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She's supposed to be younger than you.
Your connection with her is supposed to
be heavily emotional -- from an expert,
"Of course women are much more emotional
than men; that's the cause of all the
problems." She is supposed to tell you about what's between
her ears (thoughts and emotions), care about you,
respect you, and respond to you (E. Fromm). And,
really, being younger than you, she is supposed
to look up to you as a leader. You are supposed
to be a good leader of you both, but you have to
use some subtle means I can't explain usefully
here; we're not talking military or business
leadership here. As in Eric Berne, the two of you are not
supposed to be equal -- you are supposed to
be quite different, "equal" in respect as
persons but not the "same" (E. Fromm). Actually, from Mother Nature, if she is
already old enough and you are still young
enough, then that's enough! Things she
doesn't know or gets confused about are
places where you need to apply some
leadership. E.g., if you want your kids
home schooled but she didn't go to college,
then you have to lead in how she can
get materials, keep the schooling organized,
and make good use of good tutors and
other home schooled children. And if
you want your kids taking the SATs at
12 and the GREs at 16, then you will have
to lead in how your family does this.
Did I mention leadership? She can have a "brain" and even be brilliant
(my wife was Valedictorian, PBK, Woodrow
Wilson, NSF, and top research university
Ph.D. and just brilliant but, still, was
mostly run by her emotions) but will still
be run mostly just by her emotions. She
may care more about her emotional security
from you than even financial security. I don't know about your school, but I went
grades 1-12 with, from girls my own age
in the school building, receiving a total
of likely less than 100 words. Right,
they ignored me. Then in the ninth grade
I discovered that girls 1-3 years younger
could be from eager to much more to talk
to me -- some of them were both shocking
and obvious and about much more than just
talking. Girls are designed to like
older men. The way of the world. |