MILF: Motherhood, Identity, Love and F*ckery

The problem is that the spoiling of men is continued by marital expectation. Even in the most unconventional of set-ups, the free-thinking liberal man expects his woman to be at home serving his emotional needs when she may prefer to be free to do other things.

Women, especially mothers, have always been expected to be nurturing, kind, empathetic. I don't think we put out sons under as much pressure to have those qualities (and we should).

Society teach us as women that if we want careers it's us who must pay the price. Feminism has left us overworked and over-demanded upon as punishment for wanting equality.

The other thing is, I am not desperate enough to compromise for a relationship...I actually like my own company. I like my own space. I like doing what I want!

By learning to be with myself I may be able to learn to have healthier relationships in future. I've always wanted to be looked after, but instead I did too much looking after. I've always wanted to be supported, but I did too much supporting. I don't even know if I understand how to accept help. I certainly don't know how to ask for it. So, it is with that in mind right now I need to learn to be still with myself, to be bored of myself, to validate myself. It's time to work on the most important relationship I will ever have and the one I've neglected the most: me.

Mothers aren't just women with children in my opinion. They come in many forms, they are grown and evolve from nature and nurture combined.

Happiness and joy really need to come from inside yourself. You can't find it in external sources...When you are looking for it inside, you will feed you are failing and then one day someone will say 'you seem really happy' and you might think, Actually, yes, I think I am. I've realised that you really have to trust in the power of time: the knowledge that time continues and you need to do a bit of riding it out before you can see that time never stops and it brings all manner of situations and opportunities your way right when you least expect them. There is hope. There is always more. It's scary and you have to be brave.

It is very difficult for me to decide whether I am a nightmare in a relationship or just simply someone who won't settle for anything other than joy. This is the eyes of society labels me selfish or wild or untameable. Who in their right mind would want to be tamed anyway? No one should want to be tamed!

Very few women who are my age are still selling records or making waves in the music industry (Sia wore a bag on her head and a wig to cover her face), and yet that's not because we no longer have things to say. Of course we do. I have so much to say and the experience to match it. It's because the media insist on focusing on a woman's age. The sooner we stop putting this ridiculous pressure on ourselves to be young forever and society learns to deal with the fact that women's faces will change as they get older, the better.

When the man who was initially my boyfriend transitioned into my husband, it was as if overnight he expected my role in his life to change. He complained that I didn't spend enough time at home (I was out working a lot), he complained that my ambitions overpowered my duty as a his 'wife'. Well I cut and run as soon as I heard that rhetoric but I am aware that many women don't. We perpetuate the servitude to male need. It is important to add that I know plenty of men with mothers who absolutely didn't spoil their sons but somehow society seems to still give licence for them to receive the 'special treatment' anyway. They genuinely feel justified in thinking that their contribution to family, society or the home is enough while we women are left feeling we aren't 'doing enough'. It's ingrained in generation after generation. Most of my relationships have been with evolved modern men who claim to think their relationship with me has been balanced and equal. But I have to differ on this. There is an invisible expectation of women to mother them...

Are men spoilt as children? Are they overindulged by their mothers and society into thinking they are justified in constantly centring their suffering? Why is everyone doing so much work on toxic masculinity and male mental health and barely any on women's?

What I hadn't considered before it came up in therapy is: am I even able to make room for a male to help me? I think I view it as co-dependency or a robbery of my independence. I think as women, we definitely experience men putting in much less that we would like them to and we can opt for a single existence, but can we accept help? Can we truly invite it in when some (I admit: few) men are willing to give it?

Hairlessness is about holding on to the girlhood for me. I am happiest in adulthood and I'm not sure the type of men I like are the ones who hate body hair. Those men are usually warped by too much porn exposure and have unrealistic expectations of sex anyway.

Men don't have to spend two hours in hair and makeup. They don't have to wax, pluck, tweeze and preen. It's so time consuming.

For example, it's OK to the world that some male musicians who are thinning on top, they are still celebrated. But a woman who has children and a career must never age or show signs or wear and tear.

This government doesn't adequately subsidise childcare costs for families working with children under the age of three, so what are most people's options? Put most of your salary on childcare? Give up work? Either way, what do you then live on? Why is society still stacked up against us so we are forever in debt? When will society be in debt to its mothers for raising the next generation, and for trying to maintain seamless handovers and returns to work during maternity absence? When will we be recouped/redeemed for our own sacrifices?

I wonder why it still seems to be unusual for men to take significant parental leave, even though it is now possible to share the allowance between male and female parents? Are men worried they will be judged as lazy, as if childcare is not harder than work?

You are not always capable of all the things you take on. It's OK to say, "I'm sorry, I can't do that right now". It's OK to do less. It's OK to sleep more/get early nights. Mind and body are two different things - they don't always agree. You don't have to please everyone.

Successful women from the celebrity community are being vocal about choosing to be alone...It's because once women reach a level of financial independence where they can actually for the help they desperately need they are realising how little contribution being in romantic relationships is making to their lives. They are tired. At time it's easier to choose to have no one in the house to resent for not helping you with you load than to face loneliness itself.

We are at breaking point. We can't breathe for expectation. And when our male counterparts want to help us usually they ask, what they can do? Asking what you can do is the same as creating another job. If I need to explain what to do and how to do it and all the ingredients of doing that thing properly I honestly may as well do it myself. Women feel overlooked, taken for granted, exhausted by where feminism came and then abandoned us.

I am acutely aware of the progress that was made for women to have the right to work, to live alone, to take the contraceptive pill, to vote, to burn their bras, but we only really arrived halfway. What began as a brilliant innovation towards the liberation of women has halted or at least slowed down to arrive at another form of patriarchal oppression. Women are doing too much. We are pressed and squeezed for too much of ourselves.

How many women in the world haven't even had an orgasm? How many are putting up with shit sex just so they can have some perceived security? Or those women who give birth, go back to work and just take it on e chin that they have to morph into the equivalent of three standard humans. Resilience is something women are very good at. Too good in fact.

Feminism has left us with a confusion about the male and female roles...Maybe if a woman grows and births children and is constantly demanded upon, perhaps their partner (whatever their gender) needs to be intuitive and fill in the gaps. Isn't that common sense, or is that wishful thinking?

It's interesting because I meet women who don't want to end up like me. They fear being lonely and not having a life partner. But I find it a privilege as I am so free.

It feels like feminism has caught women in this strange in between stage where we are striving towards equality but what we have ended up with is something more insidious.

There is no cookie cutter answer to what is right or wrong. It's personal, just like whether you have a baby or not is and should be a personal choice.

Women are overloaded. We are stretched. Across the board. With or without children, we are not over the hill of feminism - we are barely getting started.

The fact is, women have spent their lives carrying the family, taking on the emotional burdens of others, avoiding rape or unwanted sexual advances, being perceived to be stupid, being told they are mad, negotiating extreme hormonal shifts, being paid less, being viewed as either a piece of meat or hideous and unattractive (why are these our only two options?), being told they slutty or frigid, having less power than their male counterparts, being expected to eat less than men...being told they have to have careers and excel in academia...being told they must he children and be great, present mothers, being told they must be sexually available to their partners and not go off sex even after childbirth and breastfeeding, looking after sick family members, cleaning up their father's messes (many women I know do this) and still look young and smile and cook well and have time to give advice and love to their male friends and lovers...No.

the world is not ready for free women