Being the Threat!

I read the article last week by Samantha Brick about how being beautiful can be a blessing sometimes, but also how it can also be your demise with your same-gendered peers. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2124246/Samantha-Brick-downsides-looking-pretty-Why-women-hate-beautiful.html?ito=feeds-newsxml (for you to all know where I'm coming from!)

I had dinner with a fellow single mum yesterday and discussed the points she brought up, to see if she felt that way within our community.

After you split with your life partner (well, supposed 'life partner'), you are torn between which friends will take your side. It's a decision you can't make - the friends are the ones who make that choice. You lose a part of your family that you either loved or loathed, but as a single female, you become the bigger threat. While you were together at parties, there was always the innocent flirting at parties with your friends or sibling's partners, which meant nothing when you were attached, but now it is a completely different story. As a single woman, you have nothing to lose, but your friends and siblings now feel that you are a threat to their very existence, as they think back to the times that you had a quiet conversation with their husbands, or drunkenly gave their husband an extra big hug and their jealousy consumed them. So now, you get invited to nothing. NOTHING!! Even though you have absolutely no intentions of ruining their lives, have no attraction to their husbands and literally just want your friends and family to support you in your time of need. But then, you soon realise that they weren't real friends at all, if they can't be there for you as you go through such a harrowing time.

My friend was telling me how much she loved her ex's family, and how much they loved her. And she really misses them. And that after she found out that her ex cheated on her, and his family kept telling her that he desperately wanted her back, she instinctively knew that it was 'them' who wanted her back, and that his philandering ways were still going and she couldn't ever go back to rebuilding that trust with him.

I must admit, I do have one friend who has been in my shoes, and has a couple of us single mums who get invited to everything, because she knows how it feels. And I am so thankful that she is in my life. :) But most of my friends in the school community have washed their hands of me... gone are the times that I get invited to their house for a casual catch up and gone are the days that my kids get invited to their home... as they know that I get along with their husbands as well as them, and I am literally a threat! And what you do find, is that the single mums band together because no one else wants you, and when you do catch up with family who are all partnered off, they tell you off for being involved with so many other divorcees because 'you're becoming one of them.' News flash: I AM ONE OF THEM!! You get support from those who understand exactly the predicament you're going through, something they will never understand, unless they go through it themselves.

But I'm not only a threat because of my marital status... I am also a threat because I take care of my appearance on a daily basis, I have an energy that they just don't portray as a stay-at-home housewife, I am something that they were once, but not anymore. And I am a little open with my sexuality, but use that with immense discretion. Is it jealousy? Or are they uncomfortable within their own marriage that I might just whisk their partners into something that they can't offer their husbands anymore?

But that's the thing... the point of my blog really is to allow ALL women to be better within themselves and not to succumb to the labels that being a wife, mother, domestic goddess or provider entails. It's to empower women to also be something for themselves. But so many get stuck in the drudgery of mundaneness and can't think of something exciting or adventurous to do with their partners or family.

For me, I'm not interested in any of my friend's or sibling's husband or partner. I am a one man woman, and my heart is attached to one. That's how I'm built. My friend who invites me to her parties and family events, knows this, knows that I'm not a threat to her relationship. And that's why I love her... for accepting who I am.

But, through all this 'working out who your friends are', you soon know what's right for you. What you need to do for yourself and your kids to be better and be above their pettiness.

I understand what Samantha Brick is going through. And she's married! She made some valid points, maybe didn't get them across the right way, but I know where she's coming from. Women are bitchy - silently to your face, noisily behind your back. And it's so much more obvious in the school grounds than anywhere else, but if you had a close knit group of friends when you were married, it can also be just as attacking there.