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Serious: struggling with misogynistic thoughts (hexbear.net)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2766019

Please remove if not appropriate here and I will post somewhere else.

Without getting into too much detail...I have been abused by women most of my life. I finally ended an abusive marriage with a female narcissist. I have never really struggled with this issue up until recently.

I am finding that I am often dismissed and not believed when I try to discuss this issue, even to therapists and my lawyer (all whom have also been female). I have almost no resources or support. There are no men's groups for this issue in my area. Often online I will see people mock people like myself. I have even had people on socialist sites dismiss situations like mine. It is beyond frustrating.

I understand how it is and I know that patriarchy and misogyny are still huge issues, but I've noticed myself feeling very resentful towards a lot of women recently and sometimes veer into misogynistic thoughts.

I don't want to be like this, but I am struggling.

Any advice on what I can do to control these thoughts and retrain my brain?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I've also experienced a relationship with a female narcissist and it was awful. Fucked up my expectations about how relationships should work for a good 2-3 years. In that time I believe I perpetuated the cycle of emotional abuse by applying what I "learned" in that relationship to further relationships with other women. It took time to unlearn these harmful patterns, and that started by recognizing they were not normal and were harmful both to other people and to myself. To realize that actual good relationships are not characterized by wild emotional swings, but instead a basic calm contentment with the presence of another person you love.

It is good you have started to recognize your thought patterns for what they are. Emotional abuse reproduces itself and you need to understand that you are currently a vehicle for that. Though you cannot fully discharge your culpability, you are in some sense possessed by the ideology of emotional abuse that warps and interferes with your emotional responses. This is the lens you should take with you to therapy. Don't tell your therapist that you are struggling with misogynistic thoughts. Tell them you are struggling to keep from reproducing the emotional abuse you experienced on others. That is much more in the therapists' wheelhouse. It should be noted that the woman who abused me was herself emotionally abused by a man in the relationship prior to ours. Perhaps she learned to act that way in that relationship. Abuse echos throughout a community for years.

Also read the book Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. Despite the title and case studies all being men, it is a fairly gender-neutral book. It is very illuminating about how these thought processes work and can help you identify ones you have been infected with.