There’s a dichotomy in some people that is just so glaringly obvious sometimes that I can’t help but wonder why others don’t see it. Oh I have a good idea why it is not seem. Typically, those who cannot see beneath the overtly friendly surface of these people to the true ugliness underneath don’t want to see it because they have an emotional connection to this person. Inevitably, like a battered spouse, those who cannot see the ugly person for what they are will get hurt, rationalize it, explain it away, and then find themselves being set up over and over again. The pattern is so rarely broken.
Sometimes it is better to be the outsider. The one with no investment in the outcome of any interaction with these ugly people. It is much easier to see their motivations. To see the mask they wear that covers the underlying narcissist.
Such is the case with an older woman I was introduced to by the LTR. This particular women is in her mid 50′s. She came of age in the late 60′s and early 70′s and as such was steeped in free love and feminism. Both of which she embraced whole heartedly from the time she was a teenager. Seeing a 50-something woman spout grrl power and other hackneyed phrases really just comes across as sad and pathetic. That her life has so obviously shown that lie in those statements is ironic. That the other women she associates with don’t see it that way makes it all the more humorous to me.
Upon graduating from high school, Laura moved out into the working world. The drinking age at the time was 18 or 19 in the state she lived in and from what I can tell she was probably a bit of a party girl. By the time she was 20 she found herself pregnant. Abortion was newly legal, but she chose to keep the baby and to marry the father. Their first child was a daughter. Life was tough, the economy sucked, but they were making things work. A couple of years later daughter number two arrived. At this point Laura felt that she was missing out on all the vague things that life had to offer. She felt she was destined for greater things. With a daughter of roughly 3 years old and a newborn under the age of one, she moved out and filed for divorce.
If Laura thought things were tough before, they got tougher now. A series of not so nice boyfriends, dead end jobs, and hard times flowed forth for the trio. At times Laura lived with her two children in her car. All until she could find another man to shack up with. When her two daughter were roughly 10 and 8, she shipped them off to another state to live with their father. By now, the father had remarried and had a couple of children with his new wife. To say his two older daughters were strangers to him would be an understatement. Still he took them in and raised them. Home schooled them as they lived a long distance from any public school.
The eldest vowed to be different from her mother. In all the right ways she is different from her mother with one exception. She is an ardent feminist and her head is full of new age crap. The younger daughter is the spitting image of her mother in looks and in personality. A feminist, irresponsible, short sighted, narcissistic. As you can tell, I don’t like her much either.
Getting back to Laura. Well, she aged as all of us do. She packed on the pounds too. She found her siren call had less and less power over the men she desired until one day it had none. What to do? By the time she reached her 40′s she’d been married two or three times. She’d never held a job for longer than a couple of years. She still had dreams but by this time they appeared to be more delusion than dream.
Laura met a nice guy, never married, probably a virgin, from a well to do family, and he was smitten by her. I liked the guy the only time I met him. Without being too specific, there was a medical reason for him perpetual bachelorhood, other than that he was a solid beta male. Charming, nice, and perpetually in the LJBF category for any woman he met. Laura saw her ticket. Here was a guy willing to overlook her flabby unattractive appearance. Here was a guy who believed she could do no wrong.
Laura married him after only dating for a short time. His parents opened their arms to Laura, her daughters, and by now both of her daughters families. They were great grandparents to the daughters children. They took everyone on vacations, showed up for birthdays and made Laura’s extended family part of their extended family.
By the time Laura was approaching 50, she was morbidly obese. Health related problems due to her obesity were becoming acute. She decided she needed gastric bypass surgery and her husband was willing to pay for it. After the bypass surgery and the accompanying weight loss, Laura felt she needed plastic surgery. Excess skin to be removed, breast lift, face lift. The works. Her husband happily paid for it all.
Ah, but Laura is a restless soul, so she says. All the body reshaping left Laura thinking she could do better in the man department. A new lease on life. Time for her to pursue her dreams once again. She promptly dumped her husband and moved out. The guy was apparently devastated. Like many men, he never saw it coming.
Once again Laura had flung herself out into the harsh, cold world, and once again she was unable to stand on her own two feet. Big surprise for a woman with no job skills, no prospects, and no work ethic. What was she to do? Ah, but this is the United States, where the disadvantaged can find help from the government. She successfully convinced the government that she had a psychological disability and should receive social security payments. On top of that, she’s living in a rent free (taxpayer paid) apartment in the downtown area of a big metropolitan city.
So there she is. A woman who has squandered everything, used everyone (including her daughters) she has come in contact with. A woman who sees herself as a strong woman feminist, and yet she has never been able to support herself. A woman who always preferred the bad boy to a stable man. A woman who gets handouts to survive. A woman who I can’t help but despise.
