I started of my Surrendered journey realising that women can be really disrespectful to men – in the way they talk to them and in the way they talk about them. So I started watching my language when I spoke to him and also when I spoke to my friends. It was horrible realisation that there are so many nice women out there who actually think so very little of their menfolk, and how much their menfolk actually do for them.
So, I stopped talking bad about men, including my husband, and mentioned all the good they did. If I needed to address an issue where the creed of men in general would behave poorly, I would do it gently and made sure I didn’t put the whole gender down. Instead of saying, ‘How very like a man!’ I would make sure I would say ‘Well, men can tend do x, y, z, however, what we can do as women is to ensure blah, blah, blah’.
Yet recently I am becoming so painfully aware that men are guilty of the same thing. After spending the last 7 years ensuring I respect my husband and the men in my family, I am having a sinking realisation that some men, not all mind you, have an extremely low opinion of women, and can even be classed as women haters.
I’m currently in the process of rewriting my training material to ensure women are equipped with the resources they need to create Better Wedded Lives. A huge eye-opener for women during my Better Wedded Lives course is when they read The Way We Disrespect Men. They are often startled, and say ‘Oh, I do that! I never thought of it as disrespect, but I see so plainly now that it is!’ However, they will be shocked, and probably saddened to also read the new material I will be adding, which is The Way Men Disrespect Women. I’m sure the reaction will be the same one that I had, when I read about it: ‘This is so true, it is painful. It’s awful when men treat us like this. I’ve always felt terrible when this happens to me but I never knew how to put it into words.’
Part of embracing our inner Wise Woman is knowing and recognising. It is the opposite to being naive. When we start to recognise ways that we can be hurt, manipulated, disrespected or imposed upon, we can only then put our boundaries in place. If we don’t know there is meant to be a fence around our garden wall, and that we actually endanger our garden without one, why would we ever put one there, especially if it took time, money and energy to get one?
Let’s take this opportunity to become aware of when we disrespect and also when we are disrespected and started sowing the seeds of change, so that we can move forward to a future where men are respected for all the wonderful and amazing things they do for us all, and where women are respected for all the wonderful and amazing things we do for the whole of humanity, too.
‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure’ – Williamson
