One of my co-workers recently told me that she didn't like
me when she met me because she thought that I was pretty, which somehow
bothered her even though we work in different departments and are in completely
different age groups. I had no idea
that our four-year friendship had had such a rocky start, as I believed that we
had bonded instantly. She went on to
lament that the story of her life was pretty girls wanting to be friends with
her, which was completely against everything she wanted. The pretty girl sat next to her in school
and wanted to hang out with her, and she hated it because she didn’t think she
was attractive as her new friend. It
sounds so unbelievable when you hear someone relate such a story, yet we have
to accept that it is completely valid in her own mind.
In my 28 years as a
member of the “fairer sex,” I have experienced my share of hatred between women
and, if I am being truly honest with myself, then I have to admit that I have
surely given as much as I have received.
Women have a reputation for being absolutely horrible to one another,
and this reputation is well deserved.
What is it that causes us to feel such hatred for each other, when we
could be building a supportive community and enabling each other to grow?
I believe that it is a
self-preservative denial of emotions, an inherent need to protect our fragile
egos, often at the expense of others.
Reminisce on your elementary school days when someone else dared to call
your best friend her best friend and you instantly hated her. We learned from our teachers and parents
that we were jealous and that our desire to retain our position as the one and
only “best” friend blinded us to the truth that there was enough friendship for
everyone. As we grew older and wiser,
the term jealousy was replaced with envy, as we didn't just fear a loss of
something that we thought was ours, but we actually wanted what someone else
had, whether it was a physical attribute or a material possession. There are certainly some circumstances for
which these hold true, as it is simply not possible to never have a personality
clash, but it is not the universal cause of animosity between women.
The root of all of this hatred is a natural, internal fear
of rejection, which can be so damaging to our ego that we will go to great
lengths to avoid it. We subconsciously
reassess the situation so that we are not the problem; that girl is a slut who
is throwing herself at your boyfriend, or she’s a gossipping bitch who is
probably telling your best friend a bunch of lies about you. If we are honest, we really feel rejected by
our boyfriend or by our friend because we are afraid that they might like
someone else more than us and that we might lose someone we really love because
they have met someone amazing.
If you are secure in yourself, you don’t have to fight the
imaginary fight, as you know your value and what you contribute to any
relationship. You can recognize when
you truly dislike another woman for her attitude or for something that she has
actually done to you, and when you are just feeling threatened by another
woman. Unfortunately, acknowledging your worth isn't as simple as just deciding
you are amazing because you have to be willing to look within yourself, to
examine your flaws and your attributes, and to admit that this is who you are
as a person. We shy away from this
process, as we are forced to acknowledge and accept the negatives of our
personalities, which isn't even the worst part: we have to tell ourselves that we
are worthy and that we have value.
We are not raised to be celebratory of our own person, lest
we be considered egotistical or conceited.
What we need to understand is that self-love is not promoting ourselves
to make others feel badly, but acknowledging that we deserve friendship, love
and success. In order to enable
ourselves to achieve a state of self-acceptance and self-love, we need to
create a positive mental environment.
An easy way to start enhancing our mental strength is simply
showing gratitude for the things you don’t normally think of: thank your body
for its strength and thank your mind for its abilities. As silly as it sounds, forcefully adding
gratitude into your life, even if it just expressed within your own head, will
actually retrain you to recognize it naturally. Providing a positive mental environment enables more graciousness
and empathy, which you will be able to offer to your own self.
The end result is the ability to extend this new found
graciousness and empathy outward, even to those whom you would normally refuse
to acknowledge as a potential friend.
The clichéd statements that claim that you must love yourself before you
can love others are true, even with regard to non-romantic relationships. To answer the question of why women hate
each: we don’t, but we are threatened by that which we perceive as a potential
hazard to the existence that we have grown accustomed to. In order to stop projecting a level of
hatred toward other women, we need to stop rejecting ourselves and start
celebrating our own worth.
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