If I had a dollar for every moment in my relationships when my significant other made me feel less than worthy, I’d own several thousand shares of Netflix or Facebook or Amazon and be disgustingly rich. Honestly. That’s how many times I was the recipient of an unkind or thoughtless word and/or action that came from a person that by his own choice, was in a relationship with me and claiming to love and care about me. I look back on my prior relationships and even my marriage now and wonder what I could’ve done differently to obtain the respect I am worthy of in those times I accepted treatment infinitely lesser than my value. And as I wrote that last sentence, the answer was right there – accepted – in all of my relationships, the FIRST instance of blatant disrespect, lack of care and genuine show of unkind words/actions should’ve been the LAST time I accepted the behavior. The truth is, I always had an excuse when a partner hurt my feelings.
“He’s just having a bad day. He didn’t mean to say that.”
“He’s used to communicating this way, it would be judgmental and dramatic of me to make a big deal out of his hurtful way of speaking to me during disagreements.”
“Nobody’s perfect. Breaking up with him over what he said/did only takes me back to square one: single. We’ll get back together anyway.”
“He’s just a flirt. He’s not really interested in that girl.”
“Men and women just inherently think differently so what I think is disrespectful/hurtful words and behavior is just the difference between our genders”.
“Boys will be boys.”
Admittedly, everyone has a bad day and men and women are wired (socialized) to communicate differently but those variables taken into consideration, it seemed I couldn’t shake the “I don’t care” attitude of the men I got involved with. Which leads me to my next point, the one thing all those men had in common outside of treating me poor was ME! I’m the link between them so I clearly had a legitimate part in repeating the same dynamic in each relationship. That realization crushed my soul, put dread in my heart and seriously almost took me to a place of depression. I was sub-consciously choosing the same man over and over again because I was in denial. I didn’t want to face the internal issues that were manifesting as the symptoms of mistreatment by those closest to me. The irony in that statement is I don’t let anyone outside of my inner circle get away with mistreating me. Not. A. Single. One. Yet here I was playing relationship for the sake of being in a relationship just as unhappy and beaten down in confidence as you can get.
I had my light bulb moment after a particularly hard season trying to hold on to toxic, dead relationships. I was bitter. I was angry. I was resentful. Rejection had me feeling like I was nothing to anybody. I doubted every great and unique and valuable trait about me because I had convinced myself those toxic, dead relationships were failures that meant I wasn’t good enough for a loving, caring, kind, compassionate, empathetic, stable, healthy partner. I remember comparing myself to other women and their relationships and feeling jealous of those women and their ability to be treated with the value and worth they deserve (you know what they say about greener grass). I even had the nerve to get frustrated with God and question why He didn’t think it was a priority to send me a “good” man. Of course, God left me right in that place of self-righteousness and ignored me (not that I blame Him.) It wasn’t until quite sometime later that I opened myself to His ever-present reminding of who I am: the perfectly created and only Marquita that has my mind, my heart, my body and my soul. As I reconnected with God, He revealed more of me to me and I remembered one of my Daddy’s favorite sayings about a man: “A man gon’ do EXACTLY what he wants.” Anybody that knows my Daddy will say he is a man of little talk. But when he’s got something to say, you better believe it’s going to hit you right where you need it. Once I got that saying in my mind again, it wouldn’t leave me alone. It fit so accurately with all of my experiences with my romantic partners. I even applied my Daddy’s logic to friendships too – ‘man’ became ‘person’ and ‘he’ became ‘he or she’ and I was DELIVERED! The residual guilt, shame, rejection, hurt, anger, disappointment, resentment of past experiences of mistreatment by others left out of me like a leaf being picked up by a light breeze and carried away. Did I absolve myself of responsibility for accepting and allowing others to mistreat me – absolutely not. What I did do is acknowledge that being mistreated in my relationships was never about me. The other person ALWAYS had a choice in the words/actions used towards me and nothing I could ever say or do would change what someone WANTS to do or say. Glory to God for the blessing of that truth!
I leave y’all with this message to my fellow Queens (even though it says he, it’s for all the people in your life that are applicable).
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I love y’all. Be good to yourselves. Be good to others.
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