"At 50, I'm a hostile environment to awful men and the shitty things they do"
A lifetime of conditioning told Julia Raeside to be 'reasonable', non-confrontational, 'good', then she hit middle-age…
It wasn’t a single moment, more like a growing dismay, the bit in the horror film where the heroine gets that she’s walked into a trap. As I turned 44 in 2019, I started to see my relationship history coagulate, to become a tangible story with one repeating motif. Most of the men I’d dated, slept with, followed around like a lamb, had been attracted to my low self-esteem.
Even if they didn’t know it, they wanted a woman who doubted herself as much as I did, because it gave them all the power.
I’m in the same oppressive midlife sandwich - kids on one side, aging parents on the other - that compresses us all. Just as I’m boarding the hormonal ghost train to menopause, symptoms jumping out at me like skeletons. My patience is incredibly limited.
And as a middle-aged woman finally seeing things clearly, I did something I’d never done before. I allowed myself to feel angry about it. About those weak men so desperate for validation.
 | A guest post by
|