Ms. Jackson done sang it: "I'm in CONTROL."

I hate controlling relationships. To see a person subjugate oneself to another, the so-called "alpha," him or her rimlicking without knowing it, his/her head totally in the dark of the domineering person. It is not just chauvinist men controlling doormat women -- it pisses me off more to see a woman pistol-whipping a man, emasculating him to the point of rendering him a certified eunuch.

The acrid taste that comes up when a girl talks flippantly of her "stupid boyfriend," or a woman demeaning "her man" for not doing exactly what she demanded or summoning some innate ESP and reading her mind. It comes up whether she chastises him in front of me, or confides to me her dissatisfaction and tries to appeal to our common womanhood -- that supposedly as a woman, she automatically possesses the "universal right" in a relationship. (I have to check myself and admit I'm guilty of this BS in past relationships. I know now why I acted and reacted that way. As I've said, know your triggers...)

An eyewitness account of such a dysfunctional relationship: my former best girlfriend from the neighborhood. (Bitch was already on the outs with me since being a histrionic mooch at my birthday celebration, for which she is too conceited to apologize.) She enslaves her husband en total. He's indebted to her because their "love match" of a marriage also fortuitously saved him from deportation -- and she makes him pay for it with his pride. The whole purpose of his being now is to make his wife successful. I've never heard what his goals are.

No wonder he drinks himself into a stupor almost every night. No wonder he wants to spend his whole paycheck playing pool at pubs, defying his wife's Oprah-budget rules. I can even understand his violent side, the anger he takes out on inanimate objects, the Martha-Stewart WASPy material things she so covets and values. She boasts how she plucked him from the crowd, changing him from a shirking wallflower, picked his hipster clothes and turned him into something; now she is horrified to see what that something really is.

I don't hang out with them anymore. My easygoing smile and nonmaterial outlook are wasted on the likes of them. (Before I cut them off, I had a very bemusing incident, maybe too much to recount on this blog.) She refuses to ever admit she's wrong. She expects me to be as a much of a bootlicker as her husband. Don't hold your breath, woman. I actually enjoy hearing dissenting viewpoints -- openness deepens understanding. But I won't back down from my principles.

As a single mother, I have to be very selective when choosing a potential partner (even if it's just for a fun time or a good screw). Being steadfastly Pro-Choice, it was a point of empowerment for me to choose to be a single mother. Whoever I bring now into my life and my son's life, I have to enforce that same control. I am looking for an equal.