And Another One…

Self-sabotage. I’ll be the first to raise my hand and admit that the reason I’m single today is because when I did have something good for me, I found a way to ruin it, a lot like Ricky Bobby’s dad; remember the restaurant scene? The only thing he left with his family were the wise words, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Well, when I was first, I WAS last because whenever I found myself close to the finish line, my old ways would come back again to make sure I stayed stuck.

I’m currently going through yet another relationship dilemma. This past year was so hectic and chaotic that I didn’t even realize the fact that I could potentially be in a solid relationship by now had I been a bit more focused and healthier emotionally. I read that your soul mate is not necessarily that person who gave you love-at-first-sight butterflies. It’s the one that forces you to look into your soul, and address the good, bad, and ugly so you can be a better person. I’m not saying this gentleman was or is my soulmate, but I am saying he’s challenged me to check my fucked up ways.

Now I’m not here to beat myself up. I don’t encourage anyone to do that. However, I do feel that it is necessary to look at oneself from an observer’s POV, and objectively assess the repetitive behavior.

This guy that I really like, he has unique qualities that I appreciate that you don’t see everyday. Are there some aspects about his character that I could live without, absolutely. But those times where he showed his ass, giving me a little taste of the possibilities that could occur on a real bad day, it was usually due to me messing something up that could’ve been avoided if I just paid a bit more attention. While being careful not to accept mistreatment, I also try to be mindful of what actions on my part caused him to be, and I hate to say the word… but .. . triggered. He would not like me implying that he gets triggered cause “he’s a man”. That seems to be going around a lot these days, all this “I’m a man” stuff. As if a man couldn’t be triggered, hell they can be more sensitive than woman if you ask me. Seen it with my own eyes. Not a bad thing, it’s ok to be a human.

Back to the point, I’m writing this post to take the time to dissect the repetitive behaviors that have caused this very unwanted reoccurrence. My goal is to course correct, and possibly repair what I’ve broken. As I mentioned earlier, we’re just over a year-in of knowing each other. I know he’s over me on some level. But we’ll see. I’m going to make the changes any way because at the end of the day, this is really for me. So that I can be a better woman, and human being.

“You need to start paying more attention to your time!”

One of the things that has gotten on my nerves about this fellow, is that he’s always correcting me, or has some smart shit to say that discredits whatever I’m bringing to the conversation. And before you say “you sure that’s what you want?”, let me say that those sorts of comments are not legit deal breakers for me. Quick to cry, maybe, but I can handle genuine criticism. Meaning they thought about it and concluded that the action was fucked up before going off me.

This man considers himself to be a HVM. I say that because he’s actually said things like “…a high value man like myself.” I just would laugh to myself, like “ok sir, a high value man like yourself…” Because what man doesn’t consider himself to be of value?

Early on, and I’ve mentioned this a little bit before, he would spend a lot of time talking about his disdain for women. At first I took slight offense to his opinions because I didn’t feel as though they were fair. We had just met, I knew that the things he believed about women didn’t really apply to me. That was before I realized how much I had changed in a negative way post the 2020 breakup.

I had been beyond loyal in all of my actual relationships; meaning we were over 21, had made a conscious decision to be in a relationship and then behaved as such; either as domestic partners, known back in the day as ‘shacking’, or two people who spent seventy-percent or more of their free time together. My ex-fiancé and I lived together the majority of our relationship, we ended up getting a place together about six months in, and looking back, I would almost bet that it was because he knew he wouldn’t have the bulk of adulting on his shoulders, we’ll just say that. Remember when I told about the time I helped him with his rent? Well he never really paid his rent after that and he ended up having to move out of his apartment. We were in our thirties. Completely unacceptable on his part and moving in with him after seeing this was a HUGE no-no on mine.

After the breakup, I felt very sensitive about the idea of living with another man without some sort of established commitment. On one hand I felt like it was time for me to try life out on my own, and be responsible for myself. On the other hand, I just wanted to be more careful about who I chose to rebuild my life with because I was afraid of being drained dry of my energy, again. I liked the feeling of renting my own little house and managing everything on my own wasn’t that bad. I did pretty well with this newly found, level of responsibility I was expressing. It was a pleasant surprise for even me. That’s not to say that the water bill wasn’t late here and there, but I wasn’t as strapped for cash like I was when my ex and I were together.

While I was doing alright on the financial end, by this time having quite a few sources of income, other areas of my life that weren’t together were starting to surface.

“Girl I thought you were going through depression, I ain’t never seen your house like this!”

When my 2020 ex, Mr. Red, started showing that he had fewer, and fewer fucks to give in regards to our relationship, I did start feeling a type of way. I know now what it is, but at the time I could only describe the feeling as an extreme lack of motivation. I was loosing motivation to cook for him, because he wasn’t coming home anyway. And then my business started growing so I my time started to become more and more limited, which ultimately led to a very unkept house. I hired housekeepers to come out periodically to help me maintain some sort of cleanliness, but everything became so overwhelming from “Where is my man?” to “This is just too much and I don’t even know where to start.” I was falling apart, and my home fell apart in the process.

After he was gone, which was late September 2020, I was all over the place. I was consumed by work with it being annual report season, and somehow managed to meet the needs of several clients that I was providing services for at the time. I was very sad and although I didn’t cry a whole lot, when I did it got ugly. To be quite honest, I thought I was handling everything pretty well given that a very strong attachment was being severed in a very hurtful way. The truth is, my lack of reaction wasn’t due to me having done the work to be emotionally healthy, although I thought I had been working on myself years prior. My lack of emotion was due the fact that I ain’t have no emotions! My close friend commented, “JJ when you broke the news about the wedding being called off, you just sounded - numb.”

Well she hit the nail on the head with that one. And this is why we need real people in our life. Friend or not, just be real. I definitely felt numb. I had very little emotion to show at that time. I knew I wasn’t ready for another ‘full-on’ relationship. But I figured having a friend, or meeting new guys would be beneficial. I needed to practice building rapport with men, without making everything romantic.

Epic Fail

I was kicking it with my therapist about not knowing how to ‘be’ around men during one of our sessions. I came up with the bright idea of hopping on a dating site. It was my understanding that certain sites were used by guys who were either looking to fuck quickly, or dudes who just wanted to meet a lot of women. I never considered that a man would be on a dating site looking for a wife. I know that sounds dumb as hell. And pre-damaged me had a completely different view, as I know couples personally who met online and are now living very happily married. I think my last relationship just made me say ‘fuck it, it’s over out here’. So whatever potential for a relationship I had with this new guy, yes, you guessed it, it was over before it started. Which was what my mother said back when I broke the news of my divorce, “Girl that marriage was over before it started.”

As you’ve read, I haven’t completely giving up on this one, although I know I was primarily in the wrong on a few issues. What bothers me most is that my fuck-ups were superficially out of character for me. I didn’t generally lie, but I lied to him. I was rarely late for a date, but was pretty much always late coming to see him, and, while I was loyal to a fault with my exes, I, kinda’ cheated, I think. All of this because I went into it from a very, very damaged and unstable frame of mind. I feel horrible about it.

I go back and forth with where I went wrong and it was definitely before any lying or betrayal happened. I wish I could go back. When I was confronted, as you’ll read in Am I Numb?, I felt a combination of fear, which is why I lied about it in the first place, defensiveness, and mostly confusion. I was confused because I genuinely did not understand why he was so mad. Let me tell you how fucked up my logic had become.

What TF is this?

I guess I never learned how to date, I was very misguided as a young woman as far as what dating was supposed to look like. I was not schooled on how to vet a man, hell I didn’t even grow up really feeling like I had a choice in the matter when it came to who I dated. And fuck having a little boyfriend for practice shots, I wasn’t even allowed to have phone calls from boys, not until I got my own phone that I paid for which means I was an adult.

I was raised in a communistic-like household, in free America. Everything was chosen for me. It was a very controlled environment and I’m not the only person from my family who’s suffered because of this. The combination of my parents’ unreasonable standards and the cogic’s, as another friend with the same struggles jokingly calls them, placed me in a bad disposition when it came to finding love out here. What I was groomed for was not at all conducive for finding real love, or at minimum, a healthy and functioning partnership in the 2000’s. I was programmed to be a servant. When I think back on how my choice was strategically and manipulatively taken from me… .. it ain’t joy that floods my soul, I’ll tell you that.

In my mind, I was going to meet a guy. He was going to be cute and saved because as long as they were saved that was all that mattered. Such low standards. Especially when they ain’t trying to be saved! That means if I was to meet a guy in the streets, the only way my people would accept him would be if he ‘got saved’ and it was my job to minister to him through my life, i.e. being perfect, to win his soul for the lord. Do you hear how that sounds? I can’t believe I actually believed this. I don’t mean to throw shade on anyone’s relationship with their lord. But now that I’m standing in my power as a grown ass woman, I’m saying, it’s just not for me. Not only is this not what I want, it’s not in alignment with what I want. I’ve literally had to deconstruct everything I’ve been taught to believe, and approach these concepts with a new frame of mind. A mind of someone who can think for themselves.

Now that I’ve abandoned the ‘is he saved’ standard, I can focus on being in alignment with what I know I want. And that is a healthy and loving partnership with a man, in which we both feel a positive level of passion for each other. That may sound general, but that’s the bottom line for me. But before I can experience that, I know I still have work to do. I need to be a whole woman first, or at least close to it.

Years before I realized I had this thing they call ‘authority’ over myself, I had very, delusional expectations from men. For one, if we spent a lot of time together and was having sex, because I stopped being saved once I didn’t have to go to church any more, we were boyfriend and girlfriend.

“You are mine and I am yours” - Game of Thrones

We’ll call my ex-husband Maddog for his quote in Jason’s Lyric “It’s my leg ain’t it!” My ex-husband’s leg was always bothering him because he shot himself. Well it was most likely from a car accident that almost killed him, but I just thought I’d add that little bit in there in case anyone thought it was me. And I have to put this disclaimer out there since Maddog’s character in Jason’s Lyric was a U.S. Vet; I am not mocking those who bravely served our country during in any war. I truly respect your sacrifice.

Let’s just not even use that reference, too sensitive for many. I can hear my biological father now going into his own war stories. We’ll just call him Sin. Because it should be a sin to give a man like him the opportunity to play anyone the way I allowed him to play me. After a bit a soul searching, I think I found the onset of the very thinking that got me tied up with him in the first place.

Although I began my own semi-excommunication with the denomination that shall remain unnamed. I stuck around for the music. I still felt inspired during the praise and worship portion of the service, a staple in almost all Pentecostal institutions. I also hadn’t taken the time as I’m doing now, to objectively reevaluate what I truly believe. So although I was no longer on the church’s ‘roll’, I still ascribed to some very out of date standards and practices. After my hoe phase, which was very short lived, I had the one crazy guy, and then Sin came along. We had a good time in the beginning. He showed hints of his little boy issues, but following my mother’s example, I stuck around despite witnessing shit I knew I didn’t like. Things that give a girl that little sting of nervousness, and has her saying things like “you don’t wanna piss him off!” What I would’ve appreciated is one of my many aunts and older church friends telling me as a teen, “when you feel that, plan an exit”. Instead I just just got the old “God hates divorce” so you stuck basically. And you’re right, I said in the beginning, meaning we weren’t even married and I was acting like his wife. He’ll be quick to tell you “I didn’t ask her to do that”.

I grew up seeing women powerless, second class, and ‘put in their place’. It was during the same time women began really expressing their themselves and going for more leadership roles outside of the home. Yes, the very weird 1990’s. The decade of my teens. I denied for years that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. But it really doesn’t. I believed in my own heart that if a person wanted to change, then they could, simple. It may be because I believed this, the universe or whatever is keeping things in motion, felt as though I could use a SERIOUS life lesson. “If a person wants to change, then they can. Or can they?” What do you think?

“You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.”

Also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Yeah, See y’all keep sleeping on this beloved subject but there’s a science for everything. I’ll even bet that there’s a reformed pimp out there using this very quote to impress the young hoes. The visual is hilarious to me. If you want to read further about this theory and the researchers who developed it, I recommend visiting the Britannica website. But the short version is that people who do not possess the ability to “see their own deficiencies” tend to “overestimate their knowledge”.

Boy, I was SO wrong about what I thought I knew about men and how to be in a relationship with one. I’m just now working on this because I’m just now realizing it!

Judges gonna judge.

Deep down inside, If I’m truthful with myself, I’ve always wanted a husband, kids were questionable, but a husband was always part of the vision. They say hind sight it 20/20 and they’re right for the most part. But you don’t know what you don’t know. I wasn’t aware of how ‘off’ my beliefs were about relationships until I was able to remove the layers of myself that were protecting these outdated concepts. It was always some relationship tragedy that brought about the desire for me to look a little closer at me. But right at the point where I would start making progress becoming more of myself, there came another man who would show me just enough interest for me to abandoned my self-discovery project. And there I was again, sticking it out, showing off my refined domestic skills, doing all of the things to prove I was a team player. And then being benched despite all of my efforts. And I let it happen. Hindsight wasn’t always 20/20 for me because although I spent a lot of time thinking in retrospect, my personal conclusions developed from a skewed perspective.

I repeated this in about 98% of my relationships, and this is why I’m feeling a bit fucked up over my current situation. The thought that I' may have ran away a man who actually deserved being treated like a boss, and was willing to reciprocate my acts of love just doesn’t sit well with me. And it’s because I freely gave all of that stuff away to losers for years.

The bottom line is, at this point the only thing I can do is change. I don’t expect this guy to give me too much more time to show him who I really am, shit I MIGHT be blocked, who knows. But this time, I’m making a change because this is something that I want and need for myself. I’m really doing this for me.