Love is a battlefield:
exchanging competition for loyalty
By Emily Fultz
This article is not about romantic love. This is about the love that women owe each other as a gender, as a means to improve society as a whole. Yes, every human being owes every other human being a certain amount of love and respect so that we don’t collapse in on ourselves. However, this article is not about everyone, it is about women treating each other with a certain degree of loyalty. It is a relationship that needs to be discussed.
In my thirty years of life, I have been lucky to establish solid friendships with a handful of really amazing women. This has been the result of years of trial and error. It has also been the result of an internal shift if my own perspective about how meaningful friendships with women are to my own existence.
As with many women I know, I spent most of my childhood and teenage years preferring the friendships of males to females. Men seemed much easier to connect with. I found it easier to talk to a guy about music or books, than it was to have to reassure a girl that her hair looked fine or provide condolences that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character died in that movie. For over half of my life, I felt that befriending males was much less exhausting than befriending my own gender. Since then, I learned that I just hadn’t met the right females to be friends with yet. I also learned that the females I found to be exhausting were that way for valid reasons that have are the result of thousands of years of social conditioning.
Women can be very cruel to each other. As a high school teacher, it is disgusting to see how mean teenage girls are to each other on the internet or at school by isolating each other or discussing hugely personal matters behind each others’ backs. From what I have observed, when men have disagreements, they tend to address the issue once and move on. With women, it’s much more invasive and they carry the actions and words used against them as an attack on their identity for a long time.
As many women can relate to, I have had my fair share of betrayal by other women during high school and beyond: “best friends” sleeping with boyfriends, encroaching on men that they knew I was emotionally invested in, talking about me behind my back, vandalizing my car, leaving dead animals on my doorstep, prank calling my house, still being friends with friends that slept with my boyfriends, slandering me on the internet, stealing from me. Actually, I hope many women can’t relate to this, but everyone has their own story of hurt and betrayal. (Side Note: I find it intriguing that in areas of infidelity; women tend to blame the other woman instead of the man in the middle of it. It’s easier to despise someone you feel is competition, instead of acknowledging that everyone involved let you down.)
I also admit, I’ve said some pretty nasty things about other women or encroached on their territory when I really shouldn’t have. I’ve been cheated on and I’ve also been the other woman, whether physically or emotionally. I am not proud of myself. I have also apologized where necessary throughout all areas of my life. I was young, insecure, and hurt by other women who were young, insecure, and hurt, and I made choices that I thought would validate my worth, but instead would just cause other women to feel insecure and hurt.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Many women thrive on the acceptance of men for their own sense of well-being. This is how we’ve been conditioned to find our worth for thousands of years. We want to be desired, protected, and made to feel valuable by someone who will play with us naked and hold us when we cry. Some women will do anything to have that. They will compromise friendships. They will betray their own gender.
I feel a shift happening, though. Maybe it comes with maturity, or maybe it’s bigger than that. More women are realizing their own worth and also the worth of other women in their lives. It’s not a competition. We are all on the same side. When women side with each other, problems get resolved and we progress as a society. In the professional world, women should help build each other up by encouraging their success instead of feeling threatened by it. When it comes to personal relationships, there are seven billion people in this world. If someone you care about is emotionally invested in someone you become attracted to, respect that boundary and move on. If you decide to cross boundaries in order to feed your own desire, don’t be surprised when a woman who knows her worth will cut you out of her life.
Every woman deserves to feel love, loyalty, and respect. She should especially be able to rely on other women to provide her with that because they know her general struggle. Love is a battlefield, but the battle is between our own egos, neuroses, and fears, not each other.
In my thirty years of life, I have been lucky to establish solid friendships with a handful of really amazing women. This has been the result of years of trial and error. It has also been the result of an internal shift if my own perspective about how meaningful friendships with women are to my own existence.
As with many women I know, I spent most of my childhood and teenage years preferring the friendships of males to females. Men seemed much easier to connect with. I found it easier to talk to a guy about music or books, than it was to have to reassure a girl that her hair looked fine or provide condolences that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character died in that movie. For over half of my life, I felt that befriending males was much less exhausting than befriending my own gender. Since then, I learned that I just hadn’t met the right females to be friends with yet. I also learned that the females I found to be exhausting were that way for valid reasons that have are the result of thousands of years of social conditioning.
Women can be very cruel to each other. As a high school teacher, it is disgusting to see how mean teenage girls are to each other on the internet or at school by isolating each other or discussing hugely personal matters behind each others’ backs. From what I have observed, when men have disagreements, they tend to address the issue once and move on. With women, it’s much more invasive and they carry the actions and words used against them as an attack on their identity for a long time.
As many women can relate to, I have had my fair share of betrayal by other women during high school and beyond: “best friends” sleeping with boyfriends, encroaching on men that they knew I was emotionally invested in, talking about me behind my back, vandalizing my car, leaving dead animals on my doorstep, prank calling my house, still being friends with friends that slept with my boyfriends, slandering me on the internet, stealing from me. Actually, I hope many women can’t relate to this, but everyone has their own story of hurt and betrayal. (Side Note: I find it intriguing that in areas of infidelity; women tend to blame the other woman instead of the man in the middle of it. It’s easier to despise someone you feel is competition, instead of acknowledging that everyone involved let you down.)
I also admit, I’ve said some pretty nasty things about other women or encroached on their territory when I really shouldn’t have. I’ve been cheated on and I’ve also been the other woman, whether physically or emotionally. I am not proud of myself. I have also apologized where necessary throughout all areas of my life. I was young, insecure, and hurt by other women who were young, insecure, and hurt, and I made choices that I thought would validate my worth, but instead would just cause other women to feel insecure and hurt.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Many women thrive on the acceptance of men for their own sense of well-being. This is how we’ve been conditioned to find our worth for thousands of years. We want to be desired, protected, and made to feel valuable by someone who will play with us naked and hold us when we cry. Some women will do anything to have that. They will compromise friendships. They will betray their own gender.
I feel a shift happening, though. Maybe it comes with maturity, or maybe it’s bigger than that. More women are realizing their own worth and also the worth of other women in their lives. It’s not a competition. We are all on the same side. When women side with each other, problems get resolved and we progress as a society. In the professional world, women should help build each other up by encouraging their success instead of feeling threatened by it. When it comes to personal relationships, there are seven billion people in this world. If someone you care about is emotionally invested in someone you become attracted to, respect that boundary and move on. If you decide to cross boundaries in order to feed your own desire, don’t be surprised when a woman who knows her worth will cut you out of her life.
Every woman deserves to feel love, loyalty, and respect. She should especially be able to rely on other women to provide her with that because they know her general struggle. Love is a battlefield, but the battle is between our own egos, neuroses, and fears, not each other.