Modern Women: Publicly Emancipated Still Privately Enslaved

Women can run for president nowadays, yet, behind closed doors, they still can’t seem to run from the antiquated thinking that men are masters of the universe. As a woman, who came to age during the early days of the woman’s liberation movement, I’m shocked…I’m stunned…I’m mortified at the level of closeted enslavement twenty-first-century women are demonstrating in their personal relationships. OK, girlfriends, you can keep your Wonderbras, no one’s asking you to burn them, but you’ve got to wake up and smell the Starbucks: something’s still rotten in Denmark and in every nook and cranny around the globe.

Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, historically, and in the not so distant past, men owned women. They made all the money. They called all the shots. They had their cake and eat it too, and women, relegated to the role of stay-at-home-wife-and-mom, could do little to alter this situation. They were brainwashed to believe that they had made their beds and they had to lie in them; but, just to be fair, women did get something out of this marriage-as-a-business partnership: they got a home, children, security, and respectability.

Now, fifties years after the advent of the women’s liberation movement, women are out in the workforce in droves, and because of this financial enfranchisement of women, the whole man as king-of-the-castle kind of thinking is slowly fading. (Human consciousness takes thousands of years to evolve, so unfortunately, men with cavemen thinking will still be standing long after all of us exit this planet.)

In my sixty-plus years on this earth, the one thing that I’ve learned, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is this simple truth: human beings are deceptively resourceful, and what I’ve seen, all too often in my practice, is the way some modern day men have taken the women’s liberation movement and twisted and turned it to their advantage. What I’ve been noticing is the appearance of a growing sub-culture of twenty through forty-something men, who have morphed into a new mutated strain of the male species, one who doesn’t mind mooching off of women. “Hey, cool, let the women support us,” seems to be their anthem. Sadly, this is just another version of the master/slave archetype in action, since these couples aren’t equals in their relationships, as these women find themselves taking on the role of mommy to men who refuse to grow up. This new breed of twenty-first century guys wants to sit around, get stoned, play video games, and watch porn all day. Countless numbers of my female clients are putting up with deadbeat men, and it’s my job to get them to overcome the collective unconscious thinking, which has been hammered into women since the dawn of time, that any man: lazy, lying, philandering, drunk, drug-addicted, or dumber than a donkey, is better than having no man at all.

Just as hard as it was in the past for a wife to leave a marriage in the days when the husband made all the money, it can be equally as hard for a woman to leave her marriage today, if her husband is guilty of fiscal infidelity. In these lopsided financial arrangements, a woman can’t leave her husband, because she’s become enslaved to him and his debt and his irresponsible ways. She soon learns that no matter how hard she works and how much money she brings in, they’re still broke; and no matter how hard she tries, she just can’t seem to dig her way out of the financial hellhole her husband has burrowed her into. What I’ve seen, time and time again, is that it’s infinitely easier for a woman to rebel against and break free of the traditional women-are-chattel-and-therefore-we-own-them archetype, created by the old school brotherhood of men, who got away with beating, berating, and bullying women, than it can be for a woman to leave an emotionally blackmailing relationship in which she has unwittingly become mommy to a grown-up boy. Most women just wouldn’t or couldn’t abandon their children; therefore, when a man acts like a child, a good woman becomes plagued with guilt, psychological paralysis sets in, and she just can’t seem to walk away from this no-win situation, even when it’s destroying her.

Perhaps the most heart wrenching version of the man-as-master archetype is the new twenty-first century one: the men who can’t or won’t commit to women. This call-all-the-shots-and-jump-when-I-say-jump-and-go-when-I-say-go man seems to have emerged from the Internet dating scene, where men have somehow gotten the impression that there are thousands of needy women out there, who are desperately seeking men, and these women will do and tolerate just about anything, just to have a male specimen by their sides. So these Internet monster men go on running from one woman to another, oftentimes juggling several relationships at a once. As a relationship coach, I make my living on this all-too-common scenario: men who won’t commit to good women. These commitment-phobic men hold all the cards and tell women how close they can get: you can be my hook-up, my friend-with-benefits, my f***k buddy, but not my girlfriend, fiancée, or wife. They set the limits on how often you can see them, how often you can talk on the phone, and for the most part, the communication between these couples is via the dehumanizing mechanism known as texting. What never ceases to amaze me is that men can muster up the courage go to war, but they can’t seem to grow up and go gallantly to the gift of love!

In all honesty, though, women are equally to blame for the creation of this twenty-first-century-Frankensteinish man. Plain and simple --they have allowed it. Women need to find the courage to tell a man, “Put two feet into this relationship or take two feet out. I don’t sleep with men or date men who are sleeping with other women. I don’t want drama or disease.” Women have forgotten that they’re a sisterhood and must stick together. If women wouldn’t sleep with men who are already in relationships or married, then male Homo sapiens wouldn’t be able to get away with this kind of behavior. Boycott men who are having their cake and eat it, too. If a man is married, but whining to you about how much his wife doesn’t understand him, then tell him to divorce her without drama and trauma, and if you’re still around at that point, then perhaps, you can get together at that time. Remind him that he isn’t leaving her for you; he’s leaving her because the relationship isn’t working. If a man has a girlfriend or fiancée, respect other women, and tell this guy that you don’t get involved with men who are already in a relationship. Sisters, please remember this: you need to unite and stop linking yourself to a misaligned chain of feminine fools, who are taking a hell of a lot of crap in the name of love.

True Soul Mate couples are two equals. No one is the master. No one is the slave. Each of the partners in these blessed relationships could survive without each other -- emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and financially, but they choose to come together to form a strong and mutually supportive union. They willingly love and commit to each other with their entire hearts, souls, minds, and bodies. This is the kind of love you deserve. Anything else is just a distraction, a delusion, and plain old dysfunctional.

Contrary to popular mythology: men are not from Mars; women are not from Venus. We are equal members of the same species, who need to work in unison to make Earth a more loving and supportive place, not only for ourselves, but for our children and our children’s children ad infinitum.

Cindi Sansone-Braff, The Romance Whisperer, talks to the dead to show you how to live well and love better. She is the author of Grant Me a Higher Love and Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships. Visit her web site at: www.grantmeahigherlove.com. Listen every Thursday night to her radio show, The Number 1 Long Island Psychic/Medium Gives Free Relationship Advice: www.blogtalkradio.com/higher-love.