Learning our place.

[enlightenmequick]

The article is on the subject of rape, but to me it turns into a very excellent narrative on how we are socialised to give in, be polite, not cause a fuss etc, and how this plays right into rapists hands.
social conditioning

I didnt grow up in a violent household, but I ended up in a violent relationship.

I've often wondered why? My parents rarely argued and were the type to hold hands on the couch and I was always walking in on them kissing. Unfortunately at age 15 my dad cheated, confessed 3days later and my mum threw him out.

I ponder all the time why girls hold onto boyfriends we hen they treat them appallingly why is it an enmass response?

This article goes someway to given me an explanation.

I did something not too long ago (certainly can't blame it on youth) that I didnt want to do. Accept I didn't turn it into words in my head, is, I didn't vocalise it even to myself, if that makes sense? It was just a feeling that I had but didn't improve on. I wasn't coerced or pressured in any way. I wasn't even asked, he just did something to indicate what he wanted me to do and I did it.

I think, reading that article that I have internalised the ....insert...bitch mantra.
When you believe it to seem reasonable, you don't feel you can say no.

It's pretty frightening for me to realise OK'm this pre-programmed. Iyswim?

Is this making sense?

Well, apart from the typos!

It makes perfect sense enlighten.

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible...

Proper lightbulb there, thanks for linking OP.

WRT your own situation you are making plenty of sense and it is frightening to realise how sometimes you think you are making a choice, but really it's no choice at all. You were probably coerced because social pressure is a form of coercion too.