I've struggled a lot in life with letting people pressure me into doing things I either feel uncomfortable doing or outright don't want to do.  People guilt trip me, try to make me feel like something is in my best interest, or I just care so much about the person that I would serve them in any manner. Having this penchant for service has led me down a lot of dark roads, and because I have the tendency to see the best in people and ignore red flags in behavior and intention, I end up getting caught up in really destructive, servile patterns. Receiving from people leaves me feeling really uncomfortable too, because I ironically expect that most people aren't like me, that they aren't giving from the goodness of their hearts, but rather with an ulterior motive, so I find it easy to give, yet simultaneously difficult to receive and put up a boundary regarding what I can give back or not at all.  This is mainly due to having been psychologically abused by my mother. I was constantly having to prove I was a good obedient child while asking for nothing. My mother did not see it as her duty to give me love or adoration because I was her property; she only saw fit to provide the basics of food and shelter, and if any of us had to go to the doctor, or needed something for school, she would scream in your face that we were too poor to afford that so you better not be lying.  As a result I learned that my emotional and psychological needs were not important to others and that to gain the favor of people and make them love me I had to serve with absolute unquestioning loyalty.  And of course, we know that this doesn't work, so I was desperate for love growing up.

I had the love of my father but because my parents were divorced I only got to see him on weekends. I craved attention from males and the thought of having a family of my own was paramount.  Building a family unit that was stable and loving was my goal in life because I never had that with my mother.  There was always this underlying lowgrade fear of her outbursts at the suggestion of anything contrary to her beliefs or abilities or resources.

Throughout my young adulthood I was caught in a loop of trying to serve men to make them love me. I would have sex with men, drive insane distances for men, give them gifts with no expectation of anything in return and of course because I was so giving and expected nothing, I got nothing.  All I got was sex, not love, not true intimacy, not a true spiritual connection. I tried so hard to connect with people who were emotionally dead, because frankly you have to be dead inside to use someone else as a sexual vending machine or use them for their economic resources. And then they projected their inadequacies onto me, and I simply allowed them to. I believed every lie they told about themselves and told about me. I let them define who I was and I still never got love in return. I am now in my 30's, alone without any children or anything else to show for my dedication and loyalty to men.

After many years of self analysis, which began in my late 20's when I found feminism and began to avoid men like the plague, I developed a cultic attitude towards male evilness. I concluded there was no way a man would ever love me, simply because men are not capable of love. I still largely believe this to be true. I do not believe the vast majority of men are capable of love. Some are, like my father who remained in love with my mother after she left him for another man and even helped her move us to another state so she could live and work independently (which ultimately failed because my mother is too lazy to take care of herself and will always default back to leeching off males), but I do believe very few men exist who actually care about their partners, as evidenced by the statistical fact that men are more likely to leave their female partners when they are sick or on their death bed, or quickly move on within a matter of weeks or months after their female partner dies.

To this day I struggle with hating men knowing that my father has always been a good person, flawed, yet still a well-meaning person who always wanted to take care of me and my sister and still would have given my mother another chance if she had decided to repair the marriage; but also realizing that most men are not anything like my father and I have experienced this first hand. Most men are all too willing to use you for sex until they find their dream girl, so its up to women to have very strong boundaries and not allow men to get away with their nonsense.  The past few years of my life have been dedicated to building up those boundaries and learning to say no, no matter what excuses people give, regardless of their gender.

The reason I bring all of this up is not to hate on men. This is simply an explanation of my past. The reason for the post is because last night I had a dream about someone that I'm in love with in real life.  This feeling of love has almost grown into an obsession, largely because I dream about him constantly since the night I met him.  In my dream last night I was conversing with this person and he started basically ordering me around. It reminded me of other men I've dated, and in the dream I just went along with it. It didn't matter that I wanted to do something, but he wanted to leave because he found it boring had some other matter to attend to and he insisted that I go with him because most men do not consider me an independent being. In real life would I make this same choice if this person treated me this way, assuming we did end up together?  Would I just follow him around like a lap dog or would I assert my independence? I like to think I've evolved enough to choose the latter, but maybe I wouldn't... maybe I would just default back to that original programming or serving a man who doesn't deserve my attention, and that really scares and depresses me.

In my dream he started asking me what my goals are and I told him that my asperation is to build an earth-integrated house. I want to grow my own food, raise my own animals and hunt and make my own shelter. I want to be completely sovereign and independent of the system. Maybe this dream is telling me that I should just work on that goal alone and not focus on him anymore. If loving this person is damaging my psyche and leading me back into old patterns, maybe I should just avoid him altogether. That possibility really upsets me, but sometimes you just have to cut certain people out of your life in order to make progress.