Davis8488 wrote: (for anonymity I'll call her Wonderful)
Good on ya, Mate, you good thing you. Listen, you would be perfectly right , in the best of all possible worlds. Both sides would be required to provide reasons, and speak gently and be reasonable.
But in this, our very misshapen world, where men routinely dominate the women that are in relationships with them, women have reason to FEAR the situation Kin found herself in. Even in a nascent love affair of only a few days or weeks, many times, the man has built up this expectation of what he is now entitled to, and when the woman decides being with him was a mistake, he won't accept it. He wants to talk about why she is wrong, INSISTS on it in fact. And do you know how the woman first becomes aware she is in danger?.
It isn't a magic collar, or even a rope around her neck, mate.
It is when she, probably hesitantly because she too labours under the culture wide assumption of male entitlement, comes to the man and says "I am really not happy being with you any more, I want to leave" , and he doesn't look sad . . . he frowns.
Is this going to be a threat, is he going to tell her she isn't , is never leaving him, "If I can't have you, no one will" murder/suicide, is he even going to accept that she is entitled to say it?. "You are just over-wrought". All women fear this happening, half expect it to happen, have had girlfriends some part of it has happened to. And it only happens when the person on the receiving end of the bad news, almost always male, has an over inflated sense of their own entitlement. As far too many men do in even our present enlightened culture, let alone one of the macho ones.
I too have had a fianc├® tell me over the phone, hesitantly, sadly, "I don't think I can marry you any more". I answered, "Then we couldn't possibly be married" because, OF COURSE there is no point in telling someone who has worked themselves up to the brave point of saying such a thing "I don't want to hear that". TOO BAD, so sad, they didn't just suddenly on a whim decide this, end of discussion.
And actually in Kins world, she has been kept a sex-slave by a person not her own species, but MinMaxs species, just weeks ago. All her experience would have been saying "Don't be silly, this isn't a potential co-see-ee at all. It is a probable bully, a potential slaver" and then the whole Grabs Rope About Neck Thing ( henceforth GRANT for my selfish ease ) has proven to her that her reluctance was correct.
And so she says to him "I think you should leave" *unspoken component of sentence, you are guilty of GRANT*. What is any possible response of his but *guilty of GRANT* "I am sad now, but, OK then, goodbye"
WHY for goodness sake would any woman want to hang around explaining herself?. They are in danger when they do, and actually, most men would disdain to explain themselves in the same situation. "There is no point talking about it, I made up my mind".
Hi JessicaB, thank you for making that post, I have been trying to say something like that, but you made it look easy. And yes, I am aware of how I sometimes risk implying that "Women who don't protect themselves almost paranoid-ly, are to blame for their abuse" when I say something like "WHY for goodness sake would any woman want to hang around explaining herself?". I do try to consider these faults and not commit them, but I am human, I err.