focus on another person, to worry about him, to be afraid of losing him. Let me tell you a little more about myself in order to clarify what I mean. Four weeks after I had finally been able to free myself from months in a ménage a trois, our parents, my three brothers and sisters with their partners and I spent a most enjoyable weekend together in a beautiful hotel in Wiesbaden. It was only at night when I went back to my single room alone that the grief about my recently ended partnership became vivid. But luckily, I have this second Britta sitting in my head who is a pragmatist and a realist and who irritably raises her eyebrows in such moments and says to her twin sister: be honest, would it really have been nicer if he had been here?! Of course, it would not. During our many table talks only one half of me would have been able to focus on my dearest and nearest, while the other half would constantly have been directed towards the man at my side. Does he enjoy himself? Does my family treat him nicely? Is he – once again – jealous of one or the other of them? Does he like the restaurant? Is the food to his liking? Would he like something else to drink? Does he think I drink too much? Has he had enough of them, would he like to go to bed now? And so on, and so on. We women are really a strange species. Not that I think we are so by nature; but decades in our society and centuries of traditions have made us into what we are and how we behave. And one important part of a typically female behavior is to direct our antennae more or less continuously towards the man at our side. If – now and again – we assert our right not to do so, he feels insulted – which one can hardly blame him for because he does not know anything else. Because naturally, the same society with the same traditions has at the same time made men into a different, but equally strange species. Just as we have been taught to direct our antennae towards other people and to feel responsible for the general social success of whatever get-together, so the opposite sex was brought up to mainly look after themselves, with the result that women usually have to fight with the effects of this education for the rest of their lives. I know, of course, that in those times when you still called some man your own you had managed to catch an exception to the rule. We all – each and every one of us – has grabbed such an exception – there can be no doubt about this! If we did not all believe this, then the whole (gendered) system would not function. Even so, I am still waiting for the mathematician (preferably female, but unfortunately there are so few) who explains to me how it is – purely mathematically – possible that we all know that the coexistence with men is pretty difficult as a general rule, but that in particular not one of us has such a general specimen at home. Age and myth [extract] […] In a book tellingly subtitled Young women past 50 I found the following: "A person can only be sophisticated if she owns up to her own truths and mistakes with pride and in style, if –proud and a little bored – she enjoys the feeling of not having to prove anything anymore." The author, Konrad Heidkamp, exclusively means women, by the way. These women, he continues, seem to have remained "amazingly true to themselves", while male contemporaries "are prone to become conservative and conventional and to give up the ideals of their youth." While I would agree to his positive evaluation of not having to prove anything to anybody, I am not so sure about remaining true to oneself. Not having to prove anything – neither to ourselves nor to others – this could be the crucial quintessence of growing old in a positive sense. I am also, as I have already observed, all for remaining true to oneself. But it is not my impression that we women in midlife have remained amazingly true to ourselves, but rather that it is only now that we find ourselves. In all those years in which in deed and in thought we mainly cared for other people we hardly had the opportunity to remain true to ourselves. We would hardly have known to whom or to what we should have been true. To remain true to oneself presupposes that we know who we are. This, it seems to me, is another central, positive point about growing old. We are now ready to know ourselves; we have finally found ourselves – and thus we can now remain true to ourselves at last. Do you now see why I would call most of the notions connected with growing older myths? Because they are not true. It is not negative not to want to do this or the other anymore. It is doubtlessly going to be difficult once we will be so old that we will be unable to do this or that anymore. But these days we still substitute what is lost for numerous positive things. Growing older we also seem increasingly able to register positive events as such. A team of researchers at two renowned universities in California inform us that elderly people are in general more emotionally content than young ones. This contentment arises not least due to a modification of conceptions from which follows that positive events and sentiments are realised and kept in mind faster and better than negative ones. The team sees this in connection with a general modification of priorities and aims late in life. The film producer Gerd Bauer, aged 69, puts it beautifully into these words: "At 50 you have arrived in the present. […] Formerly you lived in the future […]. And one has to be careful not to drop into the past. This time is the most exciting in life." A wonderful example for the wrong assumptions that we all have about age when we are still young presents the following anecdote. The great English poet Christine Rossetti disappointed the prejudices of a young admirer of hers in the 19th century. The young woman expected the famous writer to be the embodiment of romantic melancholy. In reply to her remark the 54-year-old Rossetti answered: "I was a very melancholy young girl; but now I am a very cheerful old woman." Solidarity among women [extract] When women help women they help themselves. Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Solidarity among women? What does that have to do with the theme of this book? Very, very much – because I am convinced that the well-being of our soul necessarily presupposes the reconciliation with our sex. Reconciliation? Are we, then, each other's enemy? Yes, unfortunately. Many, far too many women suspiciously regard each other as potential competitors and behave accordingly. They expect from other women nothing but envy, ill-will, intrigues, maliciousness. They believe women in general to be as bad as mares fighting for a stallion, an image which horrifies me. Among horses this behaviour may make sense for diverse reasons, among women I find it totally out of the question. I would like to stress an important aspect of this: women who come up with this image of fighting mares – or with similar images – invariably mean other women only. I have never yet met a woman who was so honest to herself as to admit that she was one of such a kind. These women do not realise that – with an attitude like this – they might in fact be the reason for which another woman encounters them as unpleasantly as expected. They seem never to have heard about a self-fulfilling prophecy. But why do so many women share the conviction that women do not get along with each other? On the one hand, in former times fighting for a husband with all possible means may indeed have been justified. In a society in which women were financially and socially dependent on a husband they may not have had other choices. But as in the modern western world this is no more the case, this cannot be a justification for an unpleasant behaviour towards other women any longer. The second reason seems to be more of a psychological kind and therefore it is more difficult to leave behind. We have been divided according to the system: divide and rule – and to our eternal shame it has to be said: it worked. Quite often it still works. Formerly, the saintly woman was set against the whore, or the beauty against the plain woman. These days the choice of apparently unbridgeable opposites which keep us apart has grown, a fact which in no way mitigates the problem. Today there is the wife against the single woman, the mother against the one without child, the working woman against the housewife, the young against the old, or the woman who has been to a 'beauty' surgeon against all those who refuse to let anybody muddle with nature. I hold it to be extremely important to understand the mechanism behind these divisions. Think for a moment what an incredible power we women would be if we were united! 52% of the world's population are female. We would be the majority! Everywhere and always. I too would be frightened, if I were male. I too would ponder which mechanism could work to hinder this incredible power to unite – because there is indeed strength in unity. Friends [extract] […] A woman friend of mine, who has been living in a partnership with a man for years in two separate apartments, believes that women need four men: one for the intellect, one for culture, one for sex, and one for love. I do not agree with her at all because I see no reason why all these fields could not be shared as well – often better – with women. Women are clearly predetermined for good talks, and they are generally more interested in cultural events than men. With regard to sex among women I must admit that I know nothing about it, but I see no reason to doubt that it can be fulfilling. At a time in my life in which I experienced the partnership with a man as particularly burdensome, I very much regretted not to have a lesbian disposition, in the sense that I do not feel sexually attracted to women. Meanwhile –having grown more mature through experience and contemplation – I have my doubts whether we human beings are really predestined by nature in only one direction at all; whether we are not really bisexual at birth and only socialisation then makes most of us tend towards one sex only. Before close contact with lesbian women in my forties, I would not have dared think about the question whether a woman necessarily has to share her bed with a man. A few years, experiences and thoughts later I doubt whether a woman should share her bed with anybody. Finally, this friend of mine finds that a woman needs a man for love, and again I do not agree. It is high time to use the term 'love' in a wider sense than for the narrow and restricting sentiment within a partnership of two. At least we should admit that there are – and should be – several different kinds of love. Within our culture we find it normal to love one's partner, one's parents and grandparents, one's siblings and children. The love for animals is also widely accepted. Jesus Christ went as far as expecting from us to love our neighbour. So clearly, what we mean by 'love' can be quite different. I do not think that Christ meant that our love for different people should always be of exactly the same nature. Love for animals for example, even if not necessarily weaker, still has a different nature than the one for relatives. However, it is not customary to call the intensive connection that we feel with our women friends love. But if we accept that there are different kinds of love, then we could indeed call the deep feeling for our women friends love. And then – to come back to the contention of my friend that a woman needs four men – then it would become clear that love too could be fulfilled by several people. Sexuality [extract] […] Another solution to the problem – having a sex life without a permanent partner at hand –would, in theory, be constantly changing partners. I say 'in theory', not because I hold this to be a moral problem, but a practical one. Whereas on the one hand it is truly liberating not to be continuously regarded as a potential sexual object anymore, on the other hand this same fact inevitably constitutes a difficulty for the woman looking for such an object herself. An obvious solution would be to pay a man for his services. I imagine this to be wonderfully uncomplicated. I could stop having to make believe that I find everything arousing when in fact this is not the case. Above all, I would not have to let myself be persuaded to make love at times, in locations and in ways which I do not fancy at that moment. Not only would I not have to fake desire to this man whom I would pay for his services, I could also after, say, 20 minutes simply remark: thank you, I have had enough, here is your money, farewell. I could disregard completely whether he liked my performance or whether he enjoyed himself. I would not even have to wait until the proverbial cigarette afterwards. Particularly desirable seems to me the total absence of emotional entanglement. I solely failed to test all of this practically because of my stinginess – not because of my intent, my morality, or my courage – honestly! Those web sites that made a respectable impression (if 'respectable' is the right word in this context), were far too expensive; and those that were not too expensive were so unsavoury that my desire vanished in the haze. By the way of vanishing desire: I do not want to withhold from you the advice of a gay friend of mine which he gave me when I admitted to him that my desire often vanished even with the most attractive of men in the moment he opened his mouth. "But, Britta!" cried my friend visibly dumbfounded, "You mustn't let him talk!" Even though I completely understand that the advice is factually sound, I do seem to lack the socialisation which would allow me to see sex as what it really is: sex, that is – no more, no less, and especially: nothing else. Menopause [extract] […] Nature has arranged things in a way that all the changes in our lives coincide with the changes in our body. For this reason it is so easy to lay all the blame for our physical troubles on the menopause. It is the menopause which causes us headaches in more than just the physical sense, not the fact that the children suddenly left home, and we find ourselves back in a relationship with our partner as intimate as we have not had for many years. It is the menopause – not the fact that we are forced to look for a new purpose in life, or at least for something sensible with which to fill the unknown amount of time that the empty nest has given us. It is the menopause – not the fact that youth and beauty are gone; not that – as a result of these changes – we have to struggle for a new self-image. But all of these changes would have caused the same problems if we were not in the menopause. It needs time and inventiveness to solve them. Solutions of such an essential nature do not grow on trees. Thus, we would also have to fight with sleeplessness if our body were not in a phase of readjustment. Let me give you a wonderful example for the mechanism that holds menopause responsible for all kinds of things. At Yale University a research team led by Becca Shansky looked more closely at the well-known phenomenon that women are more depressed than men. They found that one has to look at this in a more discerning way because women are only more depressed than men after puberty and stop being so at the beginning of menopause. The researchers believe this to be a result of oestrogen, meaning that women carry less oestrogen before puberty and after menopause than in the time between these two dates. However, I would suggest leaving biology out of this and looking at it from a psychological viewpoint instead. Before puberty and after menopause women in our society are not yet respectively no more reduced to the female role of wife, mother, and sexual object. In these years they still have respectively have again the freedom to determine their lives beyond these boundaries. Thus, I do not find it surprising that in these years they are not more depressed than men. To abandon and to be abandoned [extract] […] Since my own painful experience, one aspect of solidarity with other women has been not to go into bed with other women's men under any circumstances. The men of my women friends have of course always been taboo, but since then the taboo concerns all men in partnerships. A woman friend of mine found this determination to be very hard on me. I do not agree to this. From quite early on it is easy to find out whether the man in question is in a relationship with another woman. I would only have to ask him, for instance. And should he affirm this or – what is more likely – start verbally to stagger, then I pay my coffee and leave. As long as I have not given my libido a chance to completely befog me, this is a relatively harmless procedure that can easily be achieved. Perhaps this is the right moment to tell you about my most impressive smoke machine. You surely know these machines from the theatre, the opera or the musical, machines which can produce fog. When something within me begins to be strongly interested in a man this machine is automatically set in motion. It produces excellent, dense fog. At the same time the floodlights of my lighting technology reach its peak: they immerse the fog into a beautiful, bright pink. In the midst of this magnificent fog the man stands on a pedestal on which I have put him. It is impossible to see much of him through the pink fog. After two or three hours in the theatre (equalling two or three years in life) the energy of my smoke and lighting machines is exhausted and both come to a standstill. Slowly, slowly the fog falls to the ground and the man on the pedestal becomes visible. To my utter disappointment he is naked – like the emperor in the fairytale. Neither is he an emperor anymore. Not even to me. As long as I flee the scene before my magnificent stage technique sets into motion this is not difficult to achieve, as I know from experience. But when I start once again to deem this one to surely be Mr. Right (I do not even remember how often I already believed this; I should have kept count), then self-control stands no chance. With regard to yourself and to other people who might suffer from what you do I would like to suggest that you too throw a sharp eye on your technique of self-delusion. Although it is true, as not only Buddhists say, that the world is full of sorrow, it would not be quite as full of it if we all tried more seriously to better ourselves rather than trying to better others, to come back to Nehru. Women need new men… [extract] […] Let me tell you some anecdotes about the time I spent looking for a man through ads. For one thing, you may be able to learn something, for the other you may simply enjoy it. I did not like his half-page letter right from the start. But I told myself that I could not judge and reject another person so quickly – particularly not in such a situation. My antipathy against the man augmented in a three-minute telephone conversation, but again I told myself that I could not… When we met for the first and only time my feelings proved true within minutes: a braggart. In sum, I would like to encourage you to rely on your first impression. Another man (in his late fifties) wrote me a warm, kind, long letter which heartily revived my trust in humankind (here in its specifically male execution). But after my equally warm reply plus a photo he insisted that he could only find his life's happiness with a blonde woman. Oh no, men do not even become smart in advanced age! Even then, they have not yet understood what women know at 30: it is not the outward show that makes us happy. A particularly nice candidate talked to me on the telephone for endless weeks without being able to overcome the one-hour car drive that separated us in person. I will hardly give somebody who is unable to organise his own life the chance to mess up mine as well. Another was 10 minutes late for the date – I find this behavior most disrespectful and it disqualifies the candidate once and for all. Another was looking for a biker's chick – I found no ambition in me so late in life for this. Another wished for a woman to fill the empty time after retirement for him – I have no patience with people who do not know what to do with their lives. Next, I found it very strange that a man mentioned his treatment with male hormones over the first cup of coffee. Saying goodbye he tried to kiss me – no thank you! Finally, I – luckily! – found out before the first intended sexual intimacy that he regularly shaves himself you know where. Naturally, he is free to do as he likes, but I am turned off rather than turned on by this. As you can see, humour helps. To finish this chapter off I would like to give you some advice on how to get rid of a man who turns out not to be what you were looking for. Our socialisation as a well-brought-up woman leaves us with the problem how to gracefully bring a date to its premature end. Simply hint that you find sex totally unimportant. This usually leads to the desired effect immediately! If not (which I would find surprising) add that you do not really want to have any sex anymore. Believe me, the man will hastily bring your date to an end – and you have not had to be impolite. So, if you do not take the whole thing too personally, but if you see it as a widening of your horizon in general and about the male species in particular; if you do not see it as the opportunity to finally find Mr. Right, then this is a good starting point. As there is no such thing as Mr. Right anyhow – at least not on Earth – you will not find him by an ad either. As I always say: you would have to bake him yourself – and although I have meanwhile learned baking, this will not succeed. … no, they do not [extract] […] Shortly before this, a dream had already shown me the way. Without my therapist, though, I would not even have realised it. In this dream a big buffalo lay in a ditch, which partly covered him. The buffalo had the rich color of chocolate, and so had the whole landscape around him. The ditch was in a valley, enclosed on both sides by bare brown mountains. I nimbly ran along the valley looking towards a promising but barely visible distance. Moving along, I had to cross the ditch with the buffalo, and as the two were too wide for a leap I softly ran across the buffalo with my feet. I was appalled at myself: how could I tread on an animal, even if softly?! In real life I would never ever have done so! At this point, the therapist told me once again that I should not take dreams so literally. He had understood immediately that the buffalo symbolised men lying on the ground, whom I now left behind me in order to reach new shores. I liked the image very much. The warm, satiated brown, the enticing distance, my perceptible alacrity. But also the beautiful, big buffalo and the carefulness with which I ran across him. My feelings for him were tender, positive, compassionate. But nothing detained me. I did not want to linger, not to stay, not to help him up, not to take him with me. Unmistakably, I ran across him into my own life. |
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