Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Love Hurts and You Don't Know Why: When Loving Hurts And You Don't Know Why

Product Information

Children from high-drama households often grow up with the idea that tension is an integral part of love. Therefore, the girl who grows up in a high-drama family is an ideal partner for the charismatic, explosive misogynist. The fighting, the tension, and the drama are "normal" and familiar to her. She views the swings from despair to joy, from love to hate, from abuse to intense lovemaking as proof of love.”

These matters came to a head when the band announced a new tour and my daughter asked if we could go to see them together. It would be her first stadium gig and I couldn’t have been more delighted. And then I started to panic. In this superb self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward draws on case histories and the voices of men ad women trapped in these relationships to help you understand you man's destructive pattern, the part you play in it, how to break the pattern, heal the hurt, regain your self-respect, and either rebuild your relationship or find the courage to love a truly loving man.She was beautiful and had a figure that wouldn’t quit. She had her own business and was making a go of it by herself. She’d raised her son and seemed to have done a good job of that. I’d never met anyone like her. She was outgoing and bubbly and enthusiastic about everything I was doing with my life, even about my kids. She was perfect. I started calling all my friends to tell them about her. I even called my mother. I tell you, I never felt like that before. I never thought about anyone so much or dreamed about them all the time like I dreamed about her. I mean, this was really different.

A few years ago, while my daughter was playing with a group of girls at a friend’s house, I overheard one of them prancing around in front of a mirror and wondering out loud if she looked fat. It was just role-play, an imitation of something seen on television or perhaps said by a parent, but it was chilling to hear; an unsettling fantasy of future anxiety. Idealization is a double-edged sword. It feels wonderful and flattering, but it also blinds a woman to the fact that she's doomed to fail. It is impossible to live on the pedestal the misogynist places her on, because there's no margin for error. If she is in a bad mood or displays any behavior that he doesn't like, he views it as a sign of her deficiency. He hired a goddess, and she didn't live up to the job requirements. His contempt and disillusionment with her is all the permission he needs to stop expressing his love for her and to begin criticizing, accusing, and blaming.”

Success!

When we are children our families take care of our basic survival needs; they are also our first and most important sources of information about the world. It is from them that we learn how to think and feel about ourselves and what to expect from others. Our emotional foundations are created by the ways in which our parents treated us, the ways in which they treated each other, the kinds of messages their behavior communicated to us, and the ways in which we handled that information internally.” Children in misogynistic households experience tremendous rage, tension, and frustration. When they see their mothers victimized either psychologically or physically, they become frightened and angry. Unfortunately, they have no more outlet for their anger than their mothers have for theirs. Typically, such children express their feelings in self-defeating ways: psychosomatic complaints, difficulties at school, and depressions. Bedwetting and nightmares are common reactions among younger children. The older child may express his feelings through fighting with his peers, indiscriminate sexual activity, substance abuse, or other forms of antisocial behavior. If a child is also a victim of physical and/or sexual abuse, the symptoms of distress will be much greater.”