About psycho bitches from hell

Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.

Here in Cali women are very beautiful. They seem to have a couple of advantages that I haven’t seen before that seem almost universal to the Calenas. From what I know about fitness and strength training is that a female body is harder to manipulate than a male body. If a girl has heavy upper legs, small breasts, a flat butt, not much waist or similar things there is not too much she can do about it. Of course she can still be smart, pretty and healthy and many other things. But here it seems that there are a lot of girls blessed with perfect genes for curviness, ideal fat distribution and firmness.

It is impossible not to notice and it is impossible not to be fascinated. It is a common topic of conversation because it is just true and visible everywhere around you. The Netherlands are know for tulips, cheese and weed, the USA is know for New York and hamburgers, Cali is known for its beautiful women and salsa.

When guys talk about the girls they have encountered in their lives, because that is the inevitable turn the conversation will take here, sooner or later always the ‘psycho bitch from hell’ pops up in the story. Every guy knows what this means. It is the girl that at first seemed to good to be true to the guy in question. Gorgeous, wild, fun, sexy and seductive in the beginning she turns out to be crazy, possessive, dark, unpredictable and dramatic pretty quickly.

The psycho bitch from hell is a global and cross-cultural phenomenon. As far as I know she can be encountered in every country of the world and in many different social classes. It is not just Western men that know who I am talking about, she is also known to Asian men, South American, Arab and African.

The usual way the story is told is by anecdotes of how long it took the guy to find out, the crazy things that happened in between and the moment he got the hell out of there, sometimes followed by more stories of windows and wind shields being smashed, physical attacks or suicide threats.

In these stories there is not much compassion for the girl.

Although I admit it is very difficult for a boyfriend to understand what is going on because it often happens to us when we are teenagers or in our twenties, we are immature ourselves and the girl is unable to communicate what is really going on with her I would like to try to share what I see.

It is hard being a woman. I think it is harder then being a man. This goes for every culture but I think it is even more difficult in non-Western cultures than in the West. Both men and women are expected to live according their gender roles. Any role is limiting per definition. But the expectations that are put on women cost more of her freedom and authenticity than the expectations put on men. Most importantly, as men we are more or less allowed to be aggressive and angry from time to time. Women have to fit the role of obedient, sweet, caring and serving. In an unjust world this can be incredibly frustrating, especially when the consensus inside a community is that it is ok to exploit these characteristics.

There is nothing outside of us. We don’t posses only a certain amount of human features, we all posses all of them. But we are expected to cultivate some and suppress others. We are not supposed to express the complete spectrum of our humanity. So we create a survival mechanism that serves us best: our identity or our ego. With this mechanism we try to control our lives as good as we can. We hide vulnerability, anger, fear, desire and many other aspects according to our individual personality structure. We are all looking for love, security and approval. As men we can choose to blatantly pursue power and money to hopefully make us feel safe and loved. Most women don’t have that option.

So we are all caged, and the smaller and debilitating our cage is, the more we suffer inside and the more we want to break free. We all create destructive mechanisms to escape the pressure of the expectations of culture, society and family. We drink, fuck, fight, achieve, hide, run and perish.

I don’t know if the cage of the beautiful young woman is the most complicated one. But it is difficult. Aside from all the expectations around being a ‘good girl’, a ‘good daughter’ and a ‘good student’ she learns that a certain behavior can offer a feeling of freedom and open all kinds of doors quickly. When she skillfully acts sexy, playful and wild she can get a lot of attention very fast. But it is a role that comes with a lot of norms, rules and restrictions. The love and the freedom she finds is artificial because it is not based on authenticity. Keeping the illusion alive is almost impossible. Sooner or later she succumbs from the pressure she puts on herself and she panics. But as her masks drops her identity becomes at stake. It is a very scary and vulnerable feeling when we lose control over our self-image especially if we believe we are completely depending on how we look and act to receive love and freedom. The pain, confusion and fear come out as destructive and self-destructive behavior. Last nights hot party girl has transformed into the psycho bitch from hell.

In many cultures the position of the woman is not to be envied. She can be literally kicked on the street or locked in the house when she doesn’t meet cultural, relational or sexual expectations. This reality amplifies the fear. Her situation can become very unsafe for her very quickly. Reasons for panic can be another woman, a rival and anything else that triggers a response.

Underneath all this is that most human beings don’t even have a notion of what a healthy personality structure is, let alone know how to create nurturing conditions for self and others. A psycho bitch from hell is just another lost and caged soul like the most of us, maybe a bit more lost and caged than average. We all deserve to be free. Let’s be kind to each other.