We pretend our issues are our virtues

Was reading what some one wrote today "it's hard to trust an alcoholic, if not impossible".

Musing......

One of the ways we get pulled into trusting them, is that we (especially women) like that self-image of "the sweet, trusting girl".

It's not just that the world likes women better who are never angry.... are 'sweet little girls'.

It's that we've internalized it------- and it's so deep in our psyches, that 'femininity' is tied up with an almost-naive kind of trusting of others.

Back in the '60's, when I was a young woman, the image we often tried to give forth about how we were---- was a long-haired, long-skirted, bread-making, always-smiling, soft-talking, "wow" saying, woman------ who looked up to her garrison-belted, bearded, van-driving guy.

Earth mother, trust-everyone, chew your food 35 times per macrobiotic bite Child of the Sixties.

I suspect that the 'gentle trusting of everyone woman" persona is deeply imbedded in most women's idea of how we want to be perceived.

I think we often find it difficult to 'marry' this persona ----with having to have a chronic distrust of a partner who is not trustable.
Hard for women to 'put this all together' in one woman-person.

So-------to stop 'fighting upstream'------ to feel more like we've been trained to feel and to get the feedback from others that we are, indeed, nice people, not 'shrews' ----- we tell ourselves, that 'all-trusting-ness' is a virtue.

That it makes us Good Women.

And that it makes us desirable.

When it's really an issue of minimizing and denial.

From Toby Drews, the author of the million-selling "Getting Them Sober'' books, endorsed by 'dear Abby', Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and Melody Beattie:
phone 410-243-8352
email tdrews3879@aol.com
www.GettingThemSober.com

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http://www.alcoholism-support.org/Drug-Alcoholism-Questions.html

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