Sigh...

I really hate sitting back and watching people that I care about make horrible mistakes. I was planning, this weekend, to make a post about relationships, and how to know when to get out of them, and the reasons why or why not, mostly pertaining to my friend Smokey and the jerk that she's married to. Our last conversation about him revolved around him not respecting her. Not in the "he cheats/flirts with other women, abuses me in some way, treats me like crap" kind of way, but more in the buying things that they can't afford behind her back (he built a computer for $1000 when they both have laptops, using a credit card that he got behind her back because she'd already said no), not respecting her opinions and decisions when he thinks he's right, manipulating her into closing the organization that she and I were running with little help from him. And the kicker is, he convinced her to go off of birth control by telling her about all of the chemicals, hormones, blah blah blah. Then, he complained about having to use condoms with "his own wife". And so she decided to use the rhythm method, despite the fact that her period is a goddamn crapshoot as far as when (or if) it will come on. Do you see where I'm going? She told me yesterday morning that she's 7 weeks pregnant. I'm convinced that she would have finally left him within a year if this hadn't happened. Now there's no end in sight. She didn't want kids at all. Never. She talked about maybe adopting older kids, but SHE DID NOT WANT TO GIVE BIRTH, and even joked about being the first one in the abortion line if he ever got her pregnant. He, of course, wants a load of kids. So why, when I spoke to her this morning, was she all giddy and talking about how she was more excited than she thought she would be? That for this to happen, it must have been meant to be.

Knowing her for the past 2 years has been like watching a feminist get slowly bludgeoned to death. Now, feminism isn't about hating babies and not having children and hating men, it's about choice. Women nowadays may have the legal choice to have an abortion, but for most women the choice still depends on what the man wants, and it's easy for a man to decide that a woman should have a baby before she's ready. He would've physically stopped her from having an abortion, I'm sure of it, and since she's still trying to work out the relationship, what choice does she have? She never wanted kids, and I always got the feeling that she was trying to bide her time before she got the nerve to put her foot down and tell him to stop bugging her about it. And now she's pregnant. I know she made the choice to be stupid and use the rhythm method, but she suffers from the arrogance of thinking that she's smarter than everyone else, and never taking advice when offered. To me, over the culmination of 2 years of listening to her talk about their problems, I think that I can safely and accurately say that he does not respect her. He thinks that he knows what's best for her, and has proven time and time again that he will act on these thoughts, against what she wants. She's very trapped in the idea and fantasy of him. This man who's a vegetarian like her, and treats her like someTHING of value (a trophy, in my opinion), and will never leave or cheat on her (he's too possessive for that), and the same revolutionary fantasies as her, even though more and more they're settling into a middle class lifestyle (on a working class budget). And now she has an 18 year prison sentence. It already would have been hard for her to leave him, because he makes more money and her dream car is in his name. Now, it will be damn near impossible, because I know he'll make sure that she'll never have a job long enough for her to have her own savings again.

People don't understand how awful it is for a woman to have a kid that she doesn't want. She's acting like she's happy, but Smokey lives in the land of Denial. She keeps herself from experiencing bad things by denying that they're bad and pretending that they're good. It's a very extreme version of turning lemons into lemonade that I've seen her do over and over again, usually leading to a larger, irreversible mess that hurts everyone involved. This time, it will be a child hurt the most. I worry that she may not be able to handle feeling trapped; I've come to realize that she pretends to be really strong to hide that mentally, she's fragile and may have had issues in the past with her mental health.

Sigh. I knew that she would get pregnant eventually, but I hoped that she would have broken up with him before it happened. He always gets what he wants, and it seems that more and more, what she wants is in surrender to what he wants.  I don't want to sound like some nut who hates kids and calls the women who have them breeders.  I love kids, and plan to have the little critters myself someday.  But I plan to wait until I'm making a minimum of $30,000 a year, am settled into a career, preferably married to someone that I think may last a while.  She's broke, appeared to be heading towards a divorce (although, they aren't legally married to start with), and he's been telling her that a puppy was too expensive and messy to get.  Really?  Sigh.  This is so wrong.  I can't see it ending well, however it will end.