Women have a tendency to feel guilty and responsible for everything that happens around us. We feel guilty for going to work and not being with our children and we feel guilty if we don’t go to work for taking our children to the doctor. If our relationship fails, we feel guilty, if our partner is unfaithful, we feel guilty. And so in all areas of our life. Why does that feeling of guilt never go away?
Feeling of guilt, a matter of education
- The feeling of guilt accompanies us from early childhood and will not leave us at any stage of our lives. Educated to be good daughters and then good mothers, to be efficient workers, understanding partners, unconditional friends, and also to be true to ourselves. The pressure of so many roles we have to play makes us feel responsible for the happiness of others, and when things don’t work out, we feel guilty.
- Guilt is a fundamentally feminine feeling. This is not to say that men never feel guilty, but they do experience that feelng when they have really failed or made a mistake. The difference is that women feel guilty for absolutely everything. But this different attitude of men and women confirms once again that all family responsibility falls on women.
- On the road to gender equality, women have been achieving a series of rights, while at the same time we have been acquiring more responsibilities. Today’s women do not play a different role from our grandmothers, we play the same role and we add many more to it, until we become the so- called super women capable of handling any aspect of our lives and that of our family by ourselves.
The guilt of the working woman
- It is in the workplace where the feeling of guilt in women is most evident. Beginning because she is at a crossroads to decide if she opts for being a good professional or, on the contrary, a good mother. Can’t it be both? Can’t men be good professionals and good parents at the same time? Why is the reconciliation of family and work life a problem that only affects women? We don’t want you to answer these questions, just ask yourself each time you feel a pang of guilt the next time you can’t make it to your son’s basketball game because you have work to do.
- But the feeling of guilt is also present in relationships, in the circle of friends and in the family environment. It is, in any case, a feeling to avoid, because like any negative emotion, such as hate, anger, or sadness, it gets in the way of happiness. And we do not have the magic formula that eliminates the feeling of guilt from your life, but becoming aware that the happiness and well-being of your loved ones depend more on themselves than on you, can free you in part from responsibility