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I have several women I know — and why are there acquaintances, frankly, girlfriends — who, in difficult times, pretend to be «submissive Eastern women.» And the lower their self-esteem, the more diligently they pretend.
History №1
Take, for example, my friend and classmate Natasha. I have known her for a long time and well. I recently came to visit her, just in time for dinner. We sit down at the table, me and her husband Alexei. Alexey throws to his wife in a rather rude tone: “Come on, Natasha, rush about, change the plates, otherwise these are somehow not festive.” Natasha nods and runs to change everyone’s plates.
“But you don’t know how to make tea, do you?” — Alexey continues in the same spirit, and the wife with a sweet smile, without saying a word, hurries to pour new tea leaves. If Natasha comes to visit me, she tries not to stay long so as not to wait for Alexei to call and demand her home. “He is strict with me,” she explains his behavior.
Sometimes she sits up, and Alexey calls and demands. Natasha hurriedly gets ready and goes home. Aleksey is a husband-commander who gives her, a weak woman, instructions. Actually, it’s all a lie.
Alexey is an alcoholic, and for many years he has not decided anything either in their common business or in the family. He hasn’t been in the office for a long time.
Natasha manages their once common office herself. And all the housework, even the one that is conditionally considered masculine, such as carrying heavy loads, repairing and servicing the car — all this is also done by herself, with her manicured pens, or calls for craftsmen or loaders.
When she takes Alexei to rest abroad, he always gets drunk, plays weird, disappears, he is taken away by the local police. Sometimes he is put off the train, and sometimes he is not allowed on the plane. Their vacation is usually full of exotic, high-priced adventures, mostly involving her buying him back, getting him out, and bringing him home. Natasha tells people who are not privy to details that the vacation was expensive and Alexei organized and paid for everything. Alexei frowns, and the uninitiated believe.
In general, the stern “house builder husband” or “oriental man” is a decoration that Natasha herself built and herself encourages everyone to believe in her. Why is she doing this? I think I know why. It seems to me that the «oriental woman» is Natasha’s mink, in which she hides from the unpleasant truth, which she cannot change. Why the mink is the way it is, I don’t know.
History №2
But here’s another example for you. Ksenia, also my close friend, has been together with Anatoly for 15 years, they have a child. Tolya and Ksyusha are great guys, they always did everything together. Together we went on multi-day trips, once even for two months to the Altai, planning every penny, every overnight stay and every hundred grams of food. It was their big adventure together.
We can say that the next big joint adventure was the mortgage. Not as exciting as hiking, but longer and harder
Tolya and Ksyusha are such a husband and wife who have always been one team. Difficult periods they always overcame steadfastly and holding hands. And suddenly, having given birth to a child, Ksyusha realized that as a musician she did not take place, her dreams of a great musical career (she is a pianist) were shattered by work as an accompanist.
And she found herself a new calling: to take place as a mother. To do this, she needs to devote herself entirely to the household, not to go to work, and to declare Tolik the breadwinner and quickly reformat the union with her husband-partner into a relationship “he will decide everything himself.”
Transformations with Xenia began to happen rapidly. I called her recently.
— Ksyusha, how are you, what are your plans?
Yes, we are going to Thailand.
— Cool! And how much does a ticket cost in high season?
— I don’t know, Tolik will decide everything.
Oops, what do I hear: and this is Ksenia — the master of economy, Ksenia, who controls every family penny. I know that they are tight with money now, Tolik is being delayed in his salary. I ask:
— How do you live? How much is enough for a mortgage, for a kindergarten?
— Tolik has some kind of stash.
— Is she enough?
“I have no idea, I don’t even know how many there are.
Do you even know how much he earns?
“No,” Ksyusha answers me in a bored voice.
From this conversation and from Xenia herself, it smells of terrible falsehood. By the way, the husband does not yet realize that she is now an “oriental woman”, and asks her how she will manage to bring her son to kindergarten when she goes to work, and offers to plan the future budget.
Ksenia has only one way to stay at home — to sit with a child and feel like a professional mother and wife, because her career did not take place
For this, a trifle remained — to convince the husband that he is now an “oriental man”, capable of supporting wives and children, no matter how many there are, despite salary delays and mortgages, as well as the fact that they lived in a completely different way for the previous 15 years .
By the way, my classmate Natasha nevertheless left her “decorative” Alexei, and now she has a new boyfriend, 15 years younger than her. She is completely unsure of him, herself and their relationship, and therefore again runs away into her mink «enslaved woman of the East.»
— Well, Natasha, let’s go to a cafe in the evening?
— No, I don’t go anywhere else, my man doesn’t allow it. He wants me to be at home in the evening and wait for him.
What do you think of this phenomenon? Does the role of the “oriental woman” work as a defense?