While dropping Annie at Tom’s today, Tom and I had a conversation about his ex-girlfriend. He said he doesn’t know what he was ever doing with her – looks-wise. I said that I was surprised he was saying that, given how he’d been so quick to criticise my relationship with Phil based on Tom’s perception of Phil’s looks, yet he’d been with a woman that he himself didn’t find attractive. Of course he said it was totally different; he tried to justify how it was different with “it just is” and wouldn’t elaborate.

Lying in bed just now, thinking about how I feel with Tom, I realised most of the time I feel totally unheard. He makes no attempt to ever see my perspective and would never for a minute accept that my opinions are valid. He’s always right, and that’s it as far as he’s concerned. I almost could admire the conviction he has for his own words if it wasn’t so excluding of all others’ feelings or opinions.

As I drifted into a daydream, I suddenly found myself feeling like a young girl and could hear my Dad forcibly telling me my opinions and views were wrong. “NO! NO!” then making clear what was right – his opinion. I felt powerless because no matter what I said, Dad wouldn’t even attempt to hear me, speaking over me to hammer his point home, regardless of anything else. I often felt small, weak and wrong. I felt as though my opinions, my ideas, my feelings and my emotions were wrong. I felt stupid and unintelligent. This is how I feel with Tom. This is how I feel with most people whom I deem to be more powerful than me. I feel weak and ineffectual. This is how I still feel around Dad, and this is how I feel when I try to have any opinion or discussion with Tom.

I feel as though I am wrong. I feel stupid that I had a relationship with Phil when Tom thinks it’s so wrong and when my Dad said he didn’t think Phil is my type. Dad and Tom, the two shallowest men I know. Men who won’t even contemplate dating a woman who even has an ounce of fat on her simply because they cannot see beyond the body shape and size. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.” – Tom’s favourite saying. A criticism. A judgement.

As a child, even when my opinions were right for me, Dad would still argue me out; pushing, forcing his precious egotistical opinion onto me at the sake of my own trust in myself.

My words counted for nothing. My feelings counted for nothing.