To the Women of my life

I've had quite a lot of women in my life. Mothers, sisters, teachers, aunts, cousins, friends and even lovers. Each of these women have left a mark on me. Some have died, some are still alive. I have made them happy, disappointed them, annoyed them, amused them, flattered them, ashamed them and I still suffer the consequences of all my actions good and bad. One thing however all of them had in common was a personal network of female friends and relatives who they could rely on to support them in times of crisis and joy.

You can never have a relationship with a woman on her own. You'll have a relationship with her and her network, albeit at a distance. This network will monitor you, criticize you, suggest changes to be made in you and generally see to the wellbeing and downfall of your relationship. They will directly and indirectly influence the way you are perceived and will also provide diverse views on the suitability of this relationship. Whatever kind of relationship you will have with the women in your life you will share with the network in hers. This network also serves a very important purpose to women. When relationships get grim they serve a support network to grieve with, laugh with, vilify and rebuild the self esteem of the woman. When the relationships are going well they will serve as a mirror to show how well you have it. Sometimes this network will destroy a relationship indadvertedly or deliberately. They still will, however, lend their support when this happens.

We men, on the other hand, tend not to have this personal relationship with our networks. Most of our networks only touch on the surface of what we are. We have business networks, social networks and family networks. While elements in these networks may overlap, we do not have personal networks. We do not have the emotional crutch we can rely on when we need it. We maintain a distance around us, with our male friends, and limit interaction to those areas that a network is meant for. A man's emotional crutch is the women in his life. These are the only people we ever seem to touch with on a deep emotional level and rely on as our emotional crutches, and very erratic crutches these are. Mothers die, sisters get married, friends move into other relationships and even lovers sometimes give up on you. This is probably why it is a devastating experience for a man to love and lose. When we lose our lovers we do not just lose a relationship, we lose our only emotional crutch. We lose the only outlet we have for release. The loss, for us men, is greater then the face we put on it.

I am proud of the women in my life, past and present. I know there are probably a few things that I'd wish had not happened but in sharing their lives with mine they have made me what I am today. I wouldn't be me without them. To the women in my life I thank you for having been there. Happy belated Women's Day.