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I grew up in a family where respect wasn’t shown or even thought about. The man was in charge. That was it! I also grew up in New England.
My dating life when I was 15 to 20 was another story. Not having men show me respect in my family, I began to meet young men, who were older than me, who showed me respect.
The only problem at the time was I felt I didn’t deserve their respect. I was filled with self-loathing from the way I was raised.
I was married at age 20 and stayed with the same man for approximately 12 years. He did not respect me and he did not respect others. During this period of my life, my true value system began to come into play and I realized that my man at the time didn’t believe in respect, telling the truth, and being in a relationship with one woman.
As I went out into the world, I began dating after my divorce, but I didn’t value myself. I soon realized that all the abuse and disrespect that I had received in my family I had to clear within me. I began therapy and stayed in it for many years, but then had a problem with the therapist going beyond the bounds of patient and therapist. I never reported him because at the time I felt I would never be believed and I know I was right.
While seeing this therapist I also was in an important relationship with a man and he and I merged families so I was now with 4 boys. Two of my own and two of his. Raising children is challenging enough but helping to raise another person’s children was extraordinarily difficult, especially when both parents didn’t agree on how to raise their own children. Plus trying to raise my own 2 boys. I learned through this relationship just to be a friend to my 2 inherited boys and never try to be their mother because they already had one. There was more respect in this family than I had received or given in the past. I remained in this relationship for 15 years. This man was a real family man and I had yearned for that.
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I have to share this moment in time. One day I was sitting in my living room in downtown Brooklyn. We lived in a brownstone and while I was meditating, I heard the neighbor downstairs listening to Howard Stern. During the conversation, Stern began making fun of rape. I was so angry and incensed and I never got over hearing that kind of talk on the radio, and Stern had many many listeners.
When I became single again, I had been living in downtown Brooklyn, NY and moved to NYC. I had first lived with roommates but I was making enough money as a publicist to have my own place, a studio apartment on the upper west side. It was a wonderful feeling of independence.
Though all the years of growing up I was the recipient of sexual abuse from a member of our family, who by the time I was ready to confront years later had died. So there were many traumas that I had experienced that I wasn’t ready to deal with until I was in a relationship with a man who I felt safe and often times respected by, not all the time, but most. And then the rising up of the sexual abuse came. It was horrible. It was so painful but thank goodness I was with a man that allowed me to go through this. Fortunately, I worked through a lot of pain and healed myself, but one never really gets over sexual abuse. This man and I were together for 5 years and it became clear during this time that we could be friends and not live together in an intimate relationship.
I moved on and began online dating and I recall through all of the years that I dated, there were a few men that I had powerful connections with, but none of them had truly worked on themselves from the inside out. If there was a sense of a deep connection it never lasted because then the truth appeared that these men could not sustain in our relationship.
When I became an interfaith minister around 2003 it was another time I met a man who I felt had deep respect for women. He was the minister in charge of Tribeca Spiritual Center in downtown Battery Park City. We became good friends and I always felt he respected me. I had an incident with the teacher who was head of the Seminary I was going to in becoming an interfaith minister, and while the teacher handed me a beautiful necklace for completing my studies as an interfaith minister he made a lewd remark to me. I shared it with my friend, the head interfaith minister at The Tribeca Spiritual Center. In the past, this teacher who made the lewd remark to me had spoken a few times at our Center, and when my friend heard what happened he brought the incident up before his board and they vowed never to have him speak there again. I felt supported, I felt respected, I felt heard. I felt seen.
Through the years of my life, there have been very few men I have felt respected by which is sad for me and sad for them. I raised 4 boys and I only hope the love and value system I shared with them, showed them the way to respect and honor women, and being sexually aggressive with a woman, without her permission, is not okay. It’s never okay.
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Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash