Comment Of The Week: The Danger Of The Traumatized Woman

How is a wounded woman like a wounded animal? PA explains as he hoists the COTW trophy:

A nasty form of red pill involves thoughts of how to act when your woman has been through great trauma, rape or otherwise. A wounded human being is in a shitload of pain, in such cases psychic pain.

They say that you shouldn’t try to comfort a beloved dog that was injured by a car because its pain can cause it to bite you. External-source duress, usually financial, can turn a wife into a bitch.

There was an article a few years after the 9.11 attacks, about a middle aged woman, civilian employee at the Pentagon, who was badly disfigured in the resulting fires and how she copes with life. Her husband (photos from happier days were shown, they were both radiant) had left her after the disfigurement.

I was quick to fault the man for abandoning her. But now I wonder, did he try to ‘be there’ and she pushed him away? I don’t know. In the story she said she is not angry with him.

A man wants to be needed and many of us want to help the few people in our inner circle when they need us. When we were little and got hurt, our moms poured concerned affection on us, and in those recesses of our psyches lies a template for healing another’s pain.

But like the struck dog, does the traumatized woman lash out at those closest to her? Those with the hard task of ‘being there’ have to think about what she really needs. Soft care may not be it.

Yes, this is a deeply dark red pill to swallow. I’ve seen it myself, and I’ve experienced it: The lashing out of the hurt woman against those trying to comfort her. The proper response to the hurt woman is a nod of sympathy and a studied avoidance of getting entangled in her drama other than giving her time to cry it out, (and giving yourself a little distance from her bared claws).

Why is it not uncommon for traumatized women to push away their supportive lovers? It’s a mystery, but my theory is that it has to do with the natural revulsion men and women feel for sex role inversions. The caretaker and the nurturer is the woman; when a man eagerly tries to assume this role, it’s disturbing to women on a primal level. It’s similar to the aggressive career woman barging into a meeting ready to close a big deal. Men may admire her gumption in the abstract, but as a character trait it’s very off-putting to behold in a woman.

Another, related, possibility is the idea that a supportive man, in his readiness to “be there” for a hurt woman, inadvertently “betatizes” himself. He may be perceived less as a shoulder to lean on than as a cloying handmanlet who in his zeal to be helpful winds up reminding the woman of the source of her pain.

Traumatized men do this too, but it seems more common with women. Or perhaps, when it concerns women, it’s more shocking to men who witness it, given the pedestal-contoured presumptions that men hold of women’s receptivity to assistance in times of need.

Maybe there’s a reason why in large parts of the world women who are rape victims are considered sexual persona non grata. Could it be that, underneath the religious or moral justifications, men shun traumatized women because they know, instinctively, that those women will never be “right” as relationship material?