I had my heart broken a little today.
Most of the girls I work with are pretty young, like 19-21. In my opinion that should be the youngest we recruit, but it seems to be where my store manager likes it.
Some of the girls come off and on for a season and I got to meet one of them today, and we got to talking – well, I got to talking about my “new” boyfriend who isn't so new anymore because it's been what like 7 months now? Love you babe :*
Anyway she said 7 months isn't that new, and I was saying well it feels new, my last relationship was a bunch of years. She's like whoa! I'm like yeah but this is much nicer. She's like I wish I was doing good in that department – I travel so much my only options are open relationships at this point.
She went on to say most of her friends encouraged her to just have meaningless sex and to hell with it all, but she doesn't like that idea. I can't see why she would.
I started to feel sort of bad for her until she started talking about a friend of hers who likes going to this socialist bar in Paris. Who gives out stickers for laptops, marxist stickers. She's going on about how “Hell yeah, yes please, communist meeting? Yep!” Then I felt really bad for her.
She was casually throwing around excited exclamations in favor of a doctrine that was responsible for the mass murder of millions across Stalin's Russia and Mao's China during the 1900s.
A couple minutes later though she mocked a friend of hers who tended to claim that the Patriarchy was responsible for everything.
But something that really hit me hard was when I talked about my marriage, and how it died, and how I'm just now starting to realize and accept and work on the areas where I contributed to its demise. Even thought my ex was the instigator and the perpetrator and the violent one, maybe I didn't do everything I could have to help him.
That's hard to bear, and for her it was too unimaginable a state of mind.
She told me I was blaming myself for something someone else did, that it seems like I don't know how to separate the two people.
I said I don't. You're not supposed to when you're married. There are responsibilities to be taken on. Marriage isn't just a fun loving thing. You sacrifice a lot. You take on the burden of two. It was my responsibility to do everything in my power to help him through everything he struggled with.
I did do everything in my power, but my power wasn't enough for both of us, and he didn't do everything he could at all.
I just don't feel irresponsible. I know that there are two people in every fight. I see things I could have done better.
No, I'm not plagued by guilt in any sense. My conscience is clear because at the time I did all I knew how, and only now am I seeing things I didn't know – mostly because I have a man in my life now who is helping me learn and grow (love you babe :*).
We started talking about how she had met a boy overseas and slept with him, and it was great and they agreed to see each other again, but a few weeks before they were going to meet up, he told her he was sleeping with someone else.
And she was hurt. Because she didn't know the rules anymore, because there are no rules anymore. No one is holding men to any standards. No one is holding anyone to any standards, and girls are so confused.
We think we've freed women to do what they like, but we've only made it easier for men to get off the hook when they smash and dash, so to speak. What are you so upset about? We weren't together. We weren't even dating. I thought it was just fun.
That's all we wanted, back in the day, yeah? Fun.
Now there's too much fun and no one can have good solid relationships anymore.
It broke my heart a little, listening to her talk. She doesn't know the rules because there aren't any anymore. Now boys can do whatever they like and they can just call us crazy for wondering what the rules are.