Mumsnet FWR Guide to De-Programming Yourself From Self-Harming Kindness

Breastfeeding was also an eye-opener for me. There was a real struggle in the early months of putting the baby first. My OH was great at doing all the house stuff though - he’d make dinner, put the washing on, do the cleaning etc. Where I really felt the pressure was at being ‘touched out’ after having the baby all day. I just wanted my own space and body to myself.

Lots of this comes from how kids are brought up.

Very trite example but... Dh fucking horrendous with Xmas cards etc. It does my head in. He's increasingly said however that my handwriting is nicer and I'm starting to think it's partly true, but also that in his family his mum always did the cards so it feels right that I do (to him).

I am trying very hard not to do the buying etc but what often overcomes this is that I want a relationship with his young nieces and nephews and I don't want them questioning where the sodding card is.

Ive been channelling ds into making and sending cards and letters (when he wants to!) and I'm glad now at almost 6 he suggests making a card to either send for a birthday or to say thank you.

It especially pisses me off that a uni friend of both of ours, v close to him, always writes the Xmas card to us. Dh would do so but I have to organise it.

To deal with this imbalance I don't do any of the car stuff. Which I know doesn't help Marion, but we also have the fucking laundry/ bedsheet/ washing machine issue here. I don't iron though and pre mumsnet did point out that a) I don't iron my own stuff unless absolutely necessary and b) he's never ironed my stuff nor would offer to.

I've a lot to say about breastfeeding too but I'll stop here. Actually, it was breastfeeding that probably radicalised me and started the de programming journey.

Yup mumsnet has been my most effective deprogramme too.

Last decade I had years of counselling and she challenged me to say 'no' whilst looking at myself in a mirror. I actually couldn't do it.

Fast forward a lot of years and after becoming a parent and some intensive time on FWR I've got rid of a lazy, misogynistic chancer from my team. The last question he asked me before leaving 'have I done what you wanted with x task' I said 'yes' when I should have said 'no, but you know that so now fuck off out of this building'. So whilst I ultimately won the war with him I am still fighting the war with myself.

This is a very interesting thread. I have often looked back on my failed marriage and wished I had been kinder.
I was a real bitch at times and my ex said I was bullying. Ive spent a lot of time examining my behaviour.
At the root of it though, I defended my career ferociously, and vocalised my dissatisfaction with the unfair division of labour. Perhaps it was he he could have been kinder.
The question as to where we would be had we been the recipient of the care and kindness we have given out? Well I think that would probably put paid to the gender pay gap in one fell swoop!

Mumsnet was my deprogram.

I was given short shrift by anyfucker on the relationship board. I literally had to turn my thoughts inside out to understand how conditioning had made me.

Excellent thread thank you.

I love the idea of Beryl (except that my own aunt Beryl was pretty cool so I'll have to have a Marion or something.)

Learning to say No has been excellent.

Sometimes there's a different way to say no which I've become clever at, avoiding the actual word but still none of the cowing or sorries, directing a different option . a bit like talking to toddlers

Possession of a vagina is not a designated responsibility to carry the responsibility of anyone who tries to hand it to you.

This x 100000000

I read these threads and think I must be the most selfish person in the world :( Not the vaguest shadow of a Beryl has ever figured in my life.

Following with great interest.

I've tried so hard to not socialise my daughter like this but I feel like I'm still fucking up. A few months ago it was my toddler DD's birthday. Towards the end of the party a few of our closest friends were still around with their little boys. My daughter started opening all of her presents and two boys also started tearing into them. DD was happy regardless so I didn't say anything because I didn't want to look like I was being an awkward spoil sport I did talk to her later and said that I shouldn't of let them and I was sorry. She wasn't arsed but I still feel terrible about it. Up until that point I thought I was doing a good job not teaching her all the fucking horrible gender role stuff. I'm not trying to escape the blame, I know ultimately it was up to me to stop it, but in my group of friends we all discipline each others children and none of us stopped it when I was thinking about it afterwards I know quite a few little girls who I think would happily share the joy of ripping open presents with there friends but I don't think any of the little boys I know would.

I spent all my early 20s lost and confused - like most people - but when I was musing about life I always came to the conclusion that as long as I was a kind person that was all that mattered this mantra has not served me well so far. Thanks Beryl!

I used to volunteer at a bf support group. The amount of Beryl’s Who put their men before their baby and establishing breastfeeding was heartbreaking. Women crying because they can’t please their men and their baby.

^^^ This!

I see it every week - it’s incredibly common. Women torn between being kind to their DH or mum or MIL, and doing the thing they’ve chosen to do for their baby.

Couple of musings from me after catching up with the thread:

1. The whole self sacrifice thing was a sort of stealth indoctrination for me. Gender expectations growing up as a child that I was a "good girl" for doing chores around the house. So feeding off that praise as a way to gain love and then once that chore became an expectation, I needed to add another to gain more praise and affirmation. And if I stopped doing something that then became expected it turned into a negative experience for me.

My brother never had these expectations or need for this kind of affection through praise.

Luckily he grew up with more open eyes to equality somehow.

1. An almost addiction to the martyrdom of it. Enjoying watching others enjoy the fruits of your labour, gaining pleasure from putting others before you.

So indoctrinated that the thought of putting ones self first becomes something completely alien and uncomfortable to me, and the others.

I didn’t grow up with a Beryl role model, a father and grandfather who were my role models. Interestingly they probably had their own Beryl’s.

I got to 29, before the patriarchy put me back in my place. The moment I became a mother my career was over.

I can see I am expected to have a Beryl. My eldest has a Beryl and I tell her off for it. My ds acts like he deserves everything, my youngest dd copies him, so I don’t think it’s bad for anyone to put themselves first.

Teach our daughters to be assertive.

I volunteered to help out on an open day, I asked a male teacher to get me a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. He obliged, the rest of the male staff were gobsmacked. I was busy setting up a display and felt I deserved one, and he did ask if I needed any help. They told me I’d been there 5 minutes and already telling people what to do. I told the headmaster I expect my husband to bring me a cup of tea every morning as a way of saying thank you for having to do his laundry. My husband probably earns more than he did (as I did once). I’m support staff and no seniority at all, however I have zero problem in looking big blokes with big salaries in the eye and speaking as an equal.

It does help being tall.

I used to volunteer at a bf support group. The amount of Beryl’s Who put their men before their baby and establishing breastfeeding was heartbreaking. Women crying because they can’t please their men and their baby. :(

It makes all the difference.

If you got brought up to be the one who had to do the cooking for dad and brothers, and to clean the house and do the laundry and ironing for the men in the household, because they were men and I was a girl.

None of that seems particularly relevant to explain a poster's husband becomes incapable of doing the laundry after getting married.

Lass, perhaps you had a good equal upbringing without any abuse?

Whereas I think a few of us here, did suffer abuse in our childhood or youth, due to us being female, and it takes a while to get over it.

So well done you, lass! For not having being sexually assaulted, repeatedly while you were young! Well done you!
Some of us were not so lucky.

If I am wrong, and you were abused for being female when you were young, then I'd ask how you got over it to become the poster you currently represent!

We actually had a discussion once where DH claimed he couldn't tell the dirty from the clean laundry baskets (we have both, the latter is for washed but as yet unsorted laundry). He did this with a straight face - this is why he couldn't help with the laundry (or even get dirty clothes in the basket), and I got so far as saying I'd MAKE A BLOODY SIGN for the laundry baskets before I checked myself. FFS. DH has a PhD but apparently can't tell clean from dirty laundry? Bloody Beryl. What the hell was wrong with me?!

I don't understand how women allow this sort of situation to arise. You married an intelligent, presumably fully functioning adult so why put up with his behaving like a child.I have never in over 30 years done any of my husband's laundry or ironed a shirt. Why should I ? He did it before he met me. I am fussy about temperature and spin cycles for my clothes so I do my own.

Christmas is approaching and there will be the usual martyred complaints from posters about having to do everything. I have never bought a birthday or Christmas present or card for any of his family . I don't expect him to do so for my friends and family and what he does for his family is up to him.

So far as bringing up our son there wasn't even a discussion that this would be anything other than shared equally.

What is being described here does not resonate with my experience

Personally. I think all of us women have been raised with our own personal Beryl, since the day we were born and correctly observed to be female. Beryl has been imposed on us by society since that day.

Yeah, I'm still working on ditching my own personal Beryl, and still currently taking steps!

The one about walking in straight lines when out and about, and not dodging around men, not stepping off the pavement into the road because men are taking up all the pavement, not moving aside for men. Yes! Finding it fascinating!

IfNotNow I feel the same. I am selfish, I always have been, I’m fine with it, I don’t care if people don’t like me. I try to be an honest person, I am loyal and will help out and make effort with friends, but equally if u don’t feel I get it back I stop bothering. All throughout my life I’ve been told my foremost trait is being honest and to the point, some have called me rude and intimidating. This was mainly in early adulthood, I was bullied at school which did affect my self esteem but thinking about it, I think it went a long way to making me how I am. I saw the worst of people, I learned that everyone will stab you in the back, no one can be trusted to help you or have your back. So I’m very cynical about humanity as a whole but I’m proud of sticking to my guns and standing up for myself and what I believe in, both in personal and professional relationships. I’m not unpleasant or offensive, but I don’t bend over backwards for anyone. The question earlier about what different choices would you have made if you’d been shown the compassion and kindness you’ve given to others really resonated because honestly I don’t think I’ve ever given that out in great quantities to anyone

I think I must have have accidentally suffocated Beryl in her sleep as a child because I wish I was less of a selfish bitch!
I mean I'm helpful to people to a point, and I do care, but I'm not subsumed (is that the right word? ) by others needs particularly.
And I'm seen- by men at any rate-as HUGELY opinionated and feisty, which I didn't realise for years. So I'm not kind particularly, but I do stick up for people if they need me to.
RE nuns-I once visited an old nunnery and was reading about their lives. It occurred to me that in medieval times, the smart women would become nuns. When your choices were belong to a man and die in child birth or read books and do gardening, it seems a no brainer!

I've been thinking of the different reactions males and females have to trauma and stress- (nature/nurture?) where males tend to aggressively lash out and women tend to self harm. For example, male prisons are full of violent men, women's prisons are full of non-violent self harmers (bar a few exceptions on both sides).

With all the 'boys will be boys' allowances made for blokes being obnoxious and difficult and the much higher standards for girls, I wonder how much of the self-sacrificing instincts of Beryl are through direct socialisation and how much are actually an indirect 'feminine' reaction to trauma and stress.

Yes I know what you mean.

Since, on the internet, no-one knows you're a dog....

On MN, what is the correct etiquette, when you suspect that posters who imply themselves to be female... are projecting and acting out as typical males, unmistakeably so!!!

(Clutches pearls, collapses gracefully on to nearest fainting couch, demands more gin.).

Where do you think you would be now in your life if you'd received the care, support, consideration and 'kindness' that you've given to others?

I am finding this impossible to imagine. It's too much of a leap. I'd have made totally different choices.

oh. The reason I decided to put myself at #1 was because growing up my family was very abusive and according to them, I was #99 and it was killing me. it was either fight the toxicity which was destroying my soul (or whatever you want to call the thing which makes you "you") or die (by suicide), or just shatter into what felt like irreversible insanity.

Putting myself at #98 wouldn't have helped, nor any of the other numbers. If that makes sense. Can you tell I feel a bit guilty for being #1?

ArkeNOTen Measuring your self worth by how "kind" you are to others, usually ends up being "how much you self sacrifice". Maybe try to find some other quality to measure your self worth?

Okay just slightly joking here but I've always measured my own self worth by... how nice I am to MEEEEE. Sometimes in retrospect I would wind up being too selfish, it's hard to find the right balance at first but this question helped "did I get my needs met without riding roughshod over anybody else?"

That question puts me at #1 but it's a reminder that other people matter too and inadvertently hurting or harming others isn't on.

EXCELLENT thread topic btw arranfan!