Throughout a lot of my life, I have had this crisis of not
being the favorite. I’ve noticed it in a lot of different aspects and situations
and while it might sound mildly dramatic, I’m not looking for attention; it’s a
fact. I live it every day of my life. And this whole idea of a double standard,
or the propensity to favor one person over the other, is absolutely
infuriating.
I especially become disgruntled when this brand of double
standard occurs in a professional environment. I am a person who prides
themselves on hard work. Sure, everyone has their moments, and I’m sure that I
can have them too, but primarily, I make a very conscious effort to go above
and beyond what is expected of me. I have an addictive personality and I become
obsessed with doing the most thorough, absolutely excellent job I possibly can.
I like to spend my time staying occupied and up to date with things so that I
don’t start to lag behind. And as a chronically neurotic individual, the habit
of staying active helps to cure me. I have an absolute plethora of reasons to
continue working hard.
I will admit: I can be timid, and sometimes even lacking in
confidence. And to be fair, that is the kind of attribute that perpetually
plagues neurotic people. But I don’t believe that makes me a lower caliber
individual than anyone else. If anything, I think it just keeps me humble. I
just feel that sometimes it might make me look as though I don’t know what I’m
doing and that isn’t the case. Like maybe sometimes, this lack of outward
confidence gives the impression that I’m not smart. And that just isn’t true.
Because of all of this, I have had the lifelong issue of
being overlooked. I have come to terms with the realization that I’ll never be
anyone’s “favorite” and maybe that’s alright. It is certainly a lot less
pressure. It’s a lot less stressful to just be yourself rather than who people
want you to be.
Men have had every
advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so
much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books
to prove anything. –Jane Austen, Persuasion
But it has been my experience that double standards can also
occur in more of a romantical sense. I have seen a lot more favoritism when it
comes to interpersonal relationships. I’ve seen it with my friends and their
boyfriends, and I have even mildly seen it within my own marriage. I feel like
it’s just commonplace between men and women.
These double standards pop up in regards to money, being
social, and how you spend your quality time. And while it may be a common and
natural occurrence within a relationship, you are still left with the annoying
question of, why is it okay for him and
not for me? Why can he spend money on useless things but she has to
virtually record every penny for his inspection? Why can he act like a child
and make her jealous but she can’t even post pictures on Facebook for fear that
he’ll whine about it for days? Why can he have a night out with friends that
includes female ones, but she can’t even converse with male friends about
normal, daily things?
What now seems like a million years ago, I was in something
of a chaotic relationship. The details of most of it have been highly
catalogued in this blog, so for the sake of time, I’m going to gloss over
almost all of it. What is important to take away from it in this instance is
the chronic selfishness, the propensity for a double standard to live inside
every aspect of this relationship.
He was mildly metro, kind of ironically so because you
couldn’t look at him and see it, and an insanely big spender. He loved to shop but would buy the majority
of his clothes in various shades of black because he was allegedly colorblind.
But I was on a budget and he scrutinized every cent I spent,
despite the fact that I worked more hours and made more money than him. He
would go on day trips to monotonous skater stores that somehow STILL carry all
the same clothes that they did ten years ago but I was unable to upgrade my
wardrobe. (I think him not wanting me to better myself was all part of his
master idiot plan to keep me under his thumb. It was just another way that he
maintained control. But as we all know, I clearly
have a shoe problem…) If he bought one more pair of all black Etnies, I swear
to God I was going to lose it.
We had similar discrepancies regarding friends of the
opposite sex. I obviously wasn’t allowed to have any, under ANY circumstances,
save for the preapproved fellow firefighters he worked with and even then, it
was only permitted in his presence. God forbid I made eye contact too long with
the waiter at Chili’s, all manner of Irish-Italian hell would break loose. I
learned early on that the few male friends I did have prior to meeting him
would have to take a backseat. If I wanted to continue this morbid, twisted
relationship with him, there just was no other way.
He, on the other hand, had an absolute multitude of female
friends that I was supposed to just be okay with. One of them was a girl that
he had briefly dated prior to me. I remember they would have these long
telephone conversations about God only knows what. (Although I guess to be
fair, he wasn’t much of a texter. But realistically, what twenty-one year old
male sits around and talks on the phone for hours on end? This one,
apparently.)
He had other female friends from work and school, who would
join him on drunken exploits and weekly trips to Busch Gardens. And I, his
allegedly beloved girlfriend, was either busting my shapely, Italian rear-end
at one of my TWO jobs or uninvited to the party, for whatever reason. It was
pure, unsolicited nonsense.
And also to be
fair, I believe that we both know full well why I was conveniently uninvited.
How else could he convince the girl he was habitually cheating on me with that
I had been made to sleep on the couch? How else could he trick her into
thinking that he had kicked me to the curb but was nice enough to keep a roof over
my head until I found a place to go? How else could he spin this whole
monstrous scenario to make him look like the good guy who wasn’t
cheating on his girlfriend? Because obviously, my being there would have put a
pin in all that. I would have shut that shit down.
Do you really believe
that everything historians tell us about men, or about women, is actually true?
You ought to consider these histories have been written by men, who never tell
the truth except by accident. –Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women
To be honest, I just feel like this weird sense of
favoritism is something that plagues us everywhere. I have this friend who has
been with the same man for something like five years. He is one of those guys
who has an excuse for everything. And what I mean by that, more specifically,
is that he blames his allegedly troubled upbringing for his godawful behavior.
For example, there has been talk in their relationship about a future
commitment. My friend has brought up, multiple times, the idea of “next”. She
has questioned what the next step is and where they’ll go from here. And to be
honest, I don’t think that’s too terribly much to ask after five goddamn years.
He claims he can’t promise any sort of commitment because of
the fears brought on by his latch key childhood. I’m sorry; that is the dumbest
thing I have ever heard. After something like five years, you’re invested.
Forgive me for being sort of insensitive about this but being with one single
person for two years or more implies commitment. So get over yourself.
The other thing too is that sometimes being in a
relationship gets stale. You have got to liven things up every now and again,
especially when you’ve been together for a really long time.
So naturally, you can understand my confusion when this
aforementioned commitment-phobe whined to his girlfriend about how their
relationship was boring, how she was “lame” and never wanted to do anything;
but two days later rejects any sort of chance to be social with her. You don’t
get to complain about the death of your romantic social life and then refuse to
come out when your “lame” girlfriend plans something fun. Just be real, act
like a grown up for once in your pathetic life, and stop using double standards
to hide behind your dishonest double life.
Phew! #EndRant
Moral of the Crazy:
Not to sound like a bratty five year old, but the double standards? The
favoritism? It isn’t even remotely fair. Especially considering the world that
we now live in, where everyone is advocating for something, where fairness is
no being taken into consideration by the goddamn government, you would think
that such behavior would be deemed unacceptable. It should be unacceptable
everywhere.
And most especially in the workplace, where you’re literally
being paid for your commitment to the team, for the work that you put into the
company on a daily basis. It seems unfair to praise half the employees and
shower them with kindness and promotions, while the rest of us stew in our
alleged mediocrity. When you work just as hard, if not a lot goddamn harder,
than someone else, you ought to be recognized for it. Not continually
overlooked, over and over again, while others climb the ranks simply because
they’re shiny and new. It’s hurtful and frustrating. And it leaves you with the
mentality: why bother working hard when someone else is getting all my credit?
And obviously, I’m a grown up; I realize that that isn’t the
mentality you should be having in a professional setting, or really in any setting,
for that matter. But it’s difficult to keep pushing through when you’re so
noticeably underappreciated. I saw it at my old job all the time, which never
made sense to me because it was a childcare provider. You would think that
everything would be about the children; not about who the director was most
fond of. You would think that in the workplace especially, there would be no
favoritism. It would be about who works the hardest, who is the most
dependable, who has the best attitude and the biggest motivation to do better.
Not about whom the person in charge likes the most.
But like a dear, dear friend of mine once told me when we
had this conversation, “that’s the kind of stuff honest people say when they
can’t get promoted”.
Fate has her golden
sons, and her bastards. –Jennifer Mardoll, The
Sarrington Estate
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