Why I don't get along with other women...part 3,571

I'll admit it...I don't like women that much.

Obviously, it is nothing against women as a whole, or even against women as individuals (since I am one and all...) but there is just something that goes horribly wrong when women get together.

I'm involved in a women's bible study group. We are all around the same age and around the same stage in life (married with mostly preschool aged children), and almost all of us are Catholic (one is a non-Catholic married to a Catholic and raising her kids Catholic). Some days we get along just great...right now is not one of those times.

Basically, we have two warring factions (maybe a little overdramatic...) one group does not want us to have a leader, resists any sort of leadership, particularly if said leadership is the women in the group that are in charge of reporting our activities to the parish (hence, technically the leaders). This side also mostly wants to socialize, and keep us from offending anyone by getting too deep into the faith. The other side would like a hard core bible study, and are a little antisocial (okay, maybe that's just me...but not quite as enamored with the social aspects).

I ended up being the facilitator when we did Johnette Benkovic's "Full of Grace" study because I had done it before. I tried to pass the torch with our new study (Kimberly Hahn's "Chosen and Cherished") but no one would take it, so I'm facilitating again.

To make things worse, Father has set up the RCIA/Adult Education classes so that they are the same evenings as our bible study...now, the group as a whole seems to think that Father should work around the schedule of church activities rather than having church activities work around Father's schedule. Last meeting, there were 5 of us (out of 11-15...11 got books for this study) and we chose to move bible study night so it wouldn't conflict with RCIA/Adult Education. I have already started to get flak for that since I did have it put in the bulletin...but it is of course, from people who weren't there last time.

We also have this dumb secret sister thing...at first I thought it was fun...and actually it is kinda fun to come up with gifts for my secret sister. The first year, the woman who was my secret sister was a total dud (1 card all year, gift at Christmas, gift at end of year...whatever, it was fine, although I did think a birthday card would be traditional), and this year's secret sister is a little better (did several things early on in the year, but missed my birthday as well...of course, I do have a sucky time of year for a birthday anyway...) But when we have secret sister stuff (Christmas party, end of the year reveal) it takes a lot of time away from our bible study stuff...so we talked about doing either an "end on your own" thing or a coffee on a Saturday to reveal.

Here's were the current drama starts:

Next bible study is at our house, so I sent out an e-mail stating what I was cooking, what other people could bring, what chapters we are doing in the study, that we were moving days starting the following meeting, and that we had talked about the secret sister thing at the last meeting. I knew that one of the ladies had said she would take care of it, but I hadn't heard anything from her (and she has a tendency to tell me that she will call back about something and never call back...which is fine, but doesn't make me all that confident that things will get done) so I put a throw away comment at the end of the e-mail saying basically, anyone interested in organizing? Do we still want to do secret sisters? Knowing full well that there was next to no chance that anyone would take me up on organizing anything...

Well, I first got an e-mail (private to me) from one of the ladies saying that the one who had said she'd take care of it was dealing with it. I didn't bother responding, because I figured that she'd be doing it anyway...I thought that by offering it out, the people who don't want any leadership from the actual leaders of the group would be less put out by one of the leaders taking charge if they were offered the chance to be involved (do you see how convoluted this gets really quickly???) AND I figured that if anyone expressed interest, I could tell them that the lady who was going to take care of it was working on it and to call her to see if she needs help.

So, I get a call from the lady who said she'd do it telling me that if she says she'll do something, I should just let her do it, and basically keep my nose out of it. I tried to explain my reasoning...but at this point, I am just about ready to quit.

It's so much like all the drama in Altar and Rosary that caused me to try to start a K of C ladies auxillary in our old parish, which was thwarted by the new Grand Knight (the old one helped me get started) who wouldn't give us the names of the Knight's wives because his wife was an officer in Altar and Rosary and he didn't want to get in trouble with the A and R ladies...

I've never been able to get along with other women (particularly in women's groups), so I don't know why I bother trying...