ConZervative

I accidentally married a Postmodernist a few years ago. Like 4 years ago.

How do you accidentally marry a Postmodernist?

Let me tell you....

Okay, so what's a Postmodernist though? The movement originated as a sort of mistrust for any ideology and any form of art, but it's moved on a lot and now it's even scarier.

Postmodernism is technically a mistrust for or a dislike of ideology, art, logic, reason, etc. Truth is not real. It's a tool of the patriarchal white man to keep the minorities in line. Basically what it sounds like to me is an anti-enlightenment movement. My marriage turned out to be just that – anti-enlightenment. Anti-growth.

There are a couple reasons that I want to talk about what happens when you let someone like that into your life; I don't want this ideology to spread. Writing about it helps me get my thoughts in order as well.

I told you guys it's been about seven months since everything ended, right? Those years were some of the most miserable in my life, and I knew one day I'd probably want to write it all down. But I'm in such a good place now that I'm having trouble remembering the million and one reasons I finally left.

For a Postmodernist, truth is subjective. That's the biggest problem, right? There's no such things as objective truth. Or, just as badly, the only truth is their truth and it doesn't matter that you have different perspectives/experiences.

I remember sitting on that couch in the marriage therapist's office one of the first days he went with me to counseling. We wanted help. He was desperate for someone to reaffirm everything he had said to me – my expectations were ridiculous, I was spoiled and incapable and there was no reason for me to be unhappy.

But I knew that wasn't what she'd say.

We were talking with her about how sometimes, if I tell him I need something, he'd tell me that my need was silly or immature and that he wouldn't do it. He'd react similarly if I told him my feelings were hurt, or tried to talk about anything serious.

She asked him if that's true. He said no. He never said anything like that.

I told her he did that a lot too – say something then deny ever saying it. If I insisted that it was something he'd said, he'd accuse me of trying to put words in his mouth or bring up the past.

But the fact that he couldn't keep his cool in that room told her what she needed to know. He made stuff up on the spot. Rules, guidelines, things he's now allowed to yell at me about.

Anyway – we were on that couch and she was trying to explain to him that I'm allowed to have feelings he doesn't understand, and that it's his job to help me through them or at least be a good listener. He was telling her it's impossible for him to listen to things he doesn't understand, and he doesn't care about my feelings if he doesn't understand them. She asked him if he meant that he genuinely didn't care about my feelings if he couldn't comprehend them. He said yes.

She tried talking him through differing perspectives. It didn't take. She would instruct me to bring up an example of a conversation – so, I had asked him to do something, he'd said no problem, and then hadn't done it. I'd bring that up to him and he'd start screaming, usually. In marriage counseling it took longer for him to start screaming though.

He couldn't get it. We explored the option of Autism to explain the erratic, sometimes violent behavior he would exhibit when met with emotions/feelings he claimed not to be able to understand. That wasn't it, although he was genuinely worried for a while.

Here's the thing. After his screaming fits, he'd settle down and kind of look around the room a while. I never could tell how much of it was for dramatic effect. I thought a couple times he was putting it on, but most of the time it was real.

He'd cry the rest of the night and be extra nice the next day. He'd try to be better for a while but the next day I would still need the things I needed and he would still be unable to provide them – so when I talked about them, we fought.

When we fought, he wouldn't actually respond to things I said. If I told him something hurt my feelings, instead of actually hearing the thing I had said, he'd change the subject or talk about how I wasn't bringing it up correctly. Once I made him look the thing in the eye, he'd tell me I was bringing up the past. Because it took me at least two hours to get him to actually calm down enough to actually hear me. And by then it was in the past.

When I tried to use logic in our conversations, instead of responding with his own, he would outlaw the modes of speech I was using. Rhetorical questions were banned, yes or no questions were banned, more than one question at a time was a big no-no. Never allowed to use anyone outside the relationship in an example. Never allowed to say things like “I mean I'm a woman, I need X,Y, and Z.” Not allowed to use words like normal, common, natural (i.e, “it's common for ___ to happen”). Not allowed to talk about certain things that happened at the beginning of the relationship.

Not allowed to suggest he actually take his medicine. Not allowed to ask if he took it today. Not allowed to talk about it. Not allowed to bring up marriage counseling when we weren't in it. Not allowed to pull out the sheets she gave us for a fight we were having.

It was the epitome of “I don't need to change my behavior, you need to change how you react to it.”

I didn't know there was a word for that (besides narcissist, but that's just such a diluted, overused and often misused concept that it doesn't say what it needs to say here) until I listened to Jordan Peterson talk about Postmodernists, how they believe that there is no objective truth.

It all started to make sense.

There was a month when I tried moving back home, after I left for maybe six months. I introduced him to Peterson's work. We listened to it together, a lot. He said a lot of stuff was starting to make sense. He started doing his own research and talking to me about it.

Then I had to leave again. Then he disappeared. I had to move on knowing he wasn't done trying. At the time, it was pretty easy, but the weight of it has started to sit on my shoulders more heavily.

It is impossible to be with someone who has fallen for postmodernist doctrine. By definition they believe that all conflict resolution is meaningless because one cannot ever determine what truly happened. There is no point in conversation because there is no truth to hear or give your partner. There is no point in talking about the future because there's no way to prevent it.

It's a shell of a human, on auto-pilot, resentful of the world and lashing out at it with inaction and the refusal to take personal responsibility for their actions.

It's a monster.

I cannot do this anymore.

So I've had the flu for the past five or six days. It's just now starting to get better. I called out one day and worked the rest of it sick. I threw up in the bathroom today.

I also got my period today – my cramps are and always have been the worst pain I've ever experienced. So that's also happening.

I haven't eaten today because I didn't take a break at work because I was planning on leaving early.

Today was one of the worst days of my life.

So I've explained about the team to you guys – about how the regular sales associates are perfectly awesome young ladies and they treat me with respect, and how the keyholders have been pretty much nasty to me since I got there?

Ok not nasty. They haven't been nasty. But they've completely disregarded my authority at every opportunity. They don't say hello when they get in, they're not polite to me, they don't check in with me about decisions, they don't partner with me when something needs to get done, they literally seem to feel they have no use for me.

Part of that is probably because I don't know as much as they do.

But they're supposed to be helping train me so eventually I do know as much as they do, yeah? Like I'm supposed to ask questions and they're supposed to be great and help me.

Anyway today was really horrible. Usually, if I'm sick but I need to go to work anyway, I will do my best to take care of myself, drink lots of water and try to stay off my feet.

A sales associate called out this morning well ahead of her shift, but she called out for “a few days” due to a death in the family. I started making arrangements for someone to cover her shifts this week, and the girl I was opening with said “Oh yeah, the other keyholder texted me to say she was working on it already.”

wtf? I'm sorry, there's two things wrong here:

1. I'm the ASM. It's up to me to deal with someone calling out for more than a few shifts, and for bereavement.

2. This girl isn't even in the store. What the fuck is she doing talking to other employees about scheduling?

So I'm completely thrown off at this point. Since I heard it second hand, I decided to wait until she was in the store to say anything about it. Instead, I just reached out and started making shift changes all week.

At one point, while the girl I was working with left to help a customer, I stepped behind her station to continue her project. She ran towards me obviously huffy and said something like “No it's okay I'm going in order so I can finish it I can finish it.” I'm like what the fuck is up with these people?

Then she mysteriously disappeared behind the register for like three hours of her shift. She was on the phone with someone about the supply order, but when I asked her if something had gone wrong she said “no.” Just no.

Not “No, everything's fine,” or “No, sorry, I just needed to follow up with them about ....”

Just no.

So I walked away. I probably shouldn't have done that but I was so upset. They don't partner me in on anything.

So she stayed up there for a while, and I asked maybe an hour later what she was working on. “The retail communication just came through,” she answered, pointing at the e-mail. “I'm just printing everything.” And she was, and did. Another hour went by and she still hadn't moved.

I'm so confused.

When the shift change happened, the other girl (the one I'm actually having problems with) burst through the door. She doesn't say hello to me or acknowledge me when I say hello. She came right in and started go go going about all sorts of tasking she needed to give everyone. Completely disregarded me. When I went over to try to insert myself into the conversation, she and whoever she was talking to would head off and start doing other things.

Do I smell?

To Be Continued..... Probably

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.

It's gotten a little too non-political around here – so let's talk about harassment training! Yay!

I had mine today at work, finally, after quite a while of ADP not knowing what its job was.

I find most of what is talked about in harassment trainings to be ridiculous. I find most of what is in the laws and amendments that found the harassment training to be ridiculous. And I know that part of this is because at the end of the day, different people respond to verbal interactions differently.

But a lot of it is because you should never make laws based on how anyone feels. I feel.

No, I mean of course I understand that harassment isn't okay. I've been there, I've experienced that. No one should have to go through that from a moral perspective.

But that's as far as it goes for me, in the workforce. The government shouldn't be involved in social settings. Each company should have a right to their own policies, and at the end of the day the companies that foster the best workplace environment will retain their employees better, and turnover will shorten, and profits will go up, and loyalty will be achieved. Companies without these policies will not survive. Word will get out that that's where you go if you want creeps to follow you into the bathrooms.

Anyway. Today's training involved a self-proclaimed disabled latino-american, a self-proclaimed woman (wow), a self-proclaimed atheist black man, and a self-proclaimed transgender woman.

Lots of stuff I have a problem with here. None of which are these people's categorizations (ok, I have a problem with one of these).

I have a problem with anyone who can't find a perfectly good reason to dislike someone.

I do not have a problem with people disliking other people. You're allowed to do that. You should still be respectful of them to the extent that they are also human beings who have the same rights as you do, but no one has the legal right to your approval.

It's okay to have standards. It's okay to look down on certain types of actions. It's best if you can differentiate between a person's actions and their physical traits, but sometimes that's hard to do without a lot of experiences and data points to work into your vision.

I like how Ben Shapiro explains what a lot of people perceive to be racism these days – or at least, I like how I explain how Ben Shapiro explains it (i.e, this is a total paraphrase but it's how I understood it);

People don't commit crimes because of their skin color or other physical characteristics. People commit crimes because of a number of factors, which can loosely be defined as their culture; the circumstances of their upbringing, their economic status, their values, their education level and where it was gotten, etc.

These things often correlate with a person's physical characteristics, because people of the same physical characteristics tend to share similar culture (of course there are outliers and areas of the world where this is less true, but this is the general trend). Black women are many times more likely to be single mothers than white women, although it's not because they're black – it's usually because of the culture surrounding them and the values they ascribe to. Likewise, single mother families in the U.S are extremely likely to fall below the poverty line regardless of race. A white single mother is more likely to fall below the poverty line than a black family with two parents in the household.

But the culture of black people in the U.S is encouraging the fathers to leave their families. The governments and welfare states they tend to support (democrats) discourage two family homes by rescinding funding if there's a father in the home.

This has not happened so much with white families for many other cultural reasons, which in turn has made it less likely for children raised in white families to grow up with only one parent and therefore disadvantaged (Jordan Peterson talks a lot about the disadvantages of growing up with only one parent in the household in his many books and lectures, which I highly recommend).

So: I don't look down on people for what their physical characteristics are, but there are a lot of choices a person can make that I think are awful. I think it's awful to leave your family and your children. I think it's awful to molest kids. I think it's awful to steal.

I think it's awful to idolize casual sex.

I think lots of stuff is awful, and I think you probably do too, and I think we all know that different groups of people do different things at different rates. And sure maybe if we didn't say “Black people commit a disproportionate number of crimes” and said “People who are poor or in a single family home commit a disproportionate number of crimes” and tried to beat around the bush a bit, we could appease some of these groups.

But even among the poor, certain groups act out more than others.

Some value systems are better than others. Some are more successful. Some are wiser and bring more people through to the other side.

When I was little, like really little, I used to write a story about a girl around fifteen or sixteen who is very poor. I think I may have come up with the idea from a dream I had, which I can't remember anymore. No! I just remembered – it sprang from a book I read when I was around that age. I don't remember what it was called, but it was about a young girl living in Egypt, who was very poor but who had Sight. A sight that transcended the physical world. But she scared everyone with her dreams and prophesies, and her family blamed her for tragedies that she foretold.

She was embroiled in a scandal wherein a foreman was treating his workers poorly, but tried to pass it off on one of his employees. The town believed him and shame would have come on a good man – one of the only good men who had ever treated her with respect even though she was a young girl – and so she used her abilities to navigate the world and help him prove his foreman wrong.

From this dream came a story for me – an abstraction of the story I think, or at least pieces of the story that made sense to me. She was a young girl, and she was influenced by the kindness of an older man.

Of course at my age this is what my mind heard.

So I wrote a story about this other girl, who lived in the desert a long time ago, in a poor area. She didn't have a home, and didn't have a family or anywhere to go. A teacher had come to stay in her town and open a school there – just a school of himself. He was also poor but had a way of earning money. She would often sit outside in the school yard and listen to the lessons she heard, but she couldn't understand most of what he said. She would sometimes find pieces of parchment and try to envision the things he said and give herself aids, or draw in the dirt. The teacher noticed the strange markings that happened behind his building, but he didn't find other traces of the secret student. She was small and fast. She didn't want to be noticed, but she did. She just wasn't brave. On a day that was too hot she accidentally fell asleep in the shade of his building. When he came to check if there were more markings, he found her. He was astounded at first that his secret student was a girl, but then he was laughing. He left a notebook there for her.

She was starving. I was writing about a little girl who was famished – she needed sustenance of the mental kind. She needed connection and leadership. She expressed this by finding the nearest well of knowledge and desperately leaning in to drink, but so barely able to, she can only dip her fingers in and get a couple drops into her mouth at a time. But still doing everything she can to nurse herself back to health. She would go hungry sometimes if it meant listening to him speak. She would humiliate herself, dirty her hands and her dignity to try her best to capture his words in her thoughts. She starts to find things there where she slept, and she started sleeping there. She starting finding papers that had a drawing of a thing, and then a symbol to represent it. She started to connect the dots, she started to understand the lesson that he was trying to teach her. He sent her a page of drawings. She left the matching symbols for him to see in the mornings. She got all of them right. She studied diligently.

Side note. The word diligent means a lot more than I used to think it meant. I used to think it just meant focused. It actually means focused in the context of devotion and fidelity. It means devoted almost intimately.

One day he came outside and spoke with her. He was very tall, and intimidating, but there were smile lines about his eyes, and she liked them. She was caught between a child and – the next thing (when you're a child, you think you know what the next thing is, but you definitely don't).

I think my young mind was looking for guidance. I think I was writing about my future, or my hoped future, a time when someone would find me and show me things I couldn't comprehend yet.

I never finished the story because it has no plot. It wasn't a story at all, really. It was a manifestation of my soul and what it wanted.

ORPHAN OF THE SUN

I remembered :)

I have absorbed so much sunlight that I keep marking June in my journal instead of January.

Hello! I took a couple days to enjoy my vacation and try not to spend too much money on our spontaneous trip through parts of Disney (I failed. I failed so badly).

For the past few months on my phone I've been reading The Silmarillion to pass time – on the subway, train, plane, etc. But I've read it four times over in a row, and yesterday I decided to take a look at books I didn't have yet and maybe read something new.

Maybe a year ago I was gifted a copy of 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, but I only made it a few chapters in, partly because I had already listened to all his college tours on the subject, and partly because I was taking my time and trying to digest, but I took my time too well.

Anyway, I decided to get the digital copy. That's what I've been doing while I've been sitting in the sun the past few days, but I'm trying to read closer.

Anyway I recommend the book, or at least the college tours that are based on the book, ideally both. Especially if you're my age or younger. There's something about hearing someone affirm your fears – that life isn't about happiness, that it's suffering that you can make meaningful – that calms you down.

I wanted to talk about something Peterson emphasizes, but from the perspective of a very sheltered child: the difference between making your child safe versus strong.

My older siblings were from a different father, and they had it pretty rough in a lot of ways. My mom did her best, but things just weren't working out the way everyone wanted. One of them didn't make it, and we're sincerely blessed that the other did.

My mother's two children from her next husband (myself and my sister) were brought up very differently. Our father's family was pretty well off so we went to private schools, and my mom went overboard making sure that when we moved and started going to public schools, our teachers were 100% on board with keeping us more sheltered. Things like sex ed, health, and difficult topics were held off – more for my younger sister than for me – and brought into our lives carefully.

Our friend were screened and we weren't allowed to go see movies/watch shows that other kids in our age group were. Obnoxious cartoons and non-educational games were nopes. I was not exposed to anything risky.

This had pros and cons. On one hand, I focused a lot on school, and less on fun and games. On the other hand, I focused a lot on school, and less on fun and games.

I got good grades and the teachers liked me, but the kids didn't. Well, less they didn't like me. They just didn't notice me. I was never bullied. I was never anything'd really.

Professor Peterson talks about the fact (proven clinically, so many many times) that children who are not properly socialized by age four will forever have difficulty and have to make more effort to relate to and interact with other people. Unfortunately for me, since I went to such small schools and by the time I could talk I was already awkward, this was definitely true for me.

No matter the topic in school I never knew what to say. I hadn't seen that show, that movie, never heard of that actress; I was completely unprepared for the world as it was, and completely prepared for the world where Jesus Christ was coming soon, prepare a road, etc.

I knew from the beginning. Something had gone wrong.

Or maybe something had gone right, in a very wrong world?

I'm still trying to figure that part out.

My last post was sort of hard to write without some personal details, so I thought I'd go over my relationship status/history so you know where I'm coming from and where I plan to be headed.

I married a really awful man – you know, like you do – and stayed with him much longer than I had to because I was scared to leave and wanted my father to see that my vows meant more than my mothers had.

How do you marry a really awful man? Couldn't you tell he was awful when you met him?

Hmm. No. I couldn't tell he was anything when I met him. I was just a kid.

It started with the shouting. I don't really like people who shout or raise voices. I asked him to stop shouting when he didn't like something. He asked me to stop interrupting him when he was shouting.

That was the past 6 years for me. Because he said no, and so did I, so he yelled louder, and I did everything I could think of to make him stop.

Obviously everything was much more complicated than that, but every fight ended up about that. If he didn't like something (usually that something was that I didn't like something) he'd start yelling. When he started yelling, I begged him to stop. Then I left.

Divorce was tough for me. I planned on for life. But he'd made it clear so many times that I was the only one willing to meet him halfway.

Once, to try to fix our marriage, I showed up at his apartment randomly with all his favorite snacks, I gave him a massage, we watched his favorite show, and slept together for the first time in months. He asked what he could do for me, and I said well, I used to wish you'd hang out at cafes with me more. That's where I'm headed now – want to come with? Sure he goes, I'm right behind you.

Never showed up. It was pretty much over that day. But I dragged it out as long as I could after that.

I had been moved out for almost a year and a half when he disappeared. We had a huge fight a few days after my birthday. He vanished for two weeks.

I decided it was going to end now, and I ended it then.

When I was with him, I wasn't allowed to ask rhetorical questions, or keep my tea set on my desk, or use the wrong color towel. I wasn't allowed to talk about certain subjects or use certain kinds of logic in my discussions. I wasn't allowed to tell him I didn't like something in a certain way. I wasn't allowed to ask for sex if I didn't want a huge fight. I wasn't allowed to talk sometimes. I wasn't allowed to ask the same question twice at different times, and if I did, and the answers were different, I wasn't allowed to ask which one was the truth.

I wasn't allowed to “bring up the past” except that meant I wasn't allowed to ask his opinion on anything that hadn't happened within 5 minutes. I wasn't allowed to talk about anything we had discussed in marriage counseling.

It's been seven months now :) I met this really nice man and we've been together for most of that seven months. I didn't know this kind of life could be mine.

He doesn't mind if I keep my tea set on my desk, or if I ask rhetorical questions, or if I want to go to the same restaurant all the time. He's the kind of guy who inspires me to be better, the kind I don't really deserve but I'm going to try to.

We're moving in next month ^–^

So I'm writing all this down so you have a little more context with me, especially while I write about the relationships between men and women. Also, because the things I want out of men, as a Conservative, aren't what most girls are looking for. When I met my boyfriend, he wasn't really comfortable being super forward about things, but that's what I was looking for. I was just looking for someone who would finally just fight for me.

But it's hard for men these days to fight to win someone over, because if they do it wrong – and in some cases, even if they do it right – they can get their lives ruined.

We're making men feel unsafe.

But I wanted to communicate to you guys that I know what it's like to be wanted the wrong way, and I'm starting to learn what it's like to be wanted the right way – and one way might be more dangerous, more thrilling, more scary and daring, but the other is the only way to being happy.

Oh oh! I know! I'll write about how it's been working in the city with all the random men who walk up to me/sit next to me and try to pay me compliments/strike up conversations!

Execpt I won't act like it grosses me out like a lot of girls, because it doesn't.

Look, of course I get it; there's this really gross feeling you get when an ugly guy/older guy/guy you're generally not attracted to tries to check you out or come onto you. It feels nasty. Like ew. I think that must be where the idea of “vibes” comes from. It feels like he sneezed on his hand then asked to shake yours.

You suddenly feel dirty. Maybe not all the way to violated but you feel ugly. You feel undesirable. Flawed.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I've tried to figure out where this emotion comes from. At first I thought that any man complimenting me randomly would make me happy, especially when I was younger. A compliment is a compliment I thought. But then someone creepy would do something creepy and I would get this feeling like EUUUUUGHHHHH GET it OFFFFF me EWWWWWWWWWW.

Like why though? It's not his fault he's ugly. It's not his fault he's old.

Then I thought maybe it was the way they said it, like if he had just put the compliment nicely then it wouldn't creep me out. And that helps a little. Even when the man is old/ugly/gross in some way, the verbiage of the compliment can help with that. But if the guy is creepy enough, no amount of “You look lovely today” does it.

I think I figured out why that is though.

So, according to Professor Peterson, typically men will date down on ladders and women will date up. Social, economic, attractiveness and financial ladders tend to follow this trend. So I thought to myself, maybe when a person who seems to be very low on the social/economic/attractiveness ladder tries to come onto us, we instinctively receive a signal that says we as women appear lower on those spectrums than this man is.

This would also explain why even the creepiest of compliments seem fair from an attractive man – we aren't grossed out by the wording, we're grossed out by the implications.

It would also explain why men don't have this reaction to ugly/poor women coming onto them – since they date down generally, no one's forwardness can be an insult.

So, since I've been working in the city I've started having a ton more interactions with strangers, which of course is good for me. A lot – most – of these random interactions are with men. Some of them are perfectly fine and natural, and some of them are inappropriate and make me uncomfortable.

I thought I might talk a little about the difference. One of the things that has been making me scared for my generation is that girls seem not to know when an interaction is acceptable and when it's not. And of course, since they don't know, they're not helping their male counterparts know either.

When men are adolescents, they need to make clumsy approaches and learn what kinds of ways are acceptable to try to woo women, and women need to be here to slap them and never speak to them again if they do it wrong.

Two things are going wrong now, and it's contributing to the culture of unrest between the sexes:

1. Women are becoming too afraid/timid to reject men when they are behaving inappropriately. I have several friends who have talked to me about very uncomfortable situations they have recently been in, but they never told the boy that this made them uncomfortable. What does this solve? This boy is learning that these are acceptable behaviors. But they're not helping this person at all – they're setting him up to get the police called on him when the next girl has some self respect.

2. When women do put their foot down, it's at the extreme, the “You look at me wrong and you raped me” extreme. This is unacceptable. We need to be helping our male counterparts learn the difference between flirting and being creepy. How will they ever know if all we do is give them nothing to go on, or tell them they're all rapists?

Things I don't have a problem with, when I'm not in a relationship:

Men approaching me to start a conversation

Men telling me I look nice, am wearing something pretty, etc.

Men asking me if I'd like to go out with them

Men leaning forward for a kiss/making it physically obvious that they'd like to have physical contact

Men who are persistent to a certain, respectful degree (not the kind who you tell to buzz off and they won't, but men who will send a follow-up text if they don't get an answer).

Things I do have a problem with, relationship or no:

Men who can't read the signals that I am not interested (lack of eye contact, physically turning away from them, etc.)

Men who make rude/lewd comments at me

Men who don't have the balls to approach so just stare and try to make me uncomfortable (I can only assume that's what you're trying to do)

Obviously men who touch without permission.

This is a huge topic for me and I'm sure I'll write more. I think it would be good to have a rational discussion about what women as a whole are looking for from men, and what we should be providing them with in return.

Most of the people in my hometown are older – the average age of our residents seems to go up by a year every year. The train I take in the mornings isn't packed until the fifth stop, and until then I sit with some professionals at the coffee tables. They usually don't talk to me, but today one did. While the other table was putting down a Trump supporter, he and I discussed the benefits of investing in a splitter for my chargers, so that I didn't have to hurt my arm reaching for the one on the other side of the table.

It was the other ones putting down a Trump supporter that had me interested, but I was glad for the distraction.

They were talking about a woman one of them knew and how she was a “Total Trumper,” which I guess is fine to say, if she is. They were mocking her because she had recently said, “I'm moving away from hateful statements,” and putting their hands up like “What could a Trump supporter mean by that?” And they laughed. There was one point when the man said, “Sorry to any trumpers around,” which I figured meant at least he understood that not everyone feels comfortable talking about being one.

I'm not exactly a Trump Supporter, although I did vote for him. I wanted to help prevent Clinton in the Oval Office – she takes too much money from countries that execute gays for me to be cool with it. Her loyalties aren't what they should be, and she ran on a pretty sexist platform.

(I'm not going to vote for someone just because she's a woman, and I wouldn't have voted for O'bama just because he was black. Pity racism still seems like racism to me

Besides, I don't know about a female president. Not because the country isn't ready for it or anything – just because women have a lot more to deal with on the physical and emotional scales and historically men have been stronger leaders. Angela Murkel is admittedly one reason the idea of a female president leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

It was just strange, because stereotypically the older people would be the Trump supporters, and I'd be a millennial who gets offended at their jargon, but it was the other way around – they were the leftists and I was the right winger who felt bad that they thought the way they did. When I got on the train home just now, some older people were getting on, and the man was complaining to the woman about people my age. The woman said something to the effect of “Be nice,” and he was grumbling about “...phones and … why always ...” and she just smiled and said, “As long as it keeps them quiet though right?” with that Professor Umbridge tee-hee.

I glared at them a little. Technology gets better and all they want to do is whine. I'm never going to treat young people like they're not people.

This really is becoming a bit of a diary isn't it. Ok, well since it is, I'll tell you about work – it's going much better. It feels like a lot of a rollercoaster, but it's ok – I enjoy the work and I am getting to know the girls a little better. I'm going on vacation tomorrow morning to florida, and they said have fun.

I'm also very proud of myself – a few days ago I asked my boss to start Ccing me on directions for the girls while they're at work, so that I know where directives are coming from and how to plan my day around that. I had been afraid it would come off as criticism but she took it really well and was just like, sure. Of course, totally, will do.

I'm going to start doing that more often – asking my coworkers to please do things that would help me get organized.

I'll write more on the plane :)

Happy New Year! I realized I write a lot more on this blog than I thought I would, but then again, I commute a part-time job.

Maybe this is more of a public journal? Maybe it's more about someone who is growing up in a world where everyone else seems to be growing down.

The world around me seems to be growing down. People my age are becoming – or are claiming to become – less capable, not more.

When I was with my husband, I didn't grow either. I was pretty stagnant, I stayed 18 until I made it out. I don't think I learned a single thing in those years, about myself or the world (with the exception of when I left and started to listen to people like Professor Peterson). When I was finally free I started to soak up all the experiences I could find, good and bad. I felt like I was starving.

But people my age are starting to narrow their horizons. They don't want to take care of their own problems, their own trauma. They want everyone else to heal them, protect them, allow them to stay in these bubbles.

It's horrifying. It's frightening. It's how a country breaks. I love this country and everything it stands for, and people my age are starting to really frighten me.

So: they say, if you want to know who is in power in your country, find the people you aren't allowed to criticize. If you're in a very free country, like it's supposed to be, then there's no one you're not allowed to criticize. You're allowed to say that anyone is stupid if you want to.

In this country, you still are, but only certain ways.

For example, if I didn't like black people. I'm allowed to say it, legally, but I'm not allowed to act like it. Same with any minority group. I'm not allowed to refuse people jobs/housing/service if I don't like them.

By this time you've either started to think “Yeah I thought this was a free country,” or “Oh FFS she's pro-racism.”

All I'm trying to say is that affirmative action type laws are slippery slopes. I think we as a country should try our best to get over our differences and, when possible, celebrate them. I also think that it's not okay for the government to try to speed that process up by force.

Not because it's immoral, but for two reasons; A) it doesn't work. Taking money from a white person and giving it to a black person does not improve race relations or even the playing field. Money doesn't level a lot of playing fields. Money doesn't even level the financial playing field in most cases – because how much money you have is seldom by chance, and receiving more doesn't fix the habits you're in. All you accomplish is extending the welfare state and convincing everyone, both black and white, that black people can't take care of themselves. And B) it sets a precedent that the government should be a moral compass. Which it definitely shouldn't. It should not be that. And it sets a precedent that the government can take money away from someone. Which it definitely shouldn't.

If anything, the government throughout history is a good indicator of what you should not do.

I really think it would be better for minorities to work for what they have. I think it's best for everyone if everyone works for what they have. I really don't think the government should be your guardian.

Sure, of course, I might feel differently if I had it rough. But if I'd feel differently if I had it rough, you'd feel differently if you had a life like mine – steady job, not a lot of money but enough to get by, a family who is willing to help me out, a boyfriend who also has a stable job and is figured out and super talented – I mean I don't have everything but I have everything I need.

But there have been times when there's no money, when we've been a few months behind on rent and there's no money to for anything for Christmas, but that's when I turned to my family. Asked for a raise at work, or looked for an extra job (begged my husband if we could move somewhere smaller for less money, etc.)

But I didn't ask the government for a dime. Because it's not the government's dime. It's my neighbors, my fellow countrymen. They don't owe me anything, nor I them. Even when my husband asked me to apply for assistance – it felt wrong and I didn't do it.