Silence of the Lambs
June 11, 2008
Are certain types of women (okay, men, too, since I have met a few of those) more prone to become controlled, and then abused in their relationships? Are they “magnets” for controlling men? Are there qualities in a woman that “invite” that type of man to nestle into her life?
Are these women typically:
Isn’t it easier to get a quiet woman to see that the world revolves around her man than one who is outgoing? Isn’t it easier for a woman who keeps to herself become excited to be with a man who directs their activities and gets her off of her comfy couch? Isn’t it easier for a woman who does not have many friends take on her man’s and eventually let her few friends go? Oh, it’s so easy to lose your life in love. To let yourself be swept off your feet, to be excited at the possibilities you never imagined. To become who someone else says you are.
Is that what turns these relationships from romances to tragedies? In these controller-controlled relationships the tragic hero is undoubtedly the woman and her fatal flaw seems to be her boundless trust. Are we too trusting? Do we want to get out of who we are and so hand ourselves into the wrong men’s hands? Are we tempted by their visions of ourselves? And do they see us as malleable? Are they the creators and we their creations? Are they able to control their home-based universe because they have created it? Do these men need custom-designed women: ones who they’ve designed? Do these relationships sour when the women begin making their own changes? When they start to balk at the design that no longer feels right? And is this when the men start bearing down—hard—because they are losing what they need—their custom-designed women, and lives?
Is this why they are not controlling in the beginning of the relationship? Because in the beginning both the men and the women are enamored of the possibilities. There is no control until the controlled feels the strictures. And that is generally felt only when the woman has grown past what has been assembled for her. Does she balk when she feels less of herself than she wants to be? Does he break the camel’s back when he pushes for too many alterations to her true self? Is the illusion over when the subtlety is gone: you are either who I say you are or you are nothing?
* * *
Our neighbor had a young German shepherd named Max. Now Max’s yard had an electronic fence and Max occasionally wore his electronic collar. But our Maltese was just too tempting for Max. One day he must have said to himself “to hell with the electric shock that I will feel as I cross over the invisible barrier, I must get closer to Poops.” And through the invisible fence he went. He sauntered over to smell Poops’ various places, he investigated my garden, he smelled the fresher air on this side of the fence. He only went home when I screamed to his owner to get him. Max didn’t seem to have suffered from the experience. Once he realized that what was controlling him couldn’t really hurt him, he was no longer controlled by it. I thank Max for that lesson (though not for scaring Poops and me).
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