Take it and smile

A woman in Pakistan killed a bunch of people while trying to poison her husband, I can't say I blame her honestly.

I am constantly surprised that women don't just straight up murder every man they come across. Yeah in Pakistan and places like that sure, but also right here in the states. I mean it is really easy to get access to the tools required, like firearms, but every time we see a mass murder it's yet another dude, more than half the time one with a bunch of fucked up ideas about women doing it.

I am not saying all guys deserve to die, nor am I advocating for gender based mass murder, I am just saying I would understand if it happened more.

I hear stories from my female friends and family sometimes that baffle me with the needless cruelty inflicted by men upon women.

I am not talking about the obvious stuff here, like physical violence or sexual assault, although that is included, but the more subtle stuff, the gaslighting and isolation that a long relationship brings. I have a story that is all too common from my parents generation, I have heard some personal accounts of this and read more, and they all go something like this:

They married at around age twenty or so, she was in school/had a career/opportunity doing something but quit that to support her husband and raise a family, she used my savings to help set up their home or business, he never acknowledged that sacrifice, and at the time she maybe never realized what she was sacrificing, maybe she did though and decided it was worth it. As the sole wage earner, the husband feels entitled to be supported by the rest of the family, and leaves the household in her hands, as long as it is run how he wants it. He has no idea how to talk to her, having not been raised in a way that allows him to interact with her as an equal. She begins to demand communication, he withdraws, eventually the only way she seems to get a reaction of any sort is to have a full on screaming fit, this becomes normal.
Fast forward 15-20 years, the kids our grown and moved out, or on the verge of it, she allows herself to think about what her life without children will be like, and she realizes as she thinks that her future maybe doesn't have to include her husband either.

This works out well for him, as he hasn't had the emotional support he needs in years anyway, and has been exploring other options already, subtly or otherwise.

The split up, maybe she gets the house or some money from the divorce, perhaps she doesn't, she tries to reenter the job market only to find that her degree and training is twenty years old and she cannot pursue the career she once loved without more schooling or a great deal of luck. She does what she has to to pay the bills, gets a roommate, works an entry level job, makes ends meet, or close enough. She has little support as it turns out most of their friends were actually his friends hers having subtly been excluded to the point of being removed from her life entirely over the last two decades. All the time she is thinking "I wasted my life", for some this is how it ends.

Others eventually change that thought to "HE wasted my life, he WASTED my life, HE WASTED MY LIFE!"

Can you imagine? Men end up shooting a half dozen people because they can't get a date, but women throw half their lives at someone who doesn't even realize they are doing it and they die quietly and alone, because they can't possibly be a burden on someone.

The story has variants of course, sometimes kids aren't involved, sometimes the timeline is incredibly compressed, but the core elements stay the same, and you know something else? When I have been involved in conversations where a woman has told me these things do you know what the most common phrase is? The thing they all say, more often than anything else?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to put this on you.

I'm sorry to be complaining all the time.

I'm sorry I am yelling, I am just so mad.

I'm sorry.

They are filled with such a rage that it is scarcely comprehensible, and they apologize to me, not even for taking it out on me, which would be understandable as I represent my gender, but they are apologizing for making me listen to it.

Because even in the grip of emotions that can barely be controlled, they know that they have been trained for their entire lives to not express it, that to do so is wrong somehow, that a man can throw a bottle or a punch, break a window, scream in rage and defiance of injustice but a woman needs to take it.

Take it and smile.

God help us all when they stop smiling.