"But when the rage subsided, I was no closer than I was before to being a person who didn’t need to cover her ears and yell 'I CAN’T!!!' at the dinner table on a regular basis.When I wasn’t mad, I was deeply depressed about how little I could manage the mothering with which I was being tasked. After an older neighbor found me sobbing in the driveway one day, explaining, through my snotty tears, that it was just so hard to put on a good face for my kids every day, he kindly nodded in understanding and suggested 'maybe you don’t have to.'... I began to imagine a kind of mother who spent her time in ways that actually led to an expansion of herself: the Wild Mom...."
Writes Sarah Wheeler in
"Moms Gone Wild/Motherhood can obliterate you — or it can set you free" (The Cut).
"I wanted... to heal the trauma created by years of giving my body over to others.... And also, I wanted to be ungovernable. But I didn’t want to leave my marriage or my children.... My husband and I stay up late talking about our relationship.... That I sometimes fantasize about other men. That I can’t imagine never having the experience of making another woman orgasm. He doesn’t share all of my feelings, but he has his own wildness that my explorations inspire him to invest in...."
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50 comments:
This will surely end well!
She sounds incredibly self-centered and ungrateful for what she has.
The older neighbor -- "maybe you don't have to" -- is right. I had to learn to turn to my toddlers and say, "I'm starting to get angry." Give a warning. "I can't help you for a few minutes." I had to be honest, though, and not a perfect, ever-patient mother.
If you bottle that up -- fatigue, the need to have two minutes of peace -- you end up in Wild Mom territory. Don't let yourself get so overwhelmed.
Life's a bitch.
Wait until the husband shows up with the new mistress for his explorations.
I love that after several millennia, this woman has discovered for the world that motherhood is tough.
A few suggestions for her:
1) Right, whatever, have an affair.
2) Sure, go do some drugs if you wish.
3) And good grief, girl, do not deny yourself the experience of making another woman orgasm!
And, oh yeah, above all...grow up.
A half-century after "Mom goes on strike" articles and they're still running stories of women proudly showing off their snotty tears. It seems glaringly obvious that celebrating emotional fragility -- and encouraging such displays in adolescents -- is harmful to women and girls, and our whole society.
Fellow citizens: be aware that these people vote.
Gentlemen: remember the hot/crazy/writer matrix.
Children: choose your parents more wisely.
Wow. She needs Jesus in her life. The time spent navel gazing could be better spent with her family, enjoying them instead of thinking about her career or other men or other women. She probably wouldn't feel so stressed.
ChatTheCut
History is going to be amazed at how selfish and self-important we have become. does she imagine that she is the only person in the world who hates her life and has unfulfilled fantasies and dreams? Welcome to humanity honey. Buckle up Buttercup, that's life for the vast majority of people. You take your joys when and where you can and get on with being an adult. Nobody grew up wanting to be a sanitation worker, or an accountant, or a subsistence farmer in the Sudan.
Yet Another Psycho...
Volunteer in the medical field and get some perspective on life. Medical professionals have to deal with life problems and the emotion they create, but they have no time for "rage" and screaming.
I wanted to write something about her but was overcome by commenter rage.
"I'm having every problem that every other human being in history has ever experienced, but somehow it's all unique and special because it's happening to me!"
That's the gist I'm getting from this. What a narcissistic society we have become!
"...I was no closer than I was before to being a person who didn’t need to cover her ears and yell 'I CAN’T!!!' at the dinner table on a regular basis."
I CAN'T!!! is liarspeak for I won't.
Is Sarah Wheeler a married woman with an authentic husband? (Bull dykes don't count.) Or (2) is she a divorced feminist who made her ex-husband so miserable he fled at the first chance he got. Or (3) is she a have-it-all career woman rearing her spawn solo.
If the former, Mrs. Wheeler needs to have a long and polite conversation with Mr. Whomever. Perhaps a solution can be found that doesn't involve rage. (NB There no surer way to rear a pact of anti-social criminals instead of citizens than to display rage to your children. The fact that Wheeler doesn't understand this suggests to me she is a developmentally retarded basket case who ought to have had her tubes tied at puberty.)
If case 2 or case 3 applies, no one "tasked" her with mothering. (Good fucking grief, where did Sarah Wheeler pick up this pseudo-tactical vocabulary? Binge-watching Mission Impossible movies?) She chose to carry her children full-term to birth rather than murdering them according to feminist doctrine. Reproduction is like eating out, if you choose the steak, no one is going to let you pay for chicken.
"Wait until the husband shows up with the new mistress for his explorations."
And says I couldn't imagine never having the experience of making another woman orgasm.
BTW: "making a woman orgasm" is a carelessly rape-y way to put it.
. . . reading the linked article . . .
1. Okay, she consults an 'intuitive' (aka, psychic) for $200, who advises her to 'lose control,' meaning drink too much tequila and/or get a hotel room and have a one-nighter with a stranger, or failing that, masturbate. Money well spent!
2. She sees a therapist who tells her she's a 'cheating risk.' Is seeing a therapist a requirement for all upper-middle class New Yorkers? It sure seems like it. Maybe it's just the women?
3. Then the pandemic, and she's all-in on the 'mom-rage' and 'rage walks.' Massages and Zumba just aren't doing the job! Most of her friends seem to be into screwing strangers or taking drugs, or both. She's jealous.
Lots and lots of self-indulgent wallowing in self-pity about not being the most amazing and enlightened person in the universe. Being normal is just so . . . boring.
Gee, sorry about that, lady. Welcome to the party.
What is it in men that draws them to women like Sarah Wheeler, and then keeps them there? I can imagine an answer to the first part, but the answer to the second is a head scratcher. To the extent that Sarah is trying to be Everywoman, the article is an unintended advocacy for putting women in burkas and harems, binding their feet, and chaining them to the metaphorical bedpost. You need to keep wild animals in cages.
Sarah, luckily for all of us, is not Everywoman.
Althouse at 10:40. That was the loudest literal LOL I've had in ages!
At times, it must be embarrassing to be a woman. Yes, life can be hard, but how does sharing a petulant tantrum with the world help?
My mom had seven kids, and that must have been excruciating at times. Maybe that's why everyone smoked in the 60's. She found a balance. Mom did what she could and got what she needed, and it worked out.
""making a woman orgasm" is a carelessly rape-y way to put it."
E. Jean Carroll rape-y?
Or Whoopi rape-y rape-y?
If she had simply said something like "be with a woman," I think we could chalk it up to the performative bisexuality that is trending in some circles. The clinical specificity of her desire, though, suggests that it is definitely going to happen.
The lack of emotional control is bound to be scary for her kids. I have to think she's on meds; they seem like the wrong ones.
“ Althouse at 10:40. That was the loudest literal LOL I've had in ages!”
She couldn’t imagine never making another commenter LOL.
Going off to someplace private to give vent to your rage often just gets you more riled up. It doesn't solve anything. The neighbor might have been more helpful if, instead of saying, "you don't have to," he just said "it's ok to feel that way." It's normal to feel that way. Most parents have violent thoughts about their children. Just don't act on them.
When you get married, you promise yourself to that other person. If there are things you didn't do that you now can't do, well, that's the price of growing up and having an adult life. An adult life has its own benefits and joys that you can't get any other way. Everyone who becomes an adult puts away childish things.
You don't have to get everything you want to live a happy life, but you do have to be okay with not getting those things you don't get. Gratitude helps. Therapy helps. Sometimes medication helps. But trying to sow your wild oats when you have a spouse and children in the house isn't going to be good for anybody.
This woman is a real peach. Her Divorce Memoir will be excellent.
“Volunteer in the medical field and get some perspective on life. Medical professionals have to deal with life problems and the emotion they create, but they have no time for "rage" and screaming.”
This is true, however medical professionals have a high degree of burnout and many suffer PTSD eventually. Years in the medical field is rewarding, but is can also be life changing in ways that leave a mark.
There seems to be a thing with the people who grew up online. A feeling or experience isn't worth having, or worth mentioning publicly, without turning it into a little lesson for other people.
I have 20- and 30- something year old friends who like to post pretty pictures of themselves on Instagram. But they can't just post the photo. They always have to caption it with some encouragement that other women see themselves as beautiful.
Btw, this is the kind of criticism that broke Dooce, the mommy blogger who committed suicide that Althouse posted about yesterday afternoon. It's entirely voluntary and embarrassing. People should stop.
Btw, this is the kind of criticism that broke Dooce, the mommy blogger who committed suicide that Althouse posted about yesterday afternoon. It's entirely voluntary and embarrassing. People should stop.
"Wait until the husband shows up with the new mistress for his explorations."
'And says I couldn't imagine never having the experience of making another woman orgasm.'
Brava!
"After an older neighbor found me sobbing in the driveway one day, explaining, through my snotty tears, that it was just so hard to put on a good face for my kids every day"
That's the price one pays for being the first mother in the history of the World.
Seriously. It's safe to say there have been at least eight billion mothers before you.
You. Are. Not. Special.
Motherhood, fatherhood, too. Welcome to adulthood.
That kid is gonna be fucked up.
Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. Reconcile.
That said, motherhood and fatherhood are the hardest jobs you will ever love. Welcome to Earth. Welcome to the human race.
Inga said... Years in the medical field is rewarding, but is can also be life changing in ways that leave a mark.
--
Yeah, and those guv/hospital Covid protocol$ required a very special sort of callousness.
"Inga said...
There were quite a few bearded beer bellied older protestors there. Prime candidates for the ICU and a brand spanking newly bleached ventilator in about two weeks.
4/24/20, 5:29 PM
Here’s my advice regarding motherhood, and fatherhood:
Shut the fuck up and get on with it.
- Rafe
The hostess notwithstanding, in my nearly 50 years around this rock, affluent white women are the worst species known to man. There is an awful gene injected in them. Especially after losing sex drive
I'm not THAT old (lol) - but things sure have changed. I pushed myself to grow/become a better, stronger person. I addressed my flaws, or at least tried to. Not a perfect mother, lost my temper at times, etc. But I was NOT PROUD of it and certainly didn't celebrate it.
These days - babymoons, moms trips, spa days, me time. All new and self-centered. Doesn't seem to me that any of it will end well. Or make happier mothers, or healthier kids. Or stronger marriages. Or anything.
All feels like first world problems to me.
My mom, an immigrant from Norway who didn’t really speak English until her 20s, managed just fine. She just let us run feral, 1970s style. Sure there were bumps in the road but the four siblings of us turned out fine.
“Yeah, and those guv/hospital Covid protocol$ required a very special sort of callousness.”
Walter, older fat people were more likely to have a bad outcome from getting Covid. You think it’s callous to outrightly say what they might have subjected themselves to by being in a large crowd at that time? People were being put on vents to save their lives. You are a strange one.
It's not that hard. Billions of people do it. Sheesh, lady. Chill,
If I regularly had to stay up all night talking about my relationship, I might welcome a divorce.
Mothers that can’t handle motherhood. Fathers that can’t handle fatherhood. Women without a trace of femininity. Men too intimidated by the responsibilities of masculinity to even try.
Boomers suck. They miserably failed the generational test of Covid with their selfishness and hysterics. But the X’ers suck as much or more, for so blindly accepting the thin-gruel nonsense of their parents.
This goes a long way toward explaining the fentanyl deaths among the young. Put that basket case through Parris Island. She needs some of that "transformative training".
Walter... I for one am convinced that walking down the grocery store aisles against the arrows marked on the floor was a major contributor to Covid deaths, along with blue neoprene gloves.
"Boomers suck. They miserably failed the generational test of Covid with their selfishness and hysterics."
The boomers I know were as frustrated as anybody with the covid theatrics and are as devoted to their families as anybody else. Maybe painting 70 million people with the same brush is not a productive endeavor?
“The boomers I know were as frustrated as anybody with the covid theatrics and are as devoted to their families as anybody else. Maybe painting 70 million people with the same brush is not a productive endeavor?”
When I say “Boomers” I’m referring to the mindless CNN-sponge who can’t handle 30 seconds of critical thinking. Natch.
Gahrie,
"...or a subsistence farmer in the Sudan."
Now hold on a moment! The South Sudanese subsistence farmers I lived among were, in general, far happier and more well-adjusted than this sad creature.
I am going to guess that this writer grew up in a Christian fundamentalist household.
That was exhausting to read. She and those she writes about are putting so much judgment on themselves. It's they themselves putting all this pressure on, to have it all, to be the perfect mother while also working and cooking and whatever. Why do they feel this way? What's gotten them to think that way?
There's extensive research that shows that kids who are NOT obsessed over by their parents, whose every waking moment is NOT scheduled with planned activities, are happier and better adjusted. Tired of spending every single after-school minute chauffeuring the kids from baseball to soccer to dance to gymnastics? Just stop. The kid will be fine.
Worn out because the kids have been underfoot all day long? Do what our grandparents (and some of our parents) did. Tell them to get out of the house and not come back until the streetlights come on. Data shows that "stranger danger" is massively lower than it was in the 1970s and before. It's not a big risk. Tell them if they really can't think of something to do, you will find them something, and they won't like the chores you find for them.
It's overwhelming because many of those people seem to choose to make it overwhelming. A lot of them seem unable to find happiness within themselves, and are craving external validation, from their spouses, their friends, perfect strangers (for some of those "I'll just go get laid by some strange men" women). You can't ultimately get validation from others. You can only provide it yourself. There will never be some magic moment where "ahhhhh, now it's all better!"
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