‘I Had to Become Feminine’: Businesswoman, 42 and Single, Breaks Down, Ditches Feminism to Find Husband

Lisa Stingley was supposed to be happy.

An accomplished career woman with a headhunting firm in Washington, she was like a superstar in some people’s books. There’s “a glamor” to women working outside the home, she says. Yet weirdly the feminist values Stingley once venerated—for garnering success, a genuine sense of accomplishment—suddenly rang hollow.

Something was missing.

Then 42—not a man in sight—Stingley panicked, had a breakdown, and decided she wanted marriage. “You go home to an empty apartment,” she told The Epoch Times. “I used to have breakdowns when something would break in my home, I would get so resentful. A man should be fixing this!” But the type she was praying for was scarce in the “hyper careerist environment” of D.C. Her breakdown was an exit sign.

Stingley was very ready—or so she thought.

That old job of Stingley’s—like some perverse testosterone treatment—had made her masculine, she says. That dynamism, so intoxicating in the corporate world, now affronted both her husband and a harmonious marriage.

“I was loud, I was boisterous. I gave off, I call it, ’repellent,' ’male repellent,’” she said. “I was so controlling. … I think the culture encourages men to be controlled and to be submissive, which I did not want. So, I was determined not to do that. But that took years.

“I had to become more feminine.”

Her chronically scrutinizing Richard didn’t jive well—despite his own feminist leanings. There was room for just one tiger on this mountain, yet she caught herself in time: The feminist teaches to keep men “wrapped around your finger;” she rejected that. Honestly, women are ”repelled by male weakness,” she admitted. “But they can’t stop destroying their own nest.”

Turning her gaze inward, she fixed herself first. As she changed, he changed. And peace followed.

Elevating one’s self lifts others around you—including men, bringing them “up to what they were supposed to be,” she added. “The men you want to marry, they will love that. And it gets that ring on your finger in record time.”

How the media portrays relations seems slanted, most conspicuously, toward dismantling marriage. Those shown having affairs are “tremendously happy,” Stingley observed. The homosexual component couples? “Very happy.” The married couple? “Hating each other.”

Men, too, are harmed by the scourge of feminism. When women become like men, men say sayonara.

“They just leave society, they just don’t marry, they play video games,” Stingley said. “When they feel ostracized from society, by women, put down—it’s open season on men—they check out and there’s no one to marry. But women can recapture it … they'll easily come alive again.”

Today, Stingley continues to cultivate the traditional, feminine traits she so espouses.

What words has she for young belles still budding in their 20s, their whole lives ahead, full of potential?

“I do not want them to go through what I went through, what my friends have gone through,” Stingley said. “Marriage is risky. ... But don’t tell me it’s not worth it. You can get fired from a job, that’s a risk. But what is more devastating? What is more worth the risk?”

In short: sidestep the abyss, and the feminist lies she fell for. Do embrace tradition, which has preserved societies for eons. Get an education? Yes, it’s important, Stingley says. A career? Sure, working a little before marriage can lead to greater appreciation for what it offers.

Family is the “essence of life,” she added. “You won’t have to panic when Christmas comes along and you have nowhere to go. ... Just do it. Don’t just marry anybody, but you have options. And don’t be afraid to be traditional.”