Saturday, March 22, 2008

Control Freak

I was going to write about something serious but my trip from NYC to Princeton this afternoon provided too funny of a story to leave unshared. I got on the train all ready to get some school reading done (reading I had blissfully been ignoring the past few days), but my plan was thwarted by a young woman sitting behind me. She called (what I assume to be) her boyfriend and proceeded to talk to him in a really annoying voice for the next hour. I tried to shut out the sound and not listen to her, but it proved impossible. What was funny though was that she pretty much seemed to boss him around the whole time: "No, you shouldn't have that for dinner", "Take out the chicken noodle soup out of the freezer and defrost it tonight", "Don't go out tonight". At some point, I guess he made a comment about how he was going to go out with his friends, at which she exploded. "Why can't you say no?" "Why do you have to go out drinking when I am not there?" "You know how you can't control yourself" etc etc After a tirade of questions and reprimands, she finally said quietly and almost in a sulking voice, "You know what others think? They think that I try to control you too much."

Really? And that comes as a surprise?

But that then brought me to another question. Given that I have heard many women nag the guys in their lives, whether it be brother, father, significant other, is it the rule rather than the exception that women nag/try to control the situation? Or does that just happen when women themselves feel somewhat insecure either about themselves or the relationship? I personally agree with the latter but would be interested to hear what you think and why.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah deni most of the women i know are control freaks, which i think comes from the fact that they think that men are unable to make the right decisions. Being male means being stupid in their minds and thanks to that interesting point of view they feel obliged to take things in their hands. By the way do you know that more than 70-80% (i won't say 100%, because you will call me a liar) of the decisions taken by women are not based on logic?

sasho was here....again.... :P

Anonymous said...

it's insecurity for sure. and maybe lack of self-respect as well.

DJ said...

sasho: we women don't see the need for logic when our intuition can serve us better ;) but, see, you present an interesting point of view - just as you claim that women don't trust men to make the right decisions, you similarly suggest that women don't make the right decisions because they don't rely on logic.

but, yes, in general i do agree that a lot of women are control freaks, but I will caveat this by saying that they are not control freaks with every man in my opinion. some men incite more of their "control freakishness" than others.

concerned: hmmm, lack of self-respect? i had not thought of that. will ponder

Anonymous said...

:) I guess what I was trying to say was that some women are unwittingly self-humiliiating themselves by trying to somehow "repair" their boyfriends, which they perceive as "bad boys". Why are they self-humiliating themselves? If their boyfriends really are "bad boys", that means those women subconsciously regard themselves as their trophies and overcompensate for that lack of self-respect by trying to "change" them.
If their boyfriends are not really "bad boys", that means that those women are just nagging because they don't trust them as an extension of not trusting themselves. Which also indicates a lack of self-respect.