When you put on the last clean bra which happens to have a few extra straps and rationalise it as fine because it is under a high neckline, then you drop breakfast on your dress so change into a different one and you don’t really think about the combo.
Then you wonder why the guys who came to switch the windows were even more helpful than usual and the guy who was reading the water meter wanted to stop and chat.
Feeling sad for my kids who are graduating grade 8 (going to high school in Sept) and their dad is away so missing the ceremony.
I ordered $500 of suits from H&M that will hopefully have them attired appropriately.
Mouse did some good self advocacy today. He’s been fidgeting and noise making a lot which has left me frustrated. I’ve asked him to stop when I’m speaking to him, and been using language that made him feel broken. He told me so, and asked me to stop. So I apologised and am using different words.
This morning we started to get into the details of our European trip this summer. Fly into Rome, hit Salerno, Florence, Turin, and then over to my brother’s place near Bordeaux before a night in Paris and on to England. Should be fun.
Last Sunday I turned 48 and had some lovely omens and kindnesses then ran away to a tent in the woods.
I’m having some real not-joy around this particular birthday. I think it’s moving from my mid-40s to my late 40s. I remember the same for 28 &38.
However, whatever feelings I have about it, it still happened and I had a lovely time in the woodland tent. I also felt very loved by friends who helped me to feel seen & appreciated in various lovely and low key ways. I was given a copy of ‘the correspondent’ which I got into and am loving.
Female home owners report feeling stuck between men’s contradictory expectations – they are told to be independent, but not assume the bread
It wasn’t Tonya’s first time managing the discomfort her achievements elicited in prospective partners. She had already learned to downplay her successes as a professional woman working in the sciences. “As soon as I tell people I’m a scientist, they shut down or they start talking about what they’re doing.”
But she had hoped things might play out differently after being set up with someone through a mutual acquaintance. “He was mature. He was in his late 40s, so in a position where there wasn’t time to just play around. I felt he was someone I could talk to.”
When he arrived at her condo to visit, things unfolded in a painfully familiar way. “It was a nice building and I think that really threw him off,” she recalled. “He was like, ‘Oh, the rent must be crazy here.’ And I was like, ‘No I actually own it. I thought I told you that.’ The energy shifted immediately.
“I could feel his male ego kicking in, like, ‘I can provide too,’” Tonya remembered. She tried to reassure him, clarifying that she did not expect a man to take care of her and that she wanted to build something together. But things only escalated from there. “He was just being volatile and angry over mild things,” she said. When she voiced her opinion, he would call her needy or ask her point blank: “Do you want to be the husband in the relationship now?”
For women caught in between these contradictory claims – labeled both too independent and not independent enough – heterosexual dating and relationships can start to feel futile.
“The options are small to begin with, so they tell you to be open minded,” said Tonya, citing popular red-pill claims that women are only interested in hypergamy, or “dating up”. “But then the men don’t take that very well,” she said, referring to her experiences dating men with comparatively fewer financial resources. “They view it as you trying to emasculate them, even when you specifically say, ‘No, that’s not what I’m trying to do.’”
For men, however, women’s home ownership may be signaling something else entirely.
“My research suggests men can experience more psychological distress when they feel they are deviating from the breadwinner role,” said Dr Joanna Syrda, an economist whose 2019 paper found that men’s stress levels rise when their wives earn more than 40% of the household income. “So the issue may be less home ownership itself than what it symbolizes,” she added.
Men in couples where women earned more money at the start of the marriage did not report heightened levels of stress. This means “these responses are unlikely to be universal […] some men are quite comfortable with a higher-earning or more financially established female partner when this is known from the outset”, she said.
Yet in Tonya and Tiffany’s stories, the revelation came early on. I asked Dr Y Joel Wong, a counseling psychology professor at Indiana University who studies the psychology of men and masculinities, what might be driving men’s responses to single women’s growing independence.
One core feature of masculinities that can lead to problems “is a fear or avoidance of femininity”, he said. Some research has found that men feel an urge to restore their manhood when they feel they may be identified with stereotypical femininity: “So if women are more successful economically, then it’s almost like, ‘I have lost a little bit of my manhood.’”
A growing body of data shows that men engage in higher rates of infidelity and emotional and physical abuse when outpaced by female partners in traditional markers of wealth and status such as income.
'“It’s interesting because the same gender group that’s constantly complaining about how women are gold diggers who exploit them for labor and money … It turns out even they [men] can’t think of what they bring to the table other than money,” she observed.'
does the body ALWAYS have to keep the score? maybe we could just have a friendly game this time. maybe we can just have fun without putting numbers on it
Returned the rental car, and got mine back. New back windscreen seems fine & good and they also cleaned out the glass from the back.
If we had driven all the way home yesterday, as planned, we’d have headed back via Temiskaming Shores, on the Quebec border. But that will have to wait for the next time!
Today was (just) 5 1/2h travel time inc a few short breaks.
The backyard trees are getting their blooming glory out to welcome us back.
It was like driving through the seasons.
Bear was asleep by 9:20, Mouse by 9:45. Both appreciated their own beds with clean sheets and lots of space. They each have their own doubles here, and they’ve been sharing one while we were away.
I am absolutely wiped. It has truly been a great trip, and it has been absolutely full on barely a moment to myself since Friday. They could tune out in the car, but I was driving in unfamiliar places (and an unfamiliar car for most of it). It was worth every second of effort - truly - we had so many really fun and memorable experiences. But yeah I’m ready to drop.
stormborns
areudirty
izzy806
