How Alanis Morissette Exposed What Women Really Experience with Men

Sympathetic Character – Have you heard?

In 1998, one song said what we were all thinking but afraid to say out loud

I remember the first time I really heard “Sympathetic Character.” Not just listened to it, but actually heard what Alanis was saying. I was probably doing dishes or folding laundry — you know, those moments when a song suddenly stops being background noise and starts being a conversation with your soul.

And I thought: Holyshitfuck. She’s talking about what women all over the world face.

In 1998, when Alanis released this track from Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, most of us weren’t ready for what she was saying. We were still calling women who spoke up “difficult” or “too emotional.” We didn’t have words for the things she was describing — that feeling of walking on eggshells, of suppressing your own rage to keep peace, of being afraid to speak up because you knew what might happen.

Related: Is it Care or Control?

She Was Telling Our Stories Before We Knew How

When Alanis lists all those fears in the song — being afraid of his temper, his intimidation, his coercion — it’s like she’s reading from the diary so many of us kept but never showed anyone. The fear of his physical strength. The fear of being “reduced.” The fear of holes punched in walls. The fear of icy silences that could last for days.

But here’s what got me: “I have as much rage as you have, I have as much pain as you do, I’ve lived as much hell as you have — and I’ve kept mine bubbling under for you.”

For you.

That’s the line that broke me open. Because how many of us have done exactly that? Swallowed our anger, managed his emotions, kept ourselves small and quiet and accommodating because we were afraid of what would happen if we didn’t?

The song isn’t just about bad relationships. It’s about something way more common — how we taught ourselves to be afraid of the men we loved because we made them our everything. Our best friend, lover, mentor, brother, partner, teacher, keeper, anchor, family, and savior. When someone is all of that to you, you can’t afford to lose them. Which means you can’t afford to be real with them.

We All Know These Stories

You don’t need statistics to know this is real. Just ask your friends. Ask your mom. Ask your Aunt. Ask yourself.

How many women do you know who’ve tiptoed around a man’s mood? Who’ve learned to read the signs — when to speak, when to stay quiet, when to make themselves invisible? Who’ve suppressed their own feelings because his were always bigger, louder, more important?

No wonder they wanted a wife.

I’m not talking about extreme abuse here. I’m talking about Tuesday night dinners where you don’t bring up the thing that’s bothering you because he’s already stressed about work. I’m talking about choosing your words carefully because you know how he gets when he feels criticized. I’m talking about the exhausting mental labor of managing someone else’s emotions while pretending you don’t have any of your own.

Women are told to be small, not have any needs…you have heard me say it.

This stuff is everywhere. It’s in marriages and dating relationships. It’s in families and friendships. It’s the water we’ve been swimming in for so long that we forgot it wasn’t normal until someone like Alanis came along and said, “Hey, this is actually really messed up.”

I’m talking about the exhausting mental labor of managing someone else’s emotions while pretending you don’t have any of your own.

The Things We Don’t Talk About or Can’t

What Alanis captured wasn’t some rare, extreme situation. She was talking about the everyday reality that so many women know but rarely discuss openly:

Being afraid of his reactions — not because he’s violent (or sometimes he is), but because his disappointment feels like the end of the world when he’s your whole world

Related: The Perfect Patriarchy Trap

Managing his emotions — knowing that if he’s upset, your day is ruined too, so you learn to anticipate and prevent

Suppressing your own feelings — because there’s only room for one person’s big emotions in this relationship, and it’s never yours

Walking on eggshells — constantly calculating what might set him off, what might make him withdraw, what might make him leave

…and it’s never yours

Losing yourself — slowly, quietly, until one day you realize you can’t remember what you used to think about things before you learned to think about them through his lens

This isn’t about bad men being deliberately manipulative (though some are). This is about what happens when we set up relationships where women are supposed to be everything to someone while making that someone everything to them. It creates this impossible dynamic where his needs matter more because losing him means losing everything.

The Rage Beneath the Surface: A Woman’s Stolen Fire

What makes “Sympathetic Character” so powerful is how it channels the rage that women are systematically taught to suppress. The song becomes a vessel for the fury that builds when someone is told their pain doesn’t matter as much, when their voice is silenced, when their very existence becomes conditional on managing someone else’s emotions.

This rage is not destructive — it’s life-affirming. It’s the recognition that women have been carrying the emotional labor of relationships while being denied the right to their own emotional expression. The line “I have as much rage as you have” is revolutionary because it demands equal right to anger, equal right to pain, equal right to take up space with intensity.

This rage is not destructive — it’s life-affirming.

Equal, hmmm…

But here’s what Morissette understood in 1998 that we’re still learning: this stolen fire, this suppressed rage, this forced emotional servitude — it all stems from women’s economic and social dependency. When you rely on someone else for your financial security, your housing, your social connections, your very identity — you become hostage to their emotional needs.

The solution isn’t just therapy or awareness — it’s economic independence. Own your own money. Own your own home. Own your own life.

Be your own sympathetic character.

What Nobody Was Saying in 1998

Back then, if you tried to talk about this stuff, people would tell you that’s “just how relationships work” or “marriage is about compromise.” If you complained about feeling like you couldn’t be yourself, you were being “too sensitive.” If you said you were afraid of your partner’s temper, people would ask what you did to make him angry.

Alanis was out here singing about intimidation and coercion and the fear of speaking up, and we didn’t have the language for it yet. We didn’t have terms like “emotional labor” or “gaslighting.” We didn’t talk about how women are socialized to manage everyone else’s feelings while ignoring their own.

Back then, if you tried to talk about this stuff, people would tell you that’s “just how relationships work” or “marriage is about compromise.”

She was ahead of her time, but she was also right on time for all the women who needed to hear someone else say it first.

Someone who could put words to that feeling of drowning in someone else’s emotions while your own went unnoticed. Someone who could name the exhaustion of being afraid in your own life.

“And therein lay the issue, and therein lay the problem.”

The issue: we were taught to make men our everything. The problem: when someone is your everything, you lose yourself trying to keep them.

Where We Go From Here

Twenty-six years after Alanis sang about keeping her rage bubbling under, maybe it’s time we let it bubble up and over instead. Maybe it’s time we stopped being afraid of our own bigness, our own needs, our own voices.

Maybe it’s time we taught our daughters that they don’t need anyone to be their keeper, their anchor, their savior. They can be their own sympathetic character.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: when you stop making other people responsible for your happiness, they stop having the power to destroy it. When you build your own life, you can invite people into it without handing them the deed.

And that changes everything.

Listen to “Sympathetic Character” again. Really listen. And ask yourself: what have you been keeping bubbling under? What would happen if you let it rise to the surface? What would happen if you stopped being afraid?

What would happen if all the women did it at the same time?

You might be surprised by how much power you’ve been giving away — and how good it feels to take it back.

For more in-depth conversations on healing from narcissistic abuse — and our ongoing exploration of deconstructing the patriarchy from episode 69 onward — tune in to our podcast, the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Podcast, available on all major platforms.

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