issues

This post by Silvara was so akin what i was discussing with the boy the other day that I HAD to post my views.

In the past, and sometimes even now,
i could/can never be sure about the boy.
I could never say, with certainty, that the boy completely gets me about women's rights, environmental issues and everything in between.
and I know part of it is because, when i am in any kind of relationship with anybody, i am never sure about the other person just because i am the kind of anal neurotic mind stalker who really wants to sweep/memorise every inch of the other person's brain and that usually takes years and years and years to do.
and the other part is because the boy is really good at creating layers over his inner thoughts.

I knew for sure that the boy is far more enlightened than my male relatives, especially the ones who were surprised that as a male muslim, he's not dragging me to the mosque to convert and that we have a relationship where the boy is more concerned than I that i am spending way too much time in the house doing nothing.

We had these loud discussions where I went back and forth yelling and screaming at the boy because of MY preconceived notions about male attitudes toward women.
I TAKE EVERYTHING that is even remotely connected to women's issues TO HEART.
and that's mostly not because of what the boy says or does, but what I think he is going to say.
I think i have been preconditioned from years of listening to my idiot male relatives and observing prehistoric male attitudes to women that i just naturally assume all males from the indian subcontinent are the same way.
And after living in the west for the past 7 years, i don't have that much of an opinion of males from other parts of the world either.

And usually, in these ME -Orchestrated one woman diatribes, the boy satquietly detached because once i start raising my voice an octane higher than normal, he refuses to participate.
he is more of a quiet intellectual discusser than 'i'll match your yell and raise you a scream' type.

Now i realise that i could never be sure what the boy thinks about women's issues because i rarely gave him the chance to air his views.
I was so afraid that he was going to voice the wrong opinion that i shouted him down before he could say anything.

And because i kept yelling, the boy would resort to raising my hackles about every issue i cared twopence about - environment, women's rights, human rights etc.etc.
He would deflect my preemptive yell by going off on a ridiculous tangent about how he was going to start a company/party/country where only male polluters had rights and so on and so forth.

Then the other day, I was watching the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (i am guilty - there's something about watching tight, firm bodies in tiny outfits that makes me want to hit the gym - it's like having a visual to aim for...i want to be a slightly meatier version of them)
Anyhow, random instructor on it caught tiny back flap of cheerleader dancer and went you are out because you need to lose some weight or some version of that
and the boy looked up from work on laptop and went - and yeah, that girl's going to go home and become bulimic now - geez!

And it really struck me that i don't give the boy enough credit sometimes.
Sure, he makes REALLY, REALLY annoying jokes about me being unemployed and barefoot in the kitchen - and it pisses me off to no end and when I yell, he leaves the room by saying - well, why don't you do something about it by being more energised about getting a job?
and I know that more than I, the boy has been tapping his contacts and spreading my resume all over the place like butter!

I can list a lot of reasons why he is a modern enlightened man and i can list a lot of reasons why he isn't.
He refuses to say that its ok for me to be fat. HE absolutely insists I GO TO THE GYM.
And I know he's freaked about my weight and health issues and connected moroseness when i am overweight BUT he freaking smokes!!!
And though he is lean and healthy, HE SMOKES.
And so i waver between - is he insistent about me being healthy or me being skinny, so i can be some sort of trophy wife and spring all sorts of dramatic conversational traps to find out.
But just before the wedding, when he had put on weight - i jiggled his flapping paunch and drew smiley faces on it - which he would never do / has done and if he did, would be so NOT be cool.

What i would really like is for the boy to leave me alone to my morose, overweight, unemployed ways while i angst and 'deep thoughts' my way out of my funk.

Instead, what i am finally learning, and this epiphany came when i was reading Silvs post and the comments to it (so thanks Silvs), is that - i don't think the boy is there yet.
But neither am i.
But its like we are working on each other and being worked on.
We both entered this relationship with past baggages and preconceived notions that we are learning to discard.
And while I wish there were times when we didn't have to educate each other about issues, when i wish things weren't such a struggle, i am v.thankful that we are in a working. growing relationship.
That we are learning to adapt and willing to listen (i have even learned to not yell 50% of the time), and each day, we are becoming more enlightened.

PS:
I was trying to find articles on why B'deshi women don't take their husband's surnames because that's what nearly all of boy's female relatives have done. but instead i was faced with an onslaught of this - some of which talked of some women having no surnames at all because they are not perceived as not needing them. i am so confused as to what to make of B'desh - if i didn't read anything or look at any shows and just decided to base my opinion on the boy's family, i would think all b'deshis are unloud, quiet people who don't read anything popular but instead devote time reading stuff nobody is ever heard of, and where the women don't take their husband's names and just do what they want - be it excelling in business or turning their homes into a one woman super restaurant and who think that women who wear purdahs probably do so because they didn't have enough education and where the kids in the family call women in full purdahs ninjas (??? WTF), BUT who have a MAJOR problem when one of their own decides to marry a Christian AND, AND, AND are surprised to know that there are SO MANY Christians in India - they are such a contradictory bunch & I just can't figure them out, which makes it hard for me to properly slot them.