Letter to the Editor
For several weeks, as I read “Relationship realities…” by Desiree Dugger, I have been concerned about the stereotypes perpetuated in this column. This weeks’ “So I say to all of you independent women out there, stand by your man, because if you don’t, there will be somebody else out there who happily will.”
What in the world does that mean?
The author seems to argue that a woman isn’t a woman without a good man to love. I find that demeaning to women in general and a dangerous myth to espouse to young women of college age attempting to discover who they are and what they want out of life. I am a happily married mother and grandmother who knows the significance of women establishing their own identity before melding with someone else. Relationships are difficult, at the best of times, and a woman cannot bring her best to a relationship until she knows just who she is as an independent person. Young women need to be encouraged to discover their own self worth, their own goals, talents and strengths in order to bring a healthy perspective into any relationship. When you look to someone else to “complete” you or you allow your identity to be defined by a relationship with someone else, you bring an unhealthy psychological make-up to a relationship…and that spells trouble.
I agree that “there is no greater feeling in the world than to lie in the arms of a man who truly loves you,” but first, a woman must learn to love herself and to understand what “love” means. What the author most often refers to is the physical aspect of love. Many women have been seduced by that aspect of a relationship to tolerate abuse of all forms, physical, mental and emotional, rather than risk the loss of “the arms of a man.” “A man who truly loves you” offers more than just a good time in the sack and the comfort of walking “around the house with no make-up on…” True love appreciates values and supports a strong sense of self-worth that makes a relationship interdependent; one where two equal but different individuals work out the circumstances of life together with respect for one another and an understanding that two strong people working together bring a stability into a relationship that cannot exist when one partner’s identity is defined by the other’s. If standing by my man in fear of “somebody else out there who happily will” means giving up my own identity, self-worth, dreams and goals, then “somebody else” is welcome to him!
Desiree, please don’t participate in perpetuating the myth that has historically locked women into unhappy and abusive relationships simply for the sake of having a man in their life. The young women on our campus deserve so much more!
Dr. Robin Harris
Director of the office of Experiential Learning and assistant professor in the Department of
Government &
Sociology
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Oct 30 2002. Filed under Letters to the Editor.
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