Advice February 20, 2003 The Iranian Send us your questions and comments * Lost respect for girls -- and myself (unedited): what i am about to tell you took place about six months ago and i am more then over the whole situation, yet there is still something about the delema that makes me wonder..... befor i get to my point i 'd like to go back to my junior year of high school. by this time it had already been about two years since i moved to USA, from iran ofcourse, and i was gradualy getting very papular in school and specially with girls. i lost my virgenety well befor i started dating my girlfriend of two years. she was my first love and i got deeply attached to her. by end of high school we each went our seperet ways, she went to the southern millioners school and i went to school in the same town that i had lived before, and so did all of my friends. i intensified some of my unhelthy habits to a point where i was drunk almost every night. by the end of my freshmen year i had slept with over 30 girls. it became a hobby, a pathern that i would go trough often. and the more i hooked up with girls the less i respected them. i thought they where all dirty and trashy. the only girl that ever maid me wait was my first love and most likely its becouse she was 16 at the time, yet she stayed in my hart and the thought of her maid me feel very uneasy. finally, i was sickend by myself and i decided to move. and so i did. i moved to a much bigger city and cleaned up and started making really good greads at school. at the same time i distanted myself from every one. i hadn't initially made many friends to begin with and i intended to keep it that way. i started to play soccer again and read and play music and most important of all, i stayed away from girls. i didn"t go on a single date for about a year. at times i would miss the companianship of a girl but for the most part i was OK. (sorry, the interduction ran too long) any way, i decided to switch jobs and bartend at this upscales resturant/club, and after five hundred interviwes i finally got the job. by walking into this place you could diff tell that there was politics involved in the employing of the girls, they where ungodly hot. but i was diterment to keep a low profile and just make my money and get out. i have seen many good looking girls in the past but no words could discribe this girl. not even hafez or roomi or sadi could find the right words to write a poem about her. she hit me the same way i got hit in high school by my first love. we would talk about politics, love, poetry, philosophy........ but she had a boyfriend so everything was said and done with mutual rispect wich empressed me even more. on one hand she had a boyfriend and on the other hand i saw her as being out of my leage. she was three years older than me and every one was in love with her. she would walk out of work with eight hundred dollors sometimes, having had only sold two hundred dollors worth of liqure. any way, i flerted with every girl in that place except for her, she was too smart, too beutifull to flert with. every conversation with her was real, no B.S no fake talk. after four months of me knowing her, she broke up with her boyfrien of two years and seemed complitly fine. i still didn't make a move, i figured it was neccecry for her to have some time to her self, although we did start hanging out together and drinking together. till finally she made a move and all hell broke loose. i had never, uptill that point, worked so hard on pleasing a girl and it was the same way around. every night we would go to a bar after work and then go to my place and stay up till the sun came up. during the whole thing i had repidedly told her that i was moving to CA in a matter of six months, but that did not slow donw or stop anything. she opened up to me like i was her long lost friend and lover and i did the same. only the seconed girl in my life that i trusted, she made me forget about my first love all at once. in so many words she told me she was in love with me and i did the same. HERE IS WHAT I DON'T UNDRESTAND..... after three weeks of an intence affair, everything stoped. nither i, nor her made any effort to make anything out of it. she started acting funny and i did not show the slightest bit of attention to why she was acting that way. i got sick of both me and her and how we could be so in love one week and avoid each other the next week, and i quit the job that i very much needed and then i moved to CA. I found out that shortly after me, she went out with a number of guys including the only friend i had there. once again i have lost respect for girls as well as myself. HOW COULD TWO PEOPLE BULL SHIET EACH OTHER LIKE THAT? (sorry about this being so long but please, please write me back with some analysis, some words of wisdom, and forgive my spelling) confused 21 year old, thanks Reply Abjee Fotti and Abjee Pari write: Thank you for writing your letter and we hope we can share some words of wisdom. We abjeez try to be as objective and as non judgmental as we can. The point of our column is not to hurt people a la "doctor laura" however we also don't like to sugarcoat things. Thank you for providing a background to your story, which helps us in some way in analyzing the nature of your problem. It is very hard to give advice in general based on the limited information provided to us. The first impression we gathered from your letter is that there are certain underlying issues outside of just your recent relationship with your colleague at work. It seems that you tend to put women into two categories: either they are unattainable, untouchable virgin-goddesses, or on the other hand, they are just easy sexual objects for whom you have no respect. Of course, you are not the first man to engage into ths kind of exclusive dichotomy type of thinking. Just look at the films of Fellini and you will know what we are talking about!!! Now mysogyny is most commonly defined as hatred of women. This hatred of women does not manifest itself only in physical violence. It can take many forms. For example, in your case, it seems as though you use sex as an aggression, sleeping with then dumping women you qualify as "dirty and trashy." However, it takes two to tango and you should not put the blame solely on the women! Now any part of a guy's life will naturally include a phase where he sows his wild oats and experiments in partying. However, as we said, your behavior seems to us to go beyond average (getting drunk every night and sleeping with 30 girls in your fershman year alone). You yourself have recognized that this is a destructive pattern and you tried to move to another city to escape your demons and start afresh. However, unfortunately, you can't run away from yourself. Even though you genuinely cared about your female colleague during the time she was unavailable to you and thus fit into your ideal of "unattainable pure goddess", you subsequently abruptly dropped her as soon as she opened up to you physically as well as emotionally. The problem with idealizing people is that the idol always has clay of feet. So there is a feeling of let down when you realize this is just another human being, not some sort of ideal. You say she started acting "funny" around you. Maybe she was picking up on your own attitude which changed from a caring friend to someone who "was sick of her." The roots behind misogyny can be multiple. It can be a combination of a lot of factors such as being raised in a cultural and religious environment which views women either as "saints" or "whores". You said you moved to the US while of high school age. Maybe the cultural influences in Iran shaped the way you regard women. Also it could be something that started at home. You have not told us about how you were raised. The role your mother played in raising you and teaching you about women. We don't know if you grew up in a household full of sisters or that was male dominated. Or how your father treated your mom in front of you. And what kind of husband he was. These are all good clues as to explaining your general attitude towards women. Although you may take offense to this, our take on what you describe as your problems is that you are a type of misogynist. Sexual abuse at a young age can also play a role in shaping the attitudes towards the opposite gender. We are not suggesting you are a victim of childhood sexual abuse. But if you were, and you are not telling us, we suggest that this plays a key role as well in the problems you describe in adulthood. Exploring these issues and why you are acting the way you are and not being able to be close to any woman will go a long way to improving your relationships as well as giving yourself emotional health. The good step that you have taken is recognizing there is something amiss that is preventing you from developing a healthy intimate relationship. You may want to seek professional help in helping you further develop these issues. The solution is not to stay away from women altogether although a little alone time when you can reflect in private is always beneficial. And you can't go back to your destructive patterns either. So we suggest you work on your emotional well-being so that the opportunity of having a fulfilling relationship with genuine care and love will not be lost for you. Our best regards, Abjee Pari and Abjee Fotti Email your comments for The Iranian letters section Send an email to Fotti and Pari ALSO Abjeez Previous replies RELATED Kobra Khanom SECTIONS * Recent * Cover * Writers * Arts & lit * Opinion * Satire * History * Interviews * Travel * Women * Rights * Surveys * All sections

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