How is a Pickmeisha made?

Maisiebr · 2020-04-06T16:36:25+00:00

Childhood trauma, bullying, a first relationship where I was naive and he was a shitty, sneaky kind of nice guy.

TheCrownisheavy · 2020-04-06T16:54:30+00:00

Honestly, in my middle eastern culture we were taught that a man just arrives to the party... you know, brings his below- average self and that's enough... but i better be pretty, young af, thin, curvy, well-mannered, light-skinned, bubbly but passive, cook, clean etc... so it created this "pick me" culture, where all these shitty-man- baby's think a women's sole purpose on earth is for their pleasure and convenience, and all the women are desperately trying to fit their narrative.

I'm new to reddit and FDS, I am so happy to find a bunch of ladies who are on the same wave-length as me. Wow.

I am sick and tired of this fake empowerment of twerking and showing your private parts and calling it freedom. UGH. But we are stronger together, we need to try and educate these pickmeishas.

penelopekitty · 2020-04-06T18:16:17+00:00

It's our entire culture. You need to have innate self esteem and excellent critical thinking skills to escape being a pickmeisha on your own.

Some women learn to be queens early, for others it can take a lifetime. Some, sad to say, never learn. Handmaidens and pickmes until the end.

WildTenderness · 2020-04-06T16:49:30+00:00

Having parents with a bad relationship, and not having any other (good) relationship models.

I think a lack of experience and knowledge in regards to relationships is where pickmeisha tendencies stem from. If you know how you're supposed to be treated, then why would you put up with anything less?

ghygdryhchmmmmjj · 2020-04-06T19:37:25+00:00

Emotional innocence. Pure and simple. I had a very good life and sweet supportive friends and family. I thought if a man went out his way to act like he loved me he did. That made me easy fodder for a sociopath. The Narcissistic abuse cycle produces trauma bonding and manufactured desperation. I was a HVM who was turned into a pick me by emotional abuse. I clawed my way back to the strong emotionally independentwoman I used to be, but now years later and I'm less physically attractive and have no libido. Crazy. Im just done. I was just innocent and thought everyone had some good in them and it could be pulled out. This is false. Not all abusers are "just broken" there is something called inverted social reward where certain people get a dopamine rush from the suffering of others, the same way the rest of us get a rush by lifting some one up.there are no complex reasons behind it. Some of it genetic, some nurture. They just love hurting others, it's how thier brains are wired. Not all of them suffer because of it. Some of them love that they can get away with being cruel and rewarded for it constantly. There is no fixing that. Coming to terms with the idea that some people's brains are physically wired differently was a mind F like no other. I had to become a whole different person to adjust to the world as I now understood it. I lost my emotional innocence but not my sense of wanting justice. When I see people acting low value to men or women I get angry. I'm not ok with sociopathic behavior from anyone. I refuse to use anyone. That includes men , yes. So I'm happy single, it finally lines up with my values. I was an FDS approved teenager and by the time I was 27 I'd been pulled all the way down to pick me hell. In my personal life I dont talk about it. I'm not a victim, I'm a former victim. But online I vent it all out. The thing is, with no contact to the abuser, some trauma therapy, and some good fds principles you can get yourself back. I really did think there was good in everyone. I did think everyone was worth saving. I was wrong.

airhostess_inthe60s · 2020-04-06T16:54:00+00:00

For me it was:

Demeaning, overly critical narc mother,
Emotionally absent father,
"Unconventional" body type (ie. Fat) that led to bullying and disdain from others,
Low self esteem and no sense of self worth.

This was the perfect recipe to get a people pleaser that would chase the elusive male attention and validation I never got growing up.

persephones_torch · 2020-04-06T17:09:47+00:00

Pickmeisha mother. Religious upbringing. Bullying. Insecurities. Patriarchal society.

ladysteps · 2020-04-06T17:57:48+00:00

Constant rejection and loneliness. Being told you're not pretty enough for commitment. Low self esteem that feels impossible to overcome. Those are my reasons, anyway

Fatt3stAveng3r · 2020-04-06T17:09:23+00:00

Lack of good role models, abuse, pop culture/rape culture.

IrritatedMango · 2020-04-06T18:06:52+00:00

My ex best friend is one of the biggest pickmes I've ever met and in comparison to me she's had a very charmed life; rich parents, never had to worry about hitting their overdraft limit and wondering how to eat for the next few weeks and all that. I think because she's constantly had people do things and pay for her her whole life she's got low self esteem and hates the idea of being alone. That kind of attitude really came out when she got a boyfriend and she chose to stick with him when he's such a LVM.

Shame really. If she wasn't such a two faced, shitty person I'd actually feel sorry for her. But I don't.

Edit- Also wanted to say, I grew up in a culture where it's standard for women to be subservient to men. Multiple times when I was a teenager, when I rebelled against it and it became obvious I was a fireball, they basically knocked down my self esteem. Luckily it's coming back now.

TheOGJammies · 2020-04-06T16:45:00+00:00

Religion, familial instability, “sex positive” culture, Pornography, promotion of sex work as empowering, capitalism creating insecurities in women to sell products, pretty much anything coming out of Hollywood made by a male, denial of sex based differences, fairytales, etc.

So basically TradCons and Male Misogynists built our culture and LibFems go along with it to be cool with no critical analysis.

ninetiesbaby16 · 2020-04-06T20:26:03+00:00

For me it was being raised by a mother who was very unhappy in her marriage, and seeing her unloved by my dad. I never saw any evidence that my dad cared for her, no kind words or affection was ever witnessed. Also my dad was emotionally distant and sporadically abusive, any time I wanted any attention from him I was told to go away. Yet he lavished attention on one of my siblings (the one who looked most like him), and my female cousins who were pretty, so I think I learned that in order to receive love I had to look a certain way.

Also intense bullying from boys at school because of the way I looked. I still deep down feel that male love is solely determined by how beautiful you are.

I’ve had pick me moments but was more avoidant of relationships than anything. I think I was never a full blown pick me because if male love is based on visuals, and I’m not pretty, than there is nothing I can do to make up for it and win their love, so there’s no point trying. Also if if romantic love is based on looks, than it can’t really add much value and it’s not something to strive for.

In general I think pickmeisha’s are created in unhappy marriages where the wife is taken for granted, the father is useless and ignores his children, and where they are taught that marriage is the highest calling for women.

I also think little girls are raised to have poor boundaries and are aggressively introduced to the concept of empathy and theory of mind when they’re way too young, before the requisite psychological scaffolding is in place. So the message gets twisted from “others are just as important as me” to “others are more important than me”. They’re told “how would you feel if that was done to you” when they’re barely sentient, before they’ve properly established that they are a conscious entity and are valuable too, if that makes sense.

Sewud · 2020-04-06T19:24:14+00:00

I come from an egalitarian culture where moms earned as much as if not more than dads. Well, in my experience, in this egalitarian culture, sex is expected from day one (actually from before day one) and dates are expected to be free or paid separately. The only "upside" is that there's not much slut-shaming around here, there's like no taboo about having sex at all, but sex is just rampant and a given for everyone.

I wonder if that was the price we had to pay to be equal? Like we had to relinquish abundant premarital sex to all men for them to accept us being equal? Because every time men feel like women are withholding sex, they go back to saying women should have less rights and freedom, so that they would depend on men and offer them sex. It's like men use inequality to control access to sex, so they can only accept equality if it comes with increased access to sex.

daffodilhill · 2020-04-07T03:52:09+00:00

Men weren't interested in me in high school or college and society taught me that having a boyfriend was the greatest thing ever. I really wanted to be loved, so I took on the pickmeisha traits. Then I realized guys will just use you for sex and nothing else and my bubble was burst.

ForevaBubbles · 2020-04-06T20:16:33+00:00

Childhood abuse and neglect. How can you tell if someone else is treating you horrible if you were only treated horribly by your parents and also have never seen a healthy relationship? I stayed in my first serious relationship way too long and way too unhappy just because he "loved" me but that was stupid and if he really cared about me then it wouldn't have been all about him all the time.

ethnicallyabiguous · 2020-04-06T20:39:11+00:00

My father was around, and even emotionally caring for me, but he did not support my mother in any practical way. My mother did everything, and by virtue of that I learned that I need to do everything for a man. It was a sad existence that left me depleted and begging for crumbs of time. I’ve been on the FDS journey for a while now and am so happy to have found you ladies.

ErikaNaumann · 2020-04-07T02:17:12+00:00

Childhood trauma.

Meccha_me_2 · 2020-04-07T15:42:35+00:00

I see two common patterns:

1) Women are practically doomed to having low standards if they grow up around shitty or abusive men.

My dad was extremely emotionally and sometimes physically abusive growing up. My mom always reminded me that it wasn’t ok and that i deserved better and I did internalize that but the sad thing is, a lot of things can be considered “better” than a blatantly abusive man.

As a result, the bar for any man I dated was practically in hell because as long as he wasn’t calling me stupid for losing a pencil, physically intimidating me for talking, or wrapping his hands around my throat because I coughed too loudly I assumed I’d found a decent man. You can imagine someone like me never originally thought to dump my first boyfriend who made me do all of his emotional labor daily, but never supported or listened to me. He would outwardly tell me he was incapable of being happy for me because his life wasn’t going as planned. Not to mention he never cared about my interests. But he wasn’t hitting me or cheating on me, so I thought it was ok.

2) women who aren’t adjacent to the universal beauty standard are also kind of doomed to be pickmes at first. If you aren’t the ideal type, you’re less likely to get approached and also less likely to be invested in by a man. The less attention you get the more you assume that you’re the problem. This causes women to lower their standards and start chasing men.

The standards in the US are changing but a lot of polls show women like Mika Kunis and Emma Watson topping lists of the most attractive women. This is why I think I’ve seen the behavior most in some darker skinned women I know as well as curvier/bigger women. The reality is as a black woman, I know it really doesn’t matter how objectively beautiful and high value I am. If I don’t resemble a man’s type, he won’t want to put a ring on it and the reality is black women are rarely a man’s type . The difference between me and a pickme is that i would rather stay single and be ignored by men forever than lower my standards or settle for someone less attractive than me.

gigi_chi · 2020-04-06T16:58:14+00:00

Her mom. Children learn best by example.

sadpourtoujours · 2020-04-06T22:30:34+00:00

Craving and prizing male validation. Inability to validate yourself. Insecurity, low self-esteem, internalized misogyny.

2020-04-07T23:24:10+00:00

I used to be one. It took bullying, parental neglect, abuse and human trafficking. Unfortunately people pushed me too far and I became a rather violent force for a while. I'm better now but all of my fucks are gone for the wrong reasons

Radtron3000 · 2020-04-07T09:21:31+00:00

Absent mother, emotionally absent father, various traumas, etc believing all my life that there is one person for me that would understand and accept me. Thinking almost every man that I romantically view is the one - a persistent need to be loved since I hardly ever felt loved as a child.

Now I'm just getting to the point where I'm very much content being alone.

grimreapersdtr · 2020-04-08T01:33:49+00:00

You're born as either a band-aid baby, or your parents wanted a son. Once people realize you will be born a girl, relatives and friends alike will tell the parents how sorry they are for them. In the rare instances where people don't display horror and sorrow over your sex, what they really want is "an oldest daughter who can help me watch our other babies, cook and clean for us for free and take care of us when we're old!"

(EDIT: Got personal in this rant at this point)

Once you're born, your value is inherently tied to how beautiful and obedient you are, and how well your parents can live through you and use you as an object of amusement, or as a therapy animal. Being messy, having childlike needs, saying "no" are all deemed as "bad girl behavior". "Bad" girls don't get love. Their parents reject them, and allow their siblings to bully and bad-mouth them into submission and compliance.

Mom will browbeat you into "behave like a LADY" which entails sitting quietly like a baby doll as she picks out what clothes she wants her living dolly-girl to dress up in. She will get pissy if you don't want to play with dolls the way she did. She will get pissy if you make a mess. She will make fun of how big your feet are, how curly your hair is, how you're eyes are "ugly brown instead of pretty blue like your big sisters!", how chubby your belly is-- and point out these flaws to your other family members, who will proceed to harass and "tease" you over these flaws for the rest of your life. Your father, who thinks you're worthless and useless because you're female, will also berate your appearance AND constantly criticize the way you speak and laugh until you simply stop speaking and laughing. Then you will be called a "social retard" for not speaking and laughing. Since you don't get straight As like "good girls do", you are told you are "stupid" and that "you'll have to marry a rich man some day! You're just not that bright!"

When your traumatized self gets bullied at school, your parents will tell you "you must have deserved it!". Hell, your mom and dad are too distracted to notice you haven't bathed in three weeks as it is. Your teachers know your parents live in the nice side of town, so surely they say nothing, and surely nothing is wrong! If your siblings bully you, they will get away with it every time.

You withdraw into yourself, and fall into the pattern of seeking escape through entertainment aimed at girls and women-- romance novels, fairy tales. "Someday my prince will come!"

You go through puberty. Your parents degrade and humiliate you further, as "periods are filthy!" and "now she'll be a little sl_t chasing the boys!" They laugh at your expense, because there is so much pleasure in ridiculing and humiliating 11 year old girls. You're taught to think you are disgusting and inherently flawed as a human being.
You develop an attraction to men as most girls going through puberty eventually do. You know your parents will never help you succeed as an adult in life, and you know that financial support is necessary for most young adults to succeed at school and become wealthy themselves. Rich kids who's parent's love them get to do all those extracurricular activities that cost money and involve time. You're not one of those loved children, even if your parents have the money. You're just trash. Five out of five, nobody wanted you around anyway. Mommy needed a baby to soothe her emotional problems. Daddy was just happy his old saggy balls still worked, but he didn't give a $hit, either. They wanted you to entertain them, make them feel young, and impress them- but you weren't pretty enough, you weren't smart enough, you couldn't grow up fast enough to keep up with the big kids, nor could you keep yourself a baby long enough to make your premenopausal mother happy. Then your mom goes on a religious born-again kick-- right at the height of toxic "purity culture" in the 90s. Nice.

So you withdraw further, fantasizing about a man rescuing you from your abusive environment... of course, you don't recognize it as abusive at that time... even when your father literally abuses your mother right in front of your face every day with emotional mind-f*ckery and financial manipulation. No. You have been groomed to think by your father and older siblings that not only did your MOM "deserve what she got" but that YOU deserved all the bullying, neglect and abuse you got. "There must be something wrong with me!" you recognize. I must straighten my hair! I must lose weight! I must be too fat! I must be too loud! I'm just not cool enough! You don't bother planning your future, because your father, who deemed you as "too emotionally immature to make decisions" will insist on making all of the major decisions in your life in terms of which college you go to, making you live at home, and will pick your major-- which turns out to be useless in the time you graduate. Modern forms of student loans rely on parental signatures and parental consent. You, as a Useless Female who was Too Dumb to Get a Scholarship (yet-- for some reason, parents refused to allow you to join the very extracurriculars that would have helped you win a scholarship), will never have the final say in terms of your educational future. Daddy will make the decisions, mommy says.

Maybe Prince Charming will save me!

Then, once you get a brief chance at talking boys without your hovering, smothering, control-freak parents boring eyes into the back of your head, you find a guy that "seems Okay".

"He's not as bad as Al Bundy or as bad as Homer Simpson! And I'm so UGLY and STUPID that this guy is as good as I'll ever get!"
You know the rest.

Title	How is a Pickmeisha made?
Author	jadedilla
Upvotes	66
Comments	44
Date	April 6, 2020 4:24 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/fw1q1u/how_is_a_pickmeisha_made/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/how-is-a-pickmeisha-made.678861 https://theredarchive.com/post/678861

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