Tags
advice, dysfunction, dysfunctional, family, happiness, home, life, love, parenting, red pill
I saw a quote on a reader board the other day that read, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”
I thought it was such a simple truth — indeed that providing a loving, healthy, safe home for your family truly can make the world a better place. Not just within the home, but in schools, workplaces, and the community as your family returns that love, health, and safety out into the world.
Likewise, family dysfunction can haunt those involved for generations. And again, not just in the home but in schools, workplaces, and the community. Much of society’s biggest woes (crime, violence, etc.) can likely be traced back to an unhappy home as the root.
Fill your home with love today and every day. Doing so is naturally easier for those raised in such a home themselves. Yet it’s a choice available on a daily basis to all. I have known many people who have worked hard to give their families something they themselves wished for but did not have.
What are you “playing forward?”
Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
Awesome post, Bloom! 🙂
Agree 100 percent.
In the past couple of years, I’ve been surrounded by a lot of really great people in a small community.
They made me a better person, and our family gained a lot from the experience.
#Preach
“Playing forward”???
when i read things like this i always think of that scene in Top Gun where Maverick says, “I’m.not.leaving.my.wingman.”
idk why people find it easier to commit to everything and everyone except their own family sometimes, but they do. my mom is the master of this and doesn’t understand why we don’t all cheer for her when she helps everyone except anyone in her own family. you learn as a kid you can’t depend on anyone.
don’t abandon your own. period. just … don’t.
my girls know, KNOW, i will ALWAYS be there for them. even after i pass from this earth, they KNOW i’ll be there. my primary goal in this life is to live as long as i can, filling them with as much of me as possible, to be there just for them … and so when i do pass on, they’ll have enough of me to hold onto till it’s their turn. now that they’re older, sometimes they have to tell me to back off some … but i’d much rather than then have them wonder why i’m not there when they need me or want me.
“Because she is my wife.”
“The sky is blue.”
Bloom. Respect
Hypergamy called and left a message.
LOL!
I can’t convey the feeling that Mrs “just is.”
Not faith, not religion. Not blue pill red pill.
Just after everything we have gone thru, she is there. Period.
Like you know there is air for your next breath.
Might be mountain air or stinky city air, but it is there.
It just is.
Snow is cold, water is wet, Mrs is there.
And I am too.
It just is.
And if it isn’t by some disaster
then there is NO replacement.
Like never seeing snow again.
Never drinking water again.
So it doesnt get lost in last post.
Horseman – i’m trying to find a comment you made – don’t remember if it’s here at Bloom’s or at Spawny’s … something about would you consider marrying your wife again … and you said yes to then but no to 50. i can’t remember exactly all … but i remember ‘no to 50’.
can you please find it for me? 🙂
mgtowhorsemansaid:August 17, 2018 at 12:55 am
At spawnys under Reaping the wages of neglect.
“Mrs is very attractive to me at mid 50s. She is my type. Hehe.
But to be brutal.
If I was single and didn’t know her.
Me: successful, financialy stable, 6-1, 185, ok shape, all my teeth and hair.
House, vacation home, car all paid for, friends, hobbies. Kids raised and gone.
Pick her out of a crowd? In a heartbeat.
Date her over a 25 year old? Likely.
Find her interesting enough to form a relationship with? Definitely.
Be monogamous to her? Of course
Commit to provide for her, share my life’s work, risk my secured retirement funds?
For what possible reason? I just met her! I don’t owe her squat!
What possible reason once the bullshit is not worth the sex, companionship?
She is fantastic but she can also be an intractible cast iron bitch.
Just like every girl on the planet.
Even after say 3 years is she worth the last 30 years of my life?
Not A Chance!!
So why am I here now and for the next 30+ years?
Because at 24 she took a chance on a new grad working as a clerk, slightly goofy looking.
Because she said I will stand by you and I want to have your babies.
Because of 36 hours of labour and an emergency C.
Because we screamed, yelled, ignored each other.
Because thru losing a house, almost dying at 34, living with her parents she was there
Because we went thru the Year From Hell and came out together.
Because do the math, at 54 I would have to be 92 to know anyone as long as I’ve known her.
Because She Earned It.
What does a 40 or 50 year old stranger bring to the table compared to that?”
That was the original.
New commentary
Keep in mind the gist is I would have her as a STR or even LTR but at my age of 54 I am past the time of family, kids etc. I have my own. Even if I was a long term bachelor I would have whatever my version of family is. And she is past the age of giving me more fasmily beyond us as a couple.
Therefore the need to commit, permanently, for the rest of my life…for what reason?
The companionship any woman brings at that age is nice, pleasant even.
But not vital to a man’s existence.
Even if they stay together he is sharing, even if its 1\4, of his resources that he hasd saved to fulfil his retirement. Again for what purpose?
A stranger has not earned any of this. She is a stranger. Can she earn a chunk of my life savings, my golden years in the mere decade before I turn 65? Maybe, maybe not.
Mrs EARNED the next 30 years together, gods willing more, by the LAST 30 years.
Harsh but honest.
(And just what 40+ frivorcees want to hear!)
Just sayin
thank you, Horseman, for finding that for me and reposting it.
i have pondered on this since i read your comment … and i think it’s really important because what young people don’t seem to realize is that the investment we make in a relationship in the twenty years between around 20-25 to 40-45 is something that can never be recreated in any other time in our lives. we think there will be other ages, and it’s just ten, or twenty years. but it’s not the same.
a lot of that is because i think that it’s during those young years that we learn and grow and develop in ways we never will again. when we learn and grow and develop with another person, that person becomes bonded to us in a way that cannot be undone … and it also cannot be done in any other decade in our lives.
i was married to my first husband from 21 to 41. i married my second husband when i was 44, and we’ve been married nine years now. and i’ve noticed that there is not the same bond that i had with my first husband. all those ways in which we grow and learn and develop in our 20’s and 30’s are set by the time we get into our 40’s.
i think this could probably be different in a situation like Ton’s where his two girls were young when they got together, and even though he was older, they are bonding with him during their 20’s and 30’s.
so that makes me wonder if it’s just a girl thing? idk. but how you described this in your comment makes me think that it’s not just a female thing.
does any of that make sense?
@Ame said: … the investment we make in a relationship … is something that can never be recreated …
I’m making a point here about Ame’s quote , but you need to get through some background first in order for my point to mean anything.
I worked at a large international bank a while back. I knew how to code in COBOL and knew how to read and interpret Federal legislation. I managed a unit that was responsible for knowing the Federal regulations (since the Feds regulate banks) and making sure the computer systems were behaving according to the regulations – which change from time to time. I could talk to legal and understand what they were saying (or just read the regulations myself,which I did), and I could talke to the coders and understand what they were saying, and so tell them what the regs said we needed to do.
When first hired, I had to learn the behemoth that was the bank’s mainframe computer system. The core of the system’s coding was old and had add-ons on top of add-ons. I walked around a lot and talked to the IT workerbees, and asked who they turned to for help when they got stuck. I developed a master list of seven or so folks that everybody else saw as the experts. Institutional knowledge, and all that.
I went to each one of the experts, told them what I had been tasked with doing, and asked if they had any documents that described the fundamentals of the computer system in the beginning. Then I ferreted out documents that described all of the coding add-ons to the basic system. I made copies of all of the basic stuff. If I had made copies of everything, I would have had no space in my office. But – with what I had, I could create a decent mental map of how the software worked together to handle all of the different products the bank had that had data which was turned into bits and bytes for storage.
One gentleman was particularly helpful. I made copies of many of his foundational documents. But it was always a treat to be in his office. There was not an empty surface anywhere. Piles of papers and manuals and documents stacked high everywhere. Something you might see in a hoarders house. But he had a mental map of what every paper or document in those piles represented. When I, or anyone else asked him about a specific something, he knew just where to put his hands to get the particular paper or document that contained the desired information.
As I climbed the learning curve, I could turn more and more to the resources I had collected. And so my contact with these experts with institutional memories became less and less. But some three years or so after I had begun my assignment, the gentleman with the office that looked like a horder lived there appeared in my doorway – with tears in his eyes. Seems that higher ups had hired a bright young girl, fresh out of business school – who had gotten really good grades. They made her his boss. She didn’t like messes. She ordered him to clean up his office. He replied that he used different portions of his stacks of papers every day to solve coding problems that developed on the mainframes. That didn’t matter. She order him to clean his office. He couldn’t, of course. And that morning he had arrived to find a sparkling clean office, not a shred of paper to be seen. She, the bright new girl, who got really good grades, had grown tired of being defied, so she had thrown all of the papers and manuals and stuff away herself. Because she knew better. Companies run better with clean offices.
With tears in his eyes he wondered, was it possible that I might still have a paper or two of what I had copied of his stuff.. I showed him everything I had copied, from him and from the others. It is not possible to describe the relief that swept over him when he saw all of the foundational material that I had. It was not all he needed. But it was enough. The information in my stash was foundational enough that he could reconstruct other information based on my papers and his mental map he still had of all the documents that used to sit in his office.
I think those mounds of papers, and the information contained in them, represent what Ame is trying to describe about first marriages. Those papers were assembled over time. As the papers were added to the piles, the information contained in them was added to the mental map of the fellow in question. At the point that I met him and got information from him, his piles of papers, and his mental map of where everything was in the piles, were huge. When those papers were destroyed, so was something within him. It was not possible for him to even contemplate starting over and rebuilding exactly what he had lost. He could rebuild something. But he could never rebuild exactly what he had lost. And the painful thing was his mental maps still worked perfectly. He knew exactly where to put his hand to retrieve a needed piece of information. Problem was, the information wasn’t there any more. In rebuilding his stacks of paper, they would be ordered differently, and so he would need to develop new mental maps of what was where. He just didn’t have the will to start all over. A very useful employee gave up and just became a cog in the machine.
The bank was bought out and everything was run from the computer systems of the acquiring bank a year or so later – so the damage the bright young thing did was not long lasting.
Richard … that’s it, exactly … and it makes me cry. Learning these truths to in my second marriage was … harsh. I didn’t want the divorce, but it was done. I since have done the best I could with what I had. But I still reach for those old files lodged forever in my memory. There are so many files that can never be recreated. The hardware and software are now out dated.
My new marriage works because we both subconsciously know this, and my husband is an extremely patient man. I have not tried to give him what I no longer have to give, but that works both ways. He doesn’t have those files left, either.
Do we accept what we have and make the best of it.
I wish I could mind-meld these truths into people’s minds and souls. But I cannot. We all think it will be different with us. But it’s not.
Not only is this true for the adults, but it’s especially true for the kids. Parents are always told their kids will be okay because kids are “resilient.” BS. The kids pay the highest price, they just learn to compensate to exist.
Stupid typos for typing on my phone … I should know better 😃
btw, Richard … do i remember you’ve mentioned you live in california? if so, are you and/or yours in danger from the fires?
Richard, Ames
Yup.
P.s. met her in school when I moved to a new city 3 months after my 16th birthday.
Richard, Ame: Wow. Thank you.
Richard, that was something of a horror story, but thanks for sharing. It’s a good anecdote to make the point about longterm relationships, and also highlights some real world modern day problems.
Holy crap, what a cunt.
The military is really good at forming close relationships very very quickly.
It’s a combination of piling on a lot of high-stakes stress plus mutual shared interest.
By the end of the day/week(s)/month(s) you’ve made friends for life. You might’ve known another person for years and not feel anywhere near as bonded.
But there’s an age when you’ve had enough of that, no gas left in the tank.
@horseman
Have you ever spoken to any middle-aged professional women who have some assets? OMG. Their number-one goal in life is not to let any man get his grubby hands on their stuff. Marriage? My ass.
“The bank was bought out and everything was run from the computer systems of the acquiring bank a year or so later – so the damage the bright young thing did was not long lasting.”
Oh, I bet that wasn’t the *last* damage she did…have you had a chance to observe her career from that point on.
An eloquently-told story, RichardP, and it strikes me that it also applies at the level of a total society, when too much badly-thought-out change, too fast, takes away all the conceptual reference points that people have come to rely on.
I came across this article and am curious to get your opinion, Married ladies and gents. I appreciate your feedback.
https://educateinspirechange.org/science-technology/scientific-study-husbands-stress-women-twice-as-much-as-children-do/
Holy crap, what a cunt.
yep. i thought so, too. no telling the damage she’s gone on to do since then. no telling. exponential, i’m sure … b/c i doubt she ever saw any error to her ways 😦
Roger Blakely – Their number-one goal in life is not to let any man get his grubby hands on their stuff.
what’s mine is mine … and what’s his is mine … and i don’t share but i do take b/c it’s all mine.
it’s a preschooler concept – and a female one, unfortunately.
<i and it strikes me that it also applies at the level of a total society, when too much badly-thought-out change, too fast, takes away all the conceptual reference points that people have come to rely on.
and even more so as i get older! i swear my brain cannot keep up with all these changes, esp in technology. somedays i wanna bury my head in the sand and get an old roto-dialing phone and plug it into the wall – or not – and take a nap 🙂
Love – i skimmed thru it.
from my pov …
life is stressful. anytime we deviate from what God says, we’re just asking for extra stress.
Genesis 3:16 16 To the woman He said:
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be [e]for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”
1. having and raising children is going to be hard and painful.
2. our desire is for our husband to rule over us.
3. husbands need to rule over their wives.
we don’t like these things. we whine and complain about them. but they are true. we think we like and accept them in theory when it’s not our reality, but when life happens, we want to alter and manipulate to adjust to our own, ‘special’ circumstances. we think we know better than God, and we almost always think we know better than our husbands. so we try to take control of that which is not ours. concurrently, men are not taught to rule; they’re taught to worship women. we think we like this idea in theory, but in practice all it does is place on our shoulders that which God does not intend to be there.
1. so accept that raising children will be hard and painful. suck it up. deal with it.
2. accept that our husband is the ruler of us and our home.
3. allow our husband to learn to rule over us – he won’t be perfect; he will fail sometimes. but we still remain in our position as wife and respect his position as ruler.
Article title: “Husbands Stress Women Twice As Much As Children Do”
Includes this line: “Single moms reported the highest stress levels of all.”
I interpret this to indicate if a man is around to blame for the stress, women will.
If he isn’t around, however, their stress levels are generally higher.
lol! i should have read it more closely … that’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.
it’s easier to blame a man than to take responsibility for one’s own choices. bad, stupid women.
Yes, I can completely see why single mothers are the most stressed out. That’s why I can’t understand any woman wanting to go at it alone, by choice.
The article states, “over 75% of moms feel that they need to do most of the household and parenting chores.” That’s why I think traditional roles are important. Working mothers have 2 jobs. One in the day, and the other at home. They never stop working. It is so difficult to do it all and be happy. I don’t think men can do domestic chores naturally. Not that they’re not capable but they function in a different manner. After a hard days work, men come home and usually need to zone out for a bit.
I believe most women come home, and start right back up on their chores. They don’t give themselves any downtime until bedtime.
@Ame – I’m in Van Nuys, just north of Los Angeles. The bad fire this year is in northern California and a lesser fire is quite a bit south of Los Angeles. Last year, the bad fire started about a 15-minute drive north of me and then burned all the way west to the ocean. Was not threatened by flames, but lots of ash fell.
@David Foster asked: have you had a chance to observe her career from that point on? No. But I can’t imagine that she will ever again be put in such a spot where her lack of insight could do the kind of damage she did when she threw away all that information. She was young and inexperienced and I blame upper management way more than I blame her for putting inexperience into such an important position. She didn’t know computer programming, didn’t know all of the problems that can develop when you have new software routines added on to new software routines such that you may need to go back down through 15 add-ons to find what is causing the problem with the newest add-on. So I imagine she never ever comprehended the horrendousness of what she had done.
And therein lies the problem. Managers come and go. They have no more understanding of the complexity of the software on which runs their entire business than the new girl, fresh out of business school. Multiple levels of management come, stay for a while, then move on – only to be replaced by others who repeat the process. None have any understanding of what allows the business to continue keepin on. I imagine the fellow in my story was denied the ability to have the storage that he actually needed in which to place all his papers. Because no one who could grant his request understood why he needed them. Such is the price we pay for allowing bureaucracies to flourish.
Earl talks about women having agency. I conversed recently with Dawn about the develoment of moral reasoning and that men and women come at it from different perspectives. Someone upthread mentioned the female tendency to believe that what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine. I think my story demonstrates all of these elements at work: she had agency, and demonstrated it, but it was based upon a moral reasoning not appropriate for the situation she was in. She demonstrated that she believed what was his was hers also, and she did with it as she pleased, without understanding the consequences.
And I think that is the disconnect point between Ton and Earl. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds here but the girl in my story and Eve in the Garden both behaved in similar ways: as I said above, they both demonstrated they had agency by using it, but that agency was based on a moral reasoning not appropriate for the situation. The Bible makes the case that it is because this is true, and for this reason, that God said Adam / husband would rule over Eve / wife. Metaphorically speaking, to reduce the likelihood that she will act on her incorrect conclusion that she should eat the forbidden fruit, or throw away his papers simply because she wanted him to have a clean office. If her thoughts usually are not governed by something many levels deeper than “I want him to have a clean office”, her agency needs to be managed, ruled over. It’s not that she doesn’t have agency. It’s that she has agency, but her thought processes lead her to make decisions and take actions that need to be guarded against. Her attempted behavior might result in good things for her (by her calculations), but it will result in horrible things for others.
In this respect, my story about the girl throwing away the papers is an interesting metaphor for women trashing their own marriages. Throwing something away that they don’t know the value of. But that is material for another writing.
‘Article title: “Husbands Stress Women Twice As Much As Children Do”
Includes this line: “Single moms reported the highest stress levels of all.”
I interpret this to indicate if a man is around to blame for the stress, women will.’
Or perhaps a man knows of ways to reduce her stress…because stress for all intensive purposes is mainly self-created.
Richard P, I look forward to that “other writing” but I must disagree with your assessment.
“I want him to have a clean office” is NOT an example of moral agency.
It just…isn’t.
It’s not that her moral agency is “shallow”….you’ve cited a rough example of sheer arrogance (I’d actually call it “evil”, to label it in basic terms).
Ame
“… we almost always think we know better than our husbands.”
LOL, that’s why when a man does find a proverbial unicorn, we hang onto her ;-D My wife actually demanded that the pastor put “obey” back in her vows, a promise that had been removed in the United Church in Canada back in the ’20’s.
glad y’all are okay, Richard.
yep – that was mean. pure mean.
BG – i would have liked to have known her … to have sat at her feet and learned from her 🙂
The Bible makes the case that it is because this is true, and for this reason, that God said Adam / husband would rule over Eve / wife. Metaphorically speaking, to reduce the likelihood that she will act on her incorrect conclusion that she should eat the forbidden fruit, or throw away his papers simply because she wanted him to have a clean office. If her thoughts usually are not governed by something many levels deeper than “I want him to have a clean office”, her agency needs to be managed, ruled over. It’s not that she doesn’t have agency. It’s that she has agency, but her thought processes lead her to make decisions and take actions that need to be guarded against. Her attempted behavior might result in good things for her (by her calculations), but it will result in horrible things for others.
i do agree with this.
but i also agree with Liz that, in this example, this woman was mean. and i think that this kind of mean is hard for most men to understand. it’s devious. she’s been mean for so long she doesn’t know any different anymore.. in a group of women, there’s always The Mean Girl. she’s been mean since she was little, and she’s still mean. she’s selfish and demands her own way, without exception.
are there good reasons why she’s mean? very well could be … but it could just be her. and by the time she’s an adult the reasons don’t really matter when the damage trail she leaves behind is enormous and no one stops her and she keeps getting away with it.
when my Oldest was in 3rd grade there was this little Asian girl who had been adopted from china as a baby into a family where the bio kids were older and dad was on staff at a church. so poor, deprived, China Doll was coddled and pampered because … she was rescued from a terrible situation. the parents never got over it and straightened that chick out, and she learned WELL how to use it to her advantage. and this nine-year-old girl was MEAN. we came up with ways to keep my daughter out of her cross hairs – she hated that my daughter was one of the most popular girls b/c she was fair and good and drew others to her. but NO adult believed this sweet, little, rescued china doll was anything but the sweetest thing ever. gag.
us girls have been exposed to mean girls since we were wee little things. they have no conscience.
what this china doll chick needed was a good spanking and strong, very strict discipline, but i doubt she got it. they moved away, then we did, too, so i have no idea how she turned out – don’t want to know.
Love – it’s a harsh way for women to learn that they cannot do and have it all, especially not all at the same time. unfortunately, many never learn this truth and keep blaming men … if men would just help more, do what i tell them when i tell them, etc etc etc, then MY life would be easier and EVERYONE would be happier.
they’re deluded.
and encouraged continuously by women to continue to be deluded.
@Liz said: Richard P, I look forward to that “other writing” …
I should have phrased that differently. Simply meant it was a different subject for another time. I have no plans to do that “other” writing I referenced. But who knows what thoughts will get triggered down the line by things someone says.
@Liz said: “I want him to have a clean office” is NOT an example of moral agency. You have conflated two distinctly separate concepts here. Agency is having the ability to choose and act (which she did, in the wrong way, based on faulty reasoning); moral reasoning (what I discussed with Dawn several threads ago) would be the thinking that drives your choices and actions. I think women think about clean anything much more than men do (neutral comment). Her moral reasoning could have been driven by the thinking that clean was necessary, and that drove her actions. A guy would more likely be driven by the moral reasoning about property rights (his papers, not hers) and the knowledge that this guy knew the mainframe software system from the ground up and those papers likely contained much of the information that described the flow charts and coding. run a clean ship (mostly female reasoning) versus egads, the ability of this bank to do business is contained in those papers (technology recognition, mostly male reasoning).
This is not a hill I intend to die on, and you have a right to your own thoughts. I see it as an example of the different approaches to moral reasoning between men and women, but you don’t have to. You think that what she did was evil. In its consequences, yes. But I think she (like many other women I have known) had no concept of what it was that she was destroying. To know what those papers represented, and to destroy them anyway, would be evil. To have no idea what those papers represented, but to destroy them in pursuit of a clean workspace is, to me, on a whole other level. Which is what I have tried to convey with talk about agency and moral reasoning. Hubris and arrogance born out of ignorance, born out of thinking that you know all you need to know about something and don’t need to seek input from others before you act. To me I know what this is and I’m going to destroy it anyway and I don’t know what this is but I’m going to destroy it anyway are two different forms of terrible, motivated by different things.
In shorter words: the ability to act (agency), without knowing what it is you are actually doing and what the consequences will be. is a dangerous thing to have. My story about the young lady who threw away the papers is an example of that.
That is at the root of the problem in the broader world. Women want to be able to exercise their agency freely. But, when they don’t understand the repercussions of their behavior, to the point that it can destroy necessary boundaries that make civilization possible, it is not a good thing to allow them to exercise that agency unchecked. But, in this political environment, who can correct that problem? Who can bell the cat? That is the fundamental issue being discussed in the manosphere. What happens to all of us if that problem cannot be fixed? (Rhetorical)
Paragraph begining “This is not a hill … ” shouldn’t be italics.
Gahhh – To me I know what this is and I’m going to destroy it anyway and I don’t know what this is but I’m going to destroy it anyway are two different forms of terrible, motivated by different things.
Ame posted while I wrote my response above, so I didn’t see what she said. I defer to the ladies in their knowledge of women and “mean”.
Her moral reasoning could have been driven by the thinking that clean was necessary, and that drove her actions. A guy would more likely be driven by the moral reasoning about property rights (his papers, not hers) and the knowledge that this guy knew the mainframe software system from the ground up and those papers likely contained much of the information that described the flow charts and coding. run a clean ship (mostly female reasoning) versus egads, the ability of this bank to do business is contained in those papers (technology recognition, mostly male reasoning).
that makes total sense.
and a ‘normal’ girl might laugh and say, “He’s lives in a mess! His stuff is everywhere and you have to wade through his office to get to him!” and move on.
the mean girl would make it her mission to make him be like she wants him to be to the extreme of going behind his back during off hours and destroying everything that was his.
she didn’t even store it someplace … or ‘organize’ it … or bring him boxes. oh, no, this chick … she threw it all away in a place he could not retrieve it.
this was premeditated, thought out, and planned.
that was cruel.
and mean.
and she got away with it.
and that empowered her.
– – –
i know it’s not a hill to die on … but i also think it’s a big deal. most people can’t think ‘mean’ to that degree. but women know women who are like that. they are venomous, and we know to stay far away from them.
I have to note that the behavior shown by this girl is not unknown among men. Business consultants, especially those flying the ‘lean’ banner, sometimes specify that each employee’s workspace must be organized in a standard precise manner, the computer here, the pens and pencils there, no personal photos on the desks or walls or partitions, etc. Most of these consultants are male. (This approach is nonsense IMO and that of the better Lean consultants)
Another example is the British Royal Navy circa 1900. In his memoirs, Admiral Percy Scott (a pioneer of improved long-distance gunnery) said that when he was coming up, most captains were obsessed with what he called ‘housekeeping’…ensuring that the ship was as visually-appealing as possible…and didn’t like gunnery practice because it made things messy!
I do think the obsession is more pronounced among women, at least today.
Well, that was another fine explanation, Richard.
Yet still, we will just have to disagree.
“I have to note that the behavior shown by this girl is not unknown among men.”
That’s true. I think most of us probably know some examples.
I wouldn’t say “cleanliness” is the issue here. It’s a courtesy to keep an environment clean. If you have guests over, or share communal property (a Navy vessel is pretty tight quarters) and are a slob you are being inconsiderate. This was the man’s office and personal space. I only know what information has been given here, but I’m reasonably sure he didn’t use the area to entertain clients.
None of this is about “cleanliness” per se.
I agree with Ame that is was about power.
As an aside, I do think there are traits that lean female or male, and most people exhibit both to some degree. It’s a female trait to constantly complain and do nothing to change the situation (kind of hardwired, they’re looking for a man to fix their shite).
I think that’s one reason why a lot of parts of the sphere become tiresome over time.
I think it’s also a female trait to prefer blind procedure (“the rules say this is the way it has to be done”…even if grossly ineffective and/or actually harmful) over optimization (the efficient and effective way).
That’s why the stupid crack example in this case did.
Just to add, we are our habits.
This didn’t happen overnight…people learn via social cues. If behavior is accepted (especially if it is encouraged) they exhibit more of it.
I’m sure this woman was trained in the habit pattern she exhibited.
@ Liz, “As an aside, I do think there are traits that lean female or male, and most people exhibit both to some degree…”
You foreshadowed my new post! Lol.
@Ame said: …and she got away with it.
We could do a who other thread riffing on that – as an example of the way men think and operate.
Kipling again gets it. In his poem If,/i> is this line [If you can] lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss …
Some folks point fingers and whine; others just quietly set about fixing what got broken and get on with things. That was the approach of my guy. He just rebuilt what he had lost as best he could. I don’t think he ever told her superiors what she had done. And,come to think of it, I don’t know that he ever told her what she had done. He just got on with business – but kept his head low because he recognized that the folks ruling over him had no idea of what he was doing or his value to the company (they would have to know software and coding to understand his value, and they didn’t).
How appropriate, that my last post in this thread has an italics problem. We have very humid air pushed up from the south yesterday and today. I think it has fogged my brain re the html stuff.
You’re describing what I would call a Good Man, Richard.
Stay dry. 🙂
lol! i sometimes think i live in ‘brain fog’! lol!
it would have been a waste to tell anyone what she had done … b/c it was done … and she was mean.
no telling what that one experience did to that man over time.
the more i think about it … she was just flat-out men. and Liz is right … she was conditioned in some way to think this was okay. she believed she was right and justified. and that makes it worse.
i just hate people like that … and it’s almost always women … and many women in management over men have some kind of devious thread in them where they do things like this to both men and women but especially men b/c they can’t manipulate them in other ways.
and these are the women who show up in marriages and destroy men from the inside out in devious and cruel ways – hence the raging in the manosphere. which is why it doesn’t bother me. we need a place to get things out. i remember once in the midst of my sexual abuse recovery group that i was with a friend and all this vileness was coming out of my mouth when i was telling her things, and i apologized for my language. and she replied, ‘That’s okay, you need to vomit it out.” i’ve never forgotten that. when you’ve consumed all that poison, either voluntarily or not, you need to vomit it out. … of course, then the challenge eventually becomes not letting vomiting become a toxic habit, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.
and i agree with Liz that this wasn’t a ‘housekeeping’ issue. this was a core being issue. who she is. she is the kind that should have red flags hanging all over her warning the whole human race to avoid her.
and if he’d told anyone and reported what she had done, she would have been hell bent on revenge. he was smart to walk away. but i bet that changed him for life. 😦
– – –
i grew up on the beach … and while i deeply miss the beach, and the waves, and the salt air … and i love low tide and wave pools … i do not at all, not for a nano-second, miss the humidity! naturally curly hair and humidity do not mix! lol! vanity … yes, it’s real! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Naturally curly hair and humidity DO mix Ame! Ask anyone with straight hair. LOL 🙂
I’m seriously in envy of everyone with curly hair…
Me: “How did you get your hair to do that?!? It looks so great!”
Them: “Oh, it’s just this way naturally…and I hate it!”
LOL Liz!
i guess … it’s like all our other body parts … we want what we don’t have. lol!
if only we could see ourselves through the mirror of others 🙂
i grew up on the beach in the 70’s / early 80’s when Farrah Fawcett hair was popular … and let me tell ya, that was NOT happening with my naturally curly hair! there are no amount of hair products to do that for more than the five minutes you’re fixing it in the bathroom with 98% humidity 🙂
and then i’d get a hair dresser who thought it’d be cute to cut it short. gaw!
anyway … probably most of my angst is b/c both my grandmothers and my mother all hated my hair – and that’s really a mean thing to do to a little girl. but they did. and then i found out at the end of my first marriage that my husband didn’t really like it, either, despite me asking – and him never answering – how he wanted me to keep it for him. grrr.
my second husband loves it though as long as i keep it long. so long it is. i like it better longer anyway … and it helps living in a drier climate where i have some semblance of control over it.
however, i have enjoyed learning to like my hair these last nine years i’ve been married to him; that’s been a really nice change of thinking for me. and i needed it.
Wow, long curly hair…
*cough*bitch*cough*
(I kid! but I am envious) 🙂
This will be the first time I can actually let my hair grow long…it’s too straight in humid weather it looks straggly if it gets more than shoulder length, but it’s dry enough here that it looks good.
Mike likes the short edgy look though…so we’ll see.
He’ll probably like it long if I can grow it that way!
here’s the one pic i’ve put up that has my hair in it – from the back. my phone is old so the lighting isn’t good, but i think this is how the back of my hair looks most of the time (i don’t check it from the back after i get ready in the morning, so it could look terrible and i don’t know it! lol!) (https://blendingame.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/quirky-things-my-hair/)
this is ‘long’ for me. for some reason it doesn’t grow much longer than this. it’s not back-layered here, so the curls pull out some. my husband likes it to fall around my face, so i cut it in layers around my face. if the weather is right, i can blow dry my ‘bangs’ which are cut layered around my face, and let the rest air-dry. in the summer i usually let it all air-dry and pull the ‘bangs’ up in a clip, pulling out some to let it fall around my face like my husband likes 🙂 … i gotta be careful cutting it, though, because it’s like an inch longer when wet – being curly, it really pulls up a lot when dry … but when a little longer, the length pulls the curl out. anyway, i’ve figured it out over the years and cut it myself.
– – –
i had a friend years ago who had thin, straight, stringy hair. she said it did best when it was not washed often and when it was treated a lot. so she kept it colored and didn’t wash it daily.
hair … a funny thing, isn’t it!
i wish my mom and grandmothers hadn’t taught me to hate my hair – and they truly did HATE it … so i never felt pretty growing up. it amazes me, shocks me, that my husband thinks i’m pretty and beautiful and sexy. i’m 53 and it’s only been in the last few years that i’ve been able to sincerely like my hair and not feel ugly b/c of it.
– – –
i know you’re beautiful, but i’m guessing you have a stunning neck and profile, and that’s why Mike likes the short hair on you. if you had long hair and/or curly hair, it would cover all that beauty up 🙂