I learnt something!

Insecurity complex is something that I had heard of and spoken a lot about, but had never experienced it. May be that was one of the reasons why had never understood my mother in law fully. It is one of the most intense thoughts that come to ones mind when one's power or authority seems to reduce, or when one has to compete for something that was always available for no effort previously. This complex is apparently, domestically prevalent among women. May be the complex of men does not get so blatant on the home front for in our society it is the woman who is the soul of the home.

A woman in our society mostly confines herself to family and kids. That is the only place where her work has to give her the results. In case of a working woman, things are much different. It is enough to boost one's confidence if one's work outside is appreciated. She is knows she is capable of something. But in case of a home-maker, the only people who would give her that confidence to see herself in the mirror is her family. They love her, may not appreciate her like the way it happens in a workplace, but they hear to her, infact follow her words, thereby give her the authority of deciding all the things at home.

But suddenly when you have somebody else entering all the lives of the people at home, when her children find somebody so important that they tend to spend most of the times with that girl and consult her before any important decision, it depletes the confidence of that lady. It is a perfectly human behaviour. Rationally speaking, had somebody entered my workfield and was drawing my clients towards them, I would be in a same state. However, I would have had my home to support me or atleast empathise me. It would be miserable for her, for the only place that she ruled and healed herself seems to be challenging.

I had heard of such behaviour from many women at different times of their life. I thought it was a form of jealousy, to which I attach a negative connotation. It was not convincing to me as I kept wodering if a mother of a son would be jealous of the son's wife. In this phenomenon, (I use the word phenomenon, a I consider this to be a natural course of behavioural pattern) I was never convinced that the feeling could be jealousy because , jealousy is a feeling that comes when another has something that we do not. After some more thought I now think that such a feeling is definitely not about jealousy. It is just a feeling of helplessness, of rejection, of being dispensable. It has nothing at all to do with jealousy.

The feeling of dispensablity is a the worst of all. When a woman confines herself to her husband and children, they become a reason for her to live. When a feeling a dispensability enters her mind she seems to lose some percentage of her reason to live. It is very difficult to live ( I do not mean survive) every moment if you are not driven 100% from within. In such cases it is natural for any human to strive to get back the lost percentage. This is usually done is two ways, one is to regain the same reasons and the other is to introduce new reasons. The ideal one is to introduce new reasons, but that definitely requires support from family. When a woman tries to take up the second option, her phase of insecurity tends to end sooner than the first option for reasons that are obvious. This phase of trasition is the phase of insecurity.

In the process of analysing various circumstances that I came across in my life during the last few days, I feel grown up. I feel natural. I have learnt to accept. I have learnt to love and live. Most important, I have tried to understand the other perspective. Life probably is not as easy as we dream, but it is not as complicated as we think either.