Ladies in Waiting

on


"Assume the position." "What are you doing?" "Waiting to be rescued."

I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, so in high school everyone expected me to grow up to be Somebody. And then I got married at age nineteen to another nineteen year old, had a baby sooner than I expected and spent a lot of years as a homemaker and full-time mom.

One of my "hobbies" in my twenties was checking out library books -- "free" being a price I could afford on my limited budget -- and reading up on women's issues and trying to sort out how in the heck I failed to end up with the two-career couple lifestyle I had expected and kind of thought was my due in life as some kind of smarty-pants.

Because of all that reading, I see a lot of societal norms rooted in the historic tradition of male breadwinner and female homemaker. I think because of that tradition, we have a raftload of social norms that boil down to men tend to expect women to "wait by the phone" and they tend to want guarantees and commitments from women that they, themselves, won't give to her first.

Men tend to commit to their careers and women tend to commit to their men and families. This can go very bad places at times for women.

At one point, one guy I met via internet decided he wanted to meet me in person and he tried to talk me into that though I didn't really want to meet him. His initial pitch was that he traveled and hadn't been out my way in a while and he would just take a trip and we could meet while he was out there, real casual like, and I was like "Oh, okay. I can meet you if it's like that."

And then he didn't leave when he said he would and the next time we discussed it, his speil was "I am not traveling that far for a cup of coffee. If I travel that far, I want you to agree ahead of time to be my girlfriend."

My reply to that was "I barely know you. I met you like a MONTH ago. You aren't getting commitments and promises out of me. If you need a promise to come see me, then just stay where you are because that's not happening."

It didn't end there but the rest of that story is a lot of stupid and irrelevant drama. Suffice it to say we never did meet.

I'm on track to never get laid again. Most men don't want to travel for "a cup of coffee" -- i.e. a meet and greet so we can see if we even click in meat space AT ALL -- and I'll be damned if I'm agreeing to more than that ahead of time.