“YOU’RE THE ONLY WOMAN I TRUST TO MARRY MY HUSBAND”
Said a South American friend to me once (when living in NY).
They were illegal immigrants (like countless others, especially from South America), I was their friend, and her “plan” for me was: “marry my husband for a few years (a pretend marriage on paper), he’ll get the green card, divorce him, I’ll marry him back and get the green card too, and we’ll all live happily ever after”.
Back then, I refused, and tried to explain to her how outrageous such a request was (a thing which she didn’t understand at the moment).
At any rate, we basically stopped talking to each other for years, until they eventually won the green card lottery and we met once or twice on an amicable basis…. I forgave, but I did not forget…
All those years, the memory of that request remained a sore spot for me, always remembered in a negative light..
Until some time recently, when, seeing how difficult it is for most Italian women to trust me, I remembered those words and saw them in a positive light for the first time ever…..
Not for the request itself, but for the fact that, knowing me well back then, she knew that, had I agreed to such a plan, I would never have presented a danger for her marriage, nor would I have “stolen her husband”….
And, while I thought she was bonkers to ask me such a thing back then, I’VE COME TO APPRECIATE HER WORDS FOR THEIR LEVEL OF TRUST, despite that bonkers nature and context..
For, while that woman-friend trusted me to the point of asking me to “marry her husband”, some Italian women act as if they see me as a “threat” to any males in their extended family, not even someone as close as a husband… even if the issue at hand is contacting them to ask for information over something or the other……. ???!???
I realize this, too, sounds 360 degrees bonkers, given my age, but it happened so many times in the distant and recent past and keeps repeating, even now……
Maybe I should be very “flattered” that such women see some “femme fatale” in me!?!?
An idea which is, in truth, SO FAR REMOVED FROM REALITY to be, again, 360 degrees BONKERS…
But……
I can’t feel flattered,
What I felt, time and time again, was
HURT
at such a level of mistrust…..
While the chapter of “women friendships” in my life has been mostly very bright, here in Italy, it has suffered from repeated blows, and was never stain-free.
Safe to say, in over 90% of the cases, that chapter has, more often than not, been
contaminated……to the point of being radioactive….
WHY ON EARTH????
Is it my status as a foreigner?
Whereby,
in some deep recesses of their psyche,
and despite an outward sheen of openness,
there is an in-built mistrust towards a foreigner, even when she is considered “a friend”?
A mechanism that may be hidden even from the person who acts upon it….?
Is it a Medieval mindset that views a single free-spirit as a threat to the “traditional social order” a.k.a. families, which it is their duty to “protect”????
whereby, again, in some deep Medieval recesses of their psyche,
a free spirit “follows no rules” hence, she can have an ingrained “immorality gene”, and is, hence,
a THREAT?
It certainly sounds ridiculously ANTIQUATED,
especially that nowadays, unlike 50+ years ago, single women are as common in Italy as they are anywhere in the world…….
So WHAT’S THE DEAL with them acting AS IF I were some threat to the males of their pack????!?
Again, NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would look at me and think
“SHE’S a real threat!!”
And, nobody who actually knows me as a person would EVER think that either….
So why ON EARTH do such women act like I were not to be trusted around their men????????
I can’t profess to know where that’s coming from exactly…
But, I have seen it over and over again,
even from some women who are “friends”….
Like a curse….
it rears its head at the most unexpected moments and in the most unwarranted contexts….
Showing just how fragile that “friendship” really is (to them) and how poor their opinion of my character is…
And it is at those moments that I miss my women friendships in Egypt, Germany, and New York,
Of all my friendships with women in Egypt, only once did I have this problem, the rest are women who are STRONG ENOUGH and clear-headed enough to see others outside the “threat-to-males” filter…
women who CAN SEE the existence of a world that does NOT revolve solely around relationships to men and mechanisms to “protect” those relationships (or WHATEVER is going on inside the heads of such women here when they make their calculations about me…)
In Germany, I never had such problems, EVER…
And, in New York as well,
I miss my women friends in NY,
Never, EVER, did I experience such mistrust from them…
Even from women friends whose lives seemed to revolve around “Saturday-night-crusades” to find their life’s partner, and who considered every failed date an ominous defeat.. even women FIXATED on finding a man knew better than to see me as a “threat”…
Besides, there, any differences were accepted, respected, even admired
and NEVER seen as a serious flaw nor treated with covert/overt TOXICITY…..
And, after YEARS of being on the receiving end of hurt after hurt here,
I remember the woman who told me
“YOU’RE THE ONLY WOMAN I TRUST TO MARRY MY HUSBAND”
with gratitude..
because,
here, I’ve seen cases when women did not “trust me” to even talk directly to family members over the phone for something completely objective (like asking for information or a work related issue that only they knew about).
Matter of fact, such a request would be ignored, usually followed by a “communications freeze” on yours truly…
till I “learned my lesson”, that
THE BUCK STOPS HERE…
Talking directly to males in their orbit is
OFF LIMITS…..
Someone might say that this has nothing to do with “protecting their males” from yours truly, and simply that yours truly is a “nuisance” that they did not want to expose their pack to…. HOWEVER, such women did not have a problem granting me direct contact to someone else when that someone else was a woman…..
It felt ALL of these plus some:
INSULTING
DEMEANING
and
PROFOUNDLY MISTRUSTFUL.
Let alone the FACT that, even in my prime, I was NEVER a “femme fatale”, nor was that a part of my character…EVER…..
ANYONE WITH A CRUMB OF INSIGHT into human nature would SEE THAT LOUD AND CLEAR……..
UNLESS
their own deep-rooted PREJUDICES OVERRIDE what is right in front of their eyes…
Of course, this could be about something else altogether:
This could be about those women not TRUSTING THEIR MEN,
And the SWIPES they take at me are just
COLLATERAL…
And if that can happen from some “friends”,
IMAGINE
what can happen from the women who can’t stand my guts……..
An easy way out would be to tell myself it’s all about some closed “small-town-mentality”…..
however,
bearers of that free-range loathing have often had their share of wandering outside the small town long enough NOT TO BE prisoners of the proverbial “frog in the well” mindset..
UNLESS,
it’s a case of
“you can get the girl out of the village but you can’t get the village out of the girl”,
Or,
They project their own insecurities on me,
Or
in some deep recesses of a PRIMAL memory, the world is that of some National Geographic documentary,
where there is an ongoing territorial competition…….
although saying they see me as a “competitor” would be giving myself a certain worth that does not exist for them…
maybe they believe I “see myself as a competitor”, which would be, again, EPIC projection….
or,
it could just be a primal, “lizard brain” kind of thing…..
I don’t know how to explain their
gratuitous,
unwarranted
loathing,
other than that it points to some National Geographic moment, whereby when another animal shows up in their territory, it has to be thrown out…
Metaphorically,
at best, with the “I-wish-I-could-turn-you-into-a-frog” glare-you-downs,
at worst, with verbal jabs akin to the sting of a wasp,
both in its painfulness, and in the POISON it stabs you with…
What I did notice, however, is that such stings often come about when I DARE mention anything about another country I had lived in, because, through their National-Geographic-territorial lens, such reference on my part is nothing but a deliberate stunt to “show off”, presumably, to qualify for
the CROWN of the “QUEEN BEE” …..
the FACT that I actually lived in six countries and that my memory is a mosaic of that history is
COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT….
This is not about facts.
When someone’s TRUTH is regarded as a “offensive”,
When their ACTUAL HISTORY is considered a “fabrication”,
there is something PROFOUNDLY TWISTED at play…..
And I MISS:
The women who do NOT see me as a “threat” to something or the other……
The women who do NOT see my free spirit as a sign of irresponsibility, frivolity, recklessness, untrustworthiness…..
The women who do NOT see any reference to my life and history as a “show” to “steal the limelight” from them..
The women who do NOT MISTRUST EVERY SINGLE THING I SAY AND DO….
I EVEN MISS
that woman who told me, over 20 years ago in NY:
“YOU’RE THE ONLY WOMAN I TRUST TO MARRY MY HUSBAND”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
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