Mothra

Ugh, I'm so sorry you're going through that. I witnessed my parents go through a nasty custody battle over my brother. Luckily I was old enough when they got divorced that I was able to just pick my mom. I'm starting therapy too... again. I haven't had much luck in the past finding good therapists. Hopefully this time will be fruitful and I will get some clarity over what led me down this path as well. Stef mentioned "Single moms for controlling the national debt" as a joke during the conversation with Bill Whittle (ep 3120). I remember thinking "I would be in that club! I wonder if anyone else would." It's interesting. Sometimes I find myself talking to people and it comes up that I am a single mom. It's like they've been trained to clap their hands and go "bravo"... and I have to try and get them to stop. I was complaining to a male friend post-breakup that I'll probably never find another relationship, since what good man would even want to be with a single mom. He immediately told me to stop talking like that and that he has a lot of respect for single moms since he was raised by one. Trying to get him to see my responsibilitiy in the matter was like telling him he had a crappy mother. It's a weird situation to be in.

Mellomama, thanks for responding! I'd love to know more about how you came to this movement and hear about how you handle struggles and issues that come up with your kid(s). What have been some of the biggest hurdles for you?

No. I wasn't that serious about the acronym. You all raise valid points. I admit that the reason I am a single mom was that I was irresponsible in choosing who to sleep with and not using protection. I also recognize that it was selfish for me to keep my daughter and not give her up for adoption. I think the reason I did this was I needed some motivation to get my life on track. I was in a pretty bad place when I got pregnant. My mom recommended I get an abortion, but I just could not do that. Even though I had been pro-choice up to that point. Basically her father and I partied together and when I got pregnant I cleaned up my act. He did not. So I've been a single mom for the duration of her life. We moved in with my mom so I did have help, although it wasn't from a Dad. We've since moved out, so life is indeed hectic and we don't get as much quality time as we would if there were a father around. I've apologized to her for this and many other things in hopes that she will learn from my mistakes. Her Dad had been married before and I witnessed the he'll he was put through in the child support system, and how the govt siphoned off any money that could have gone to the children. It is such a corrupt system it makes me sick. I do not enforce child support and do not receive any. I also do not receive any govt assistance, although I admit that I did for a short while when I first had my daughter. This is obviously not something I am proud of. I also witnessed the perverse incentives in the system when I went back to school and learned that the govt will pay for daycare if you go for a certificate, but if you try for a degree they do not. These things and others were like puzzle pieces falling into place in my journey to realize I was a libertarian/anarchist. I guess I was just curious about other peoples' journies. And what mistakes they've made, what they've observed along the way... Stuff like that. I'm just wondering if there are any closet single moms out there I can relate to! I meet other single moms on occasion and they are horrible and deluded!

I am curious if there are any other single mothers among us, and if so, how it has been to confront certain things about yourself that either conform or don't conform to the stereoype of single moms. I feel like we need a new acronym... NASMALT.

You're right. She does do a lot. Thanks for pointing that out. I think what I perceive as "normal" is probably warped. My daughter seems pretty happy and functional now. I guess what I am worried about is if she is going to be functional in the future, when life will require more of her in the way of organizing, postponing gratification, etc I think her not enjoying reading makes me sad because it is something I cannot relate to her about. I know she enjoys learning, but just through different mechanisms. She'd rather watch a nature documentary or take a field trip to a farm or something. I guess I just need to accept that we can still be connected even if we operate differently. Definitely more concerned about just quality interaction than just video games vs reading. She will initiate other things, such as wanting to go for a walk or play cards, and we eat dinner together every night. Right, I hear you. Perhaps "push" isn't the right word. Maybe how to you guide your child would be a better question. I've been thinking on this today and I think following their lead sounds like a pretty good philosophy. I will admit that it's hard though, I think I along with many other people have been conditioned to think that a child couldn't possibly know what's best for herself. I like the idea of letting her pick her activities, and deciding how dedicated she wants to be in them. I guess I just needed some reassurance that I'm mostly going in the right direction. It just runs counter to everything I've been taught and sometimes I start questioning myself. Thanks for the feedback!

I like your approach. That's kind of what I've been doing lately as well, I'm just not really seeing much results. Or maybe 11 is too young to expect much in the way of results. My daughter is obsessed with animals. Dogs, cats, especially horses. I let her take care of all the animal chores, She also helps my mom take care of her chickens and is doing FFA (Future Farmers of America) after school, where they raise chickens and have an aquaponics farm and all kinds of neat stuff. It's just that she comes home from school and her natural inclination is to spend the entire evening playing Animal Jam - this online video game. I don't think that's particularly healthy but maybe that is just her way of decompressing after school. She is a good reader, but doesn't seem to like reading for pleasure. Maybe that's okay... but it makes me sad. Maybe that's just my issue. I guess you're saying just let her be and hope she'll eventually be inclined to read/research more about what interests her when the time comes.

I recently finished reading Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child. I saw a lot of myself in what she describes as the grandiose person. "The person who is "grandiose" is admired everywhere and needs this admiration; indeed he cannot live without it. He must excel brilliantly in everything he undertakes, which he is surely capable of doing (otherwise he just does not attempt it). He, too, admires himself, for his qualities - his beauty, cleverness, talents - and for his success and achievements. Beware if one of these fails him, for then the catastrophe of a severe depression is imminent." She describes a field study where the family backgrounds of depressives were studied. "All the patients came from families who were socially isolated and felt themselves to be too little respected in their neighborhood. They therefore made special efforts to increase their prestige with their neighbors through conformity and outstanding achievements. The child who later became ill had been assigned a special role in this effort. He was supposed to guarantee the family honor, and was loved only in proportion to the degree to which he was able to fulfill the demands of this family ideal by means of his special abilities, talents, his beauty, etc." This sounds just like my family and explains a lot. Both of my parents grew up poor, my dad especially. They both worked blue collar jobs and we moved to a college town when I was 4. Most of my friends' parents were professors. I was put in 10 million activities and when it was discovered I had musical talent they went balls to the wall on that. I was supposed to have turned out to become a famous musician, but instead I got depressed and addicted. During family therapy once, my dad even said that he had wanted to see my name in lights. When I think about this now, I have conflicting emotions. Part of me gets really angry that I had to be the source of their esteem and wishes I could have just been left alone to do what the other kids were doing. I feel cheated out of my childhood. Another part of me is grateful for being taught the value of practice and perseverance, and I love that I have music as an outlet for expressing my emotions. I think about this with my own daughter, who doesn't seem to have a lot of self discipline. Perhaps I have been too lax with her because I am afraid of doing to her what my parents did to me. Is there a correct level of "push" to give a child? How do you know when you're pushing too hard? Or not enough? And how can you be sure about your motives, i.e. whether or not you are encouraging them in order to live vicariously through them and their achievements? I just want her to be happy and functional. But I worry that she will not succeed in this world without more drive.

All very true. There's a happy medium between being focused solely on what you love and focusing on what you can do for society. I started out a music major hoping to get a job in a symphony... and that didn't work out. Later I became fascinated with science. It wasn't until I was going for my PhD that I discovered I was a libertarian, and got totally disillusioned with academia and the prospect of begging the government for money to dick around all day on a hobby. People used to ask me, well what are you going to do with Biochemistry? And I'd say "I don't know, I'll figure it out when I'm done with school." It kills me that I used to think like that. At least in my case, I definitely should have thought more about what society would pay me to do instead of burying my head in the sand and hoping that something would magically come up once I had finished school. I now have a job that I love and suits me well, but didn't require a degree or the taking of student loans. I wish I would have taken more time to figure out what sort of job I could do day after day and not hate. I'm an exterminator, so I 'm with you on being outside and active! I also get a lot of autonomy, still get to use some of my biochem, am intellectually challenged from time to time, but still have a lot of time to ponder philosophy and listen to Stef's podcasts!

I know the feeling. I have wondered where this comes from as well. At times I have thought it was because those people grew up in homes that made more money than mine. Or maybe because their parents stayed together. Or maybe they had more of a sense of family somehow, more traditions maybe. But I think you may be onto something with the attachment. I personally don't feel attached to either of my parents, though I have vague memories of loving them when I was very young. On the flip side, maybe folks like us have parents that did okay enough for us to retain a strong sense of justice and meaning. It does seem counter-intuitive that bad parenting could make children with a highly developed sense of purpose and ethics. But who knows? A lot of nature is counter-intuitive.

I would have gone to trade/technical school instead of college and not gotten student loans. I would not have gone out of state to college. I would think more about what skills society would pay me for and less about what I enjoyed.

Just got through reading your post and it sounds lot like my situation! My boyfriend was also an atheist, ancap, and into peaceful parenting. It's so hard to give that up because it's so rare and you find yourself trying to justify negative traits because of it. I'd like to go to therapy too, but in light of increased expenses since I am now paying the entire rent/bills on my own, I'm not sure if I'll be able to afford it. We went to couples therapy for about 3 months earlier this year, but it didn't really help at all. The boyfriend was even more resistant to opening up to him as he was with me, and the therapist just trotted out tired old stereotypes of "women are this, and men are that." It's so hard to find a good therapist. I just ordered a couple of books to get started... Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child and Nathaniel Branden's The Psychology of Romantic Love. There are some online therapists that have been recommended, and I may look into those too.

Sorry to hear you're going through the same thing, but I guess we will learn a lot from our mistakes. I'm trying to do the same thing and focus on the positive. Mostly, I am excited at all the freed up mental energy I have now and am putting towards learning more about the things I am interested in. There was not one reason in particular why we broke up. It was lots of little things that just kept piling up. If I look closer at it, all of the little things were probably indicative of a large thing, mainly that he was just too damaged to give me the kind of intimacy that I craved. He had a serious video game addiction, and used it as a coping mechanism for stress. He also had an extremely low tolerance for stress. He was fine with just being in my presence, without actually interacting or talking about anything meaningful. Sex was only naughty, he could never have loving or playful or any other kind of sex. He wouldn't look me in the eye. He wouldn't pick up after himself. He was unmotivated. He was more apt to spend time being passively entertained than to explore things he was curious about. Come to think about it, there didn't seem to be much he was passionately curious about that I didn't bring up initially. But man, did he have a glorious hairy chest to nestle in! I'm with you on wondering why you didn't break up sooner. I have been thinking a lot about that myself lately. There's probably some self esteem stuff going on there. Maybe I thought that nobody better would like me. Maybe I thought that I would never find anyone else that I liked as much.

Imagine what would happen if women (and everybody really) were suddenly afflicted with an honesty virus sort of like Liar Liar.

Okay, I'm with you now. It seems like all this started occurring in the 70s, with the welfare state and the rise of gender feminism. Perhaps this hypergirliness (I'm thinking of princess obsession and the like) is a backlash to the more imitative masculine "we can do anything men can do" mentality. So now you have feminine women rejecting any trait that could be thought of as masculine.

I've read both of your posts several times now, and I admit I can't help but dislike both definitions. It sounds like you're describing the type of person I would not respect - man or woman. I think that's the problem I'm having - I look at traits like assertiveness, competitiveness, compassion, empathy, being within the confines of reality, etc... and I don't automatically classify them as falling somewhere on a spectrum from masculine to feminine. They just seem like traits to me, traits that any person could have. The evo bio explanation can explain why some general differences have evolved and I get all that, but as Frosty says... ...we have the brainpower to reason ourselves out of natural tendencies. If we ask men to reason themselves out of putting their dick into everything that moves, why can we not expect a woman to reason herself out of blowing $300 on a pair of designer shoes or insisting that she believes in fairies. I'm just not understanding what the attraction would be to someone like that. Sure, I get being attracted to physical beauty and grace. But those other non-physical elements of femininity are what's baffling me, particularly since I find many of them to be plain silly. Aside from things that would make a woman a good mother of course, like empathy, compassion, and generosity. I'm more apt to go with RoseCodex and Frosty, that femininity has to do with being nurturing and sexually selective. They way you describe a feminine woman sounds like a ditzy, willfully ignorant, manipulative, and power hungry person. I hear all that time that men like nice, intelligent women. I get that you would still be sexually attracted to an airhead bitch with a great body, but would a man who prefers "feminine" women be romantically attracted to someone like that? Are you able to separate out the two? If there is a spectrum of feminine to masculine, does each straight man/lesbian have their own version of this spectrum? This would seem to make the whole concept of gender really hard to pin down. I am still confused. Biological sex is much easier to define and deal with.

Thanks for all the responses so far! Good point, that's what I meant. I just thought it was an interesting phenomenon of having a pretty, feminine girl changing a tire or whatnot. I'm still not quite sure what you mean by flowiness. Like going with the flow? Could you elaborate a little?

A couple of recent posts, Why So Few Women Anarchists, and Bruce Jenner Needs Counseling, Not Support, got me thinking about what femininity is. In addition, I was recently criticized as not being feminine enough, so I have a personal curiosity about this as well. Is femininity a superficial thing? Is femininity an obsession with aesthetics - clothes, shoes, makeup? Can a woman eschew such trivialities and still somehow be feminine? Why is it that some men think a woman is super sexy if she is doing something traditionally done by men, such as fixing a car or doing construction work? There seem to be many stories about transwomen wearing their mothers high heels or preferring pink and glitter as little boys, and these things are given as indications that they identify with the female gender. However, there is nothing innately feminine about these things. High heels were once worn by men and pink was once the color given to baby boys, as it was a muted version of red, a very masculine color. If the notion of femininity changes over time or with different cultures, it makes me skeptical of changing/mutilating one's body to conform with societies views. Is it okay to both have a penis and like high heels, glitter, and pink? I would say yes, you should be who you are and do what makes you happy. But if society as a whole says no, should one have to remove their penis and grow breasts to be okay with liking the the things you like? Many definitions of femininity I have come across do include non-superficial things like being sensitive, empathetic, generous, gentle, along with things I consider to be quite negative, such as being childlike, a follower, and dependent. Masculine traits on the other hand include things like being analytical, competitive, assertive, self-reliant, intellectual, and being willing to take a stand. I think that libertarians/anarcho-capitalists in general have more of these so-called masculine traits. I personally am hesitant to see gender as so black and white, with femininity being defined as basically weak, stupid, and overly emotional. I dislike having the notion of gender at all. Why can't we just be people and not have to pick a culturally-defined side. Can we not pick and choose what we are no matter what side of the spectrum it happens to be from? Can we not be empathic, gentle, generous and also be intellectually curious, skeptical, and independent? I would love to get some ideas of what a libertarian group of people think about femininity, since I think we in general have a great appreciation for what others generally define as masculine traits.

It's all about context. I personally don't care if my daughter uses swear words, as long as she doesn't use them to attack me or anyone else. I'd much rather hear "I hate doing fucking homework" than "fuck you." But then, I would not want her to attack anyone using ANY language, so it's not so much about the cussing as the intent. I think swearing among friends builds camaraderie and indicates you are comfortable with each other. I think most kids do this naturally as they experiment with language.There's also the cathartic element when you accidentally injure yourself or make some horrible mistake. I read somewhere that cussing after that has a biochemical effect by decreasing stress hormones. To me, swear words are just words. And ultimately all words are just sound waves and carry no moral value on their own. Context.

I have some experience with this. My last relationship started after I had already become ancap and had been listening to Stef for a while, so I was familiar with the "find some reasonable and logical and bring them to our side" tactic. My last boyfriend called himself a free-market socialist when we met. Over the course of 6 months, he had become a libertarian. And probably 6 months later had completely come to the dark side and was an ancap. When we first met, I remember thinking that he had promise because he was an atheist, liked to talk about politics, and criticize society. He seemed to enjoy talking about these deep ideas I loved so I can attest that it is possible to "convert" someone. The relationship unfortunately didn't work out in the end, though. The whole ancap thing I would say is necessary but not sufficient. And it unfortunately can't undo any trauma that may have caused a person to become dysfunctional in other ways.

Yeah, that makes sense. I had never truly connected with anyone until I was about 19 (I'm 33 now). I had friendships but they were fairly superficial. Definitely not close with either of my parents, though they weren't abusive. At least for me, once I finally found someone I could be close with, I dove right in. All of those relationships faded or fell apart over time. I've never really been able to hold on to any of them. So this is just another case of letting one of those go. Of course, I could only get SO close to him. That was one of the big problems. But just having someone I could be partially close to felt pretty good. Better than nobody. That's what I told myself anyway. But it turned out not to be true. It was torture not being able to get that full closeness and intimacy.

I finally ended my two year relationship that I had been ambivalent about for going on a year now. I feel a mixture of emotions... relief, sadness, regret (that it took so long to get in touch with how I really felt), fear... about now being alone, with no one to come home to at the end of the day and talk to and hug. Fear that no one will understand me as well as he did. Also financial fear now that I have to pay the full share of rent and bills. Guilt, for hurting him. I've cycled through sadness, panic (that I had made a huge mistake and wanted to take it all back), and acceptance. Now I am oddly at some sort of peace. For now anyway. Any thoughts on moving on with one's life and how to even begin to process everything would be greatly appreciated. Part of me wants to just move on and stop thinking about it. I've expended way too much mental and emotional energy on it already. But part of me thinks I need some sort of relationship autopsy. I just worry about getting sucked into it too much.

I know a joke about social security... Never mind, you wouldn't get it.

Some things he wants to change. But he doesn't take the necessary action to do those things. Or maybe he doesn't know what that is? It's like there is this continual input needed from me or he just returns to default. Other things I'm not sure if he wants to change. It's so hard to get him to open up. That's the biggest challenge I think is that he is so shut down. Whenever I ask him about his feelings he gives 2 word answers and that's the end of the story. It's amazing because he can wax on about any topic, but when it comes to his emotions it's just crickets. He says he doesn't like dwelling on negative emotions because that just stresses him out. But what he defines as dwelling I define as analyzing. So all the potential solutions are me brainstorming, he gives hardly any feedback, other than the occasional "okay." I feel like I'm trying to solve this alone and with no guidance from him, which doesn't help. Sorry to hear you're in a similar situation. I hope some of this helps you too.

Not annoying. I appreciate the feedback. I kinda of just didn't know where to start. I've had all this floating around in my head. There hasn't really been one particular issue, it's an amalgamation of lots of different stuff and it's hard to pick out a main issue, if there even is one. Thanks. How did you come to get angry at your parents? What (if anything) can I do to support him in this without pushing him? It would definitely not be appropriate to explicitly say "Your parents are assholes, you should be angrier." I try to just be a supportive listener and ask questions and offer my sympathy on the rare occasions he talks about it. What do you mean by acting out alter egos? Like going into his parental roles and being critical of her? I haven't seen any of that so far.

I have been in my current relationship for almost 2 years, living together for 1 year. I also have an 11 year old daughter from a previous relationship. In the beginning, it was exciting and wonderful, as I imagine most new relationships are. Several factors led us to move in together last February. Things were okay at first, there were a few “red flags” that I overlooked because he made up for them in other ways. But now it seems that the negative is outweighing the positive. He has serious motivation problems. In the past I would have labelled it laziness, but after watching the Gerlach video on laziness and procrastination I am more understanding. He does not clean up after himself and generally has to be asked to help out around the house. Even then, he will do things begrudgingly or half-assed, if he gets around to doing them at all. He has a serious video game addiction about which he is in denial about. His threshold for stress is extremely low, and he handles it by escaping into video games or movies. He is reluctant to talk about his feelings. He had a pretty rough childhood which I think he is just now starting to realize how it has impacted him. However, I feel a strong resistance in him to talking about it or even thinking about it. His libido decreased quite a bit after moving in together, probably as a result of stress. I tend to feel most loved by physical and sexual affection, so this has been difficult. Dealing with all these things makes me feel drained. The good things… he is an ancap atheist. He is generally a rational person. We see the world in a similar way. We talk about science, politics, history, and economics quite a bit. As well as religion, sociology, etc. We don’t have the bullshit small talk conversations that I hate. He hates sports as much as I do. I feel like I can more or less be myself around him. Most people I have to censor myself around because they talk about meaningless crap. He is very cuddly and will hug and kiss on me quite a bit. I very much enjoy the physical affection. I feel like if he were to address his issues more head on, not only could the laziness and video game addiction be resolved, but we could be closer, more connected. I think he has a desire to address things, but in his own way, which from what I have seen doesn't seem to work. He is very stubborn. He does not like to be told he is doing something wrong. It triggers him to self-attack and he is extremely hard on himself. Once he does this, it only exacerbates the problem and he becomes even more prone to escape responsibilities. He has become quite draining to live with. I have learned to bottle up my feelings and try to accommodate him, which is really hard… and not healthy. It doesn’t even work. I can manage it for maybe a week or two at a time, then something happens which causes me to explode, although not in anger, but in sadness and crying. The accommodation is not only hard emotionally, but physically as well. Me trying to figure out his moods and work around them, to be understanding, to not expect too much of him… it has all become a full-time job. Some times I feel like I can’t take it anymore. I’ve wanted to break up with him several times and even talked about it with him once. But then I remember the good things. I don’t want to lose those. I don’t have anyone else in my life that I can talk about real things with and let my guard down around. We have been going to counseling for a couple of months, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Anything slightly negative said to him by me or the therapist seems to trigger anger and self-attack, and then wanting to run away. He has told me that he doesn’t want to go every week any more. It’s too much. I feel like any progress he's going to make is going to take forever. I feel like I am in an impossible situation. I can’t go and I can’t stay. I know that I can’t change him, and I am growing weary of waiting for him to want to change. I am so tired of being stressed out and upset, but I don’t want to lose him. Sometimes I think that there might be someone out there who looks at the world like me, but maybe is not so damaged. I think that the longer I stay in this relationship, the less chance I have of finding someone like that. But I am so scared to leave, because I also fear there is no one I’ll relate to, that this is the best I can do. It’s all so confusing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.