The Reason Modern Women Can't Keep a Man
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Summary
Melanie King grew up in a strict Christian home in the D.C. area. She talks about growing up with strict parents and how it shaped her into the woman she is today. She also talks about how she dealt with being a teen mom growing up.
Transcript
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What up guys? Welcome to the Just Pearly Things YouTube channel and welcome to The Sit Down.
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Today I have a special guest on the channel, Melanie King. Welcome to the show.
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Hi guys. Hi. Tell them a little bit about your channel.
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Well, my channel is just basically, you know, pointing out kind of like a lot of the foolishness
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that's out here, especially that women are doing, trying to hold them accountable,
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you know, giving a female perspective on things, on dating and relationships, marriage, divorce.
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I've been through all of it. So, you know, that's basically what I do.
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So, I'd like to start from the beginning. I got questions. Okay.
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So, no. So I was wondering, where are you from originally?
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D.C. Well, actually, PG County, Maryland, Pretty Girl County, Prince George's,
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anybody who's out there, shout out. So, but it's around D.C. D.C. area.
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I do. I have two older sisters. Um, so, but they're each, one is eight years older than me.
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The other one's 16 years older than me. So we're all kind of spread out.
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And how did you grow up different than the women today, would you say?
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I went to Christian school my whole life, Southern Baptist.
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So I was raised pretty strict. Um, I grew up with a lot of strong male leaders, um, from,
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and my dad, my uncles, uh, you know, that type of thing.
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I also, I grew up in the Pentagon. My mother worked, um, in the Pentagon most of my life.
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And so growing up and around the federal government, you're just around, like, military men and that
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type of presence. And so you get used to how men are and their kind of authority and how they
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do things. And it's just, it's just ingrained in me, I guess.
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Yeah. Cause I was, I'm surprised you didn't grow up with brothers.
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Like I found a lot of the girls in this space grew up with brothers, but you didn't.
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So it makes sense to me that it was a military family.
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Well, they, my, my parents weren't really military. It's like they had left the military.
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They were more like very religious and strict. They aren't now anymore. I'm like, okay.
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Right. Now they're like completely different, but I grew up that way. And then just, I was around a
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lot of people who, you know, in DC, it's a very conscious area in terms of just, you know, you're
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aware of social issues, you know, just being around military people in power, people, you know, um,
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making a difference in the world. And so I was raised with that type of mindset.
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Did you think that was good for you as a kid to grow up in like a strict household?
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Well, you came out so grounded. Like, it's not like, you know, these girls with no, you
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know, no parents around that are just wild. And you know, you, when I was younger though,
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I did, I knew I was different. Like I used to say all the time because girls will be talking
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about certain things and doing certain things. And I would always say, I always thought naturally
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like, that's stupid. Like, that's dumb. You're going to be a teen mom. Like you're going to
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get pregnant or that boy is like not going to marry you. Like I wouldn't naturally think of
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those things, but my parents would talk to me about it. And so, but growing up, I couldn't do
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certain things. Other people could, other girls could, um, like, like I said, I couldn't wear
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dresses above my knees. I couldn't, you know, and everyone else was free and I was just, I felt
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restricted. Um, but I got used to it, but I didn't think it was special. I just thought I was just,
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No, it's interesting. Cause I grew up sort of, my parents were kind of like free range
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parents. Okay. So I've always wondered like what it would be like to grow up in a strict
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household. Yeah. My dad is strict. My mother is not. So there's like this, my father's like
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ultra masculine and like hardcore. And my mother's like ultra soft feminine to the point where she's
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never even punished me. Now my dad, he was a different. So I had this, it was, she would be
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free range if she could, but he wouldn't let her be. So I don't know. It was a good balance. I think
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that has to be good though. Has a kid to have like the masculine and feminine, you know, the
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difference in parenting styles. Now I can see it, but when you're younger, it's like you, you know,
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even when you're young, you just don't know better. You just feel like it's just your life. My dad's
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being tough on me. I'm going to go to mom, but then mom will say, go talk to your father. Cause she
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wasn't going to undermine his authority. So it was that kind of thing. So what did you do next?
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You turned 18, you went to college, you got married. What'd you do next?
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I went to college. Um, I dropped out. Um, and then I went on because I knew college wasn't
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for me. School was never for me. I was more like, I did, I was very creative. So I ended
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up getting like really good jobs. So my first job out of college, I worked at XM radio.
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I got a job there and then I moved on to PBS and then I moved on to Vogue in New York. Um,
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but then also I did a lot of production and things for like national geographic.
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I interned at the white house. I interned at the Smithsonian Institute in DC.
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So I always had like a, you know, had a lot that I had going on when I was younger.
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So when, um, you got married when I got married when I was 29, so, um, I got married, uh, and
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then I had two, my two daughters and then I got divorced. I was married for about 11 years
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or so. Yeah. And how did you, cause a lot of times, um, women seem to think that they
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have to have one or the other, like they can't have a family and a career. And you, you seem
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to have been able to do both. I never wanted a career. I grew up, um, cause in the religion
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that I was in Southern Baptist, being a housewife was aspirational. So I never wanted a career.
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So that I would just, that's why I didn't want to finish school. I just wanted to float around
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and experience different things. I was like, Oh, it'd be cool to work at XM radio. Oh,
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it'd be cool to work at PBS. It'd be cool to work at Vogue. And so I just, I just want,
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I just got jobs just to try them out. But I always, my destination was to find a husband,
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um, and be a stay at home mom. Like is that's what, how we were raised. That's how I was raised.
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My parents didn't make me or put that in my mind, but there were a lot of women I knew
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like that. And I was like, that seems pretty, pretty cool. Were you able to do that to be
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a stay at home mom? Yeah. I haven't worked a job, a real job in 17 years. Oh my gosh.
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That sounds amazing. Worked a real job in 17 years. So, uh, so yeah, you know,
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somehow it worked out for me, but I was raised like, again, in an environment that like taught
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me, like, like a lot of women nowadays, like submissions are dirty work. Like this was what
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I cut my teeth on, like submission wives, submit yourself to your husband and men were the leaders
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and authority. We were serving the men food. Like you listen to what a man says. He's the final
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authority in a household. You, you can't talk to him a certain way. You know, like I was
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raised that way. So to me, it was a natural transition. I think a lot of women today, they
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weren't raised in that environment and they're trying to learn it now, like femininity and
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submission and serving a man a plate or to me, those are bottom of the barrel basics. Like
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that should be standard model for every woman. Why do you think it isn't? Um, I think, I think,
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I mean, there's a, there's layers to it. Um, the household that people are raised in, um,
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the philosophies and how people are raised, like, uh, say if someone's raised in a single
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mother environment, a lot of times a girl in that environment almost has to be masculine,
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be like a man, take care of things very early. Um, and if there's toxicity, you know, negativity
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about men, if she doesn't have positive male role models, men to practice these things on,
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or she doesn't see it demonstrated, it's just not natural. And, and if you know, in society
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and modern media, no one puts this out there, you know, it's actually put down and it's seen
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as almost shameful and being independent, free of a man and his authority is the dominating
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thought process nowadays, or how girls are being raised. And even women who have had fathers
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in the home, they're so concerned about their daughters not succeeding is like, you know,
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grow up and get your education, get your job. You know, you don't, even a lot of fathers nowadays
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are saying you don't need a man. And so I think that's why, like, there's no one, no one pushing
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it. No one cares until they hit a certain point in the dating world and they realize it's important.
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You know what I noticed too, that a lot of people from two parent homes, like the mom wore the pants
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in the relationship. So they never really saw what a traditional relationship looks like,
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where the, where the man leads, because the woman's running the household. I mean,
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they say happy wife, happy life for a reason, right? Yeah. That her happiness will determine
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the happiness of the family. Exactly. That, that is what people say. And see,
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I never grew up with any of that. And, and I never had that modeled to me, or said to me,
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or the men were the leaders. Like, it's just what it was. Um, from, from my home to school,
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because I was in Christian school my whole life. Very, very strict Christian school too.
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And a Catholic school. Okay. So a Catholic school, the same thing. It's like, you know,