The Cinderella complex : women's hidden fear of independence by Dowling Colette

Author:Dowling, Colette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women -- Psychology, Dependency (Psychology), Women, Personality, Dependencia (Psicología), Frau, Psychologie, Unabhängigkeit
Publisher: New York : Pocket Books
Published: 1982-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Blind Devotion • 141

What's striking in these women's responses is the amount of sheer self-involvement they express. The wives seem obsessed with getting proof of how much they are loved. Most importantly, they perceive themselves as having a claim on male-provided security.

Typical of those who make such claims is the woman who sets her cap for a doctor. More than any other single factor, doctors' wives say they want ^'security" from marriage. But in the end, the conflict and hostility they exhibit toward the men who provide them with all this security is stunning to behold. A survey of the real-life experiences of women who'd chosen to marry doctors (the results of which were published in a magazine called Medical/Mrs.) got down to bedrock. Was being a doctor's wife all it had been cracked up to be? the magazine asked its hundred thousand subscribers. 'Ts it actually what you expected and what society promised?"

Not on your life, to hear the women who've gotten stuck in this miserable existence tell it. "A doctor's wife has much more expected of her than other wives and not much emotional support or positive feedback," one woman complained. "We can't rely on our husbands for anything, not even to pound a nail in the wall."

The frustration experienced by a Maryland doctor's wife was plain to see, especially in her use of italics. ''Cannot make him reaUze that extra hours put in do not increase his salary or status but subtract from family—has prevented me from having time for a life of my own because / do everything to run our house and keep three children in peace!''

'The sad part is," wrote another woman, a twenty-nine-year veteran of marriage to an M.D., 'T have been forced to create a life of my own, separate and apart from him." (Many older women, and not a few younger ones, believe that being "forced" to have a separate life is actually a sign of pathology in a relationship. The woman whose husband does not take up the slack in

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