neenzmj
New Member
This may not be popular advice, but it’s good advice for all women to embrace: stop trying to keep a man who doesn’t want to be kept. You can’t do it – no matter how hard you try. There isn’t enough love and support you can give, there isn’t enough sex you can have, and there is no amount of effort on your part that’s going to make him want to stay where he doesn’t want to be.
I share this experience from my personal life in hopes that it resonates with someone who may be going through something similar OR to let someone out there know you’re not alone in having made some bad decisions in the name of trying to be with a man.
I spent two years of my life with a guy (29 years old at the time) who was living with his mother and didn’t have a job. When I met him, he had a piece of a job and he was shared an apartment with another guy. Somewhere in there, he lost his job (over foolishness) and was forced to move out because he couldn’t pay the rent. (Clearly, this should have been Warning Sign #1). So, back he goes to his mother’s house. Now, I’m sure that people looking in from the outside could clearly see that I was wasting my time with him. After all, I had two kids, a good job, a house, a car and I was (still am) a good-looking woman. Clearly I didn’t NEED this person in my life, but in my mind “he was nice.” WHEN he came over, we had a good time together. In my mind, it was “A RELATIONSHIP,” though in moments of introspect, I knew that I was settling big time. I also knew I was making excuses for someone who had no intentions of being in a committed relationship. This was apparent to me because whenever I brought up the subject commitment, he always hedged. Sometimes he’d make comments like “I can’t give you all of me.” In retrospect, my response should have been, “Oh, it’s ok for me to give of myself sexually, yet you can’t give all of yourself to me in a committed relationship?” (Everything is so crystal clear in retrospect, huh?) This is yet another thing that’s wrong with sex outside of marriage, besides the obvious problem with it being fornication, but that’s a different entry. See, this was a guy who “liked” me, but he wasn’t trying to be WITH me. I was nice to him. I was a convenience. I made it easy for him to do his thing and fit me in whenever he needed to be hooked up. That’s the raw, honest truth and it’s probably the raw, honest truth in a lot of “relationships” out there. At the time, I’d convinced myself that the more I showed him what a great woman I was by fixing a great meal when he came over, having sex with him outside of marriage (even those times when he seemed like he’d worn the same clothes for a couple of days), getting in debt helping him buy an engine for his raggedy, crap piece of a car… no, strike that (he had no job – I BOUGHT THE ENGINE AND PAID IT OFF!) paying for our dates when we went out, being supportive and patient with him in his jobless state … all in this effort to try to make him think I was such a great catch. Well, you know what? I was a great catch -- just not for him. Furthermore, he wasn’t trying to be caught and in many ways, he’d made that perfectly clear – I just didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe that if I did enough – if I showed him that I was different than all the rest, and if I waited patiently while he decided WHEN and IF he was going to finally grow up and be a man -- miraculously the light would come on and voila! He’d be ready to stop partying, settle down and we’d live happily ever after. Yeah right! I wasted two years of my life getting the message and for a long time I felt so ashamed of how stupid I had been. Two years isn’t an eternity, but it’s time a lot of precious time that I’ll never get back.
My goal in sharing this is that my experience not be totally in vain. My goal is to encourage women to heed the warning signs. LISTEN and WATCH what a man is saying and NOT what you want to hear. Steve Harvey said it best when he said men are not complicated. A man clearly knows what he wants and what he doesn’t want. Ladies: we must grasp the fact that we can’t analyze men in the way we analyze ourselves. They are not like us – they don’t think like us and they don’t react like us. They are uniquely different creatures and that’s the way God made them. If you’re saying to yourself, “but I love him, I say “love him enough to let him go,” but importantly, love yourself enough to let him go!
My story does have a happy ending. Thirteen years ago God blessed me with a man who DOES want to be kept!
I share this experience from my personal life in hopes that it resonates with someone who may be going through something similar OR to let someone out there know you’re not alone in having made some bad decisions in the name of trying to be with a man.
I spent two years of my life with a guy (29 years old at the time) who was living with his mother and didn’t have a job. When I met him, he had a piece of a job and he was shared an apartment with another guy. Somewhere in there, he lost his job (over foolishness) and was forced to move out because he couldn’t pay the rent. (Clearly, this should have been Warning Sign #1). So, back he goes to his mother’s house. Now, I’m sure that people looking in from the outside could clearly see that I was wasting my time with him. After all, I had two kids, a good job, a house, a car and I was (still am) a good-looking woman. Clearly I didn’t NEED this person in my life, but in my mind “he was nice.” WHEN he came over, we had a good time together. In my mind, it was “A RELATIONSHIP,” though in moments of introspect, I knew that I was settling big time. I also knew I was making excuses for someone who had no intentions of being in a committed relationship. This was apparent to me because whenever I brought up the subject commitment, he always hedged. Sometimes he’d make comments like “I can’t give you all of me.” In retrospect, my response should have been, “Oh, it’s ok for me to give of myself sexually, yet you can’t give all of yourself to me in a committed relationship?” (Everything is so crystal clear in retrospect, huh?) This is yet another thing that’s wrong with sex outside of marriage, besides the obvious problem with it being fornication, but that’s a different entry. See, this was a guy who “liked” me, but he wasn’t trying to be WITH me. I was nice to him. I was a convenience. I made it easy for him to do his thing and fit me in whenever he needed to be hooked up. That’s the raw, honest truth and it’s probably the raw, honest truth in a lot of “relationships” out there. At the time, I’d convinced myself that the more I showed him what a great woman I was by fixing a great meal when he came over, having sex with him outside of marriage (even those times when he seemed like he’d worn the same clothes for a couple of days), getting in debt helping him buy an engine for his raggedy, crap piece of a car… no, strike that (he had no job – I BOUGHT THE ENGINE AND PAID IT OFF!) paying for our dates when we went out, being supportive and patient with him in his jobless state … all in this effort to try to make him think I was such a great catch. Well, you know what? I was a great catch -- just not for him. Furthermore, he wasn’t trying to be caught and in many ways, he’d made that perfectly clear – I just didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe that if I did enough – if I showed him that I was different than all the rest, and if I waited patiently while he decided WHEN and IF he was going to finally grow up and be a man -- miraculously the light would come on and voila! He’d be ready to stop partying, settle down and we’d live happily ever after. Yeah right! I wasted two years of my life getting the message and for a long time I felt so ashamed of how stupid I had been. Two years isn’t an eternity, but it’s time a lot of precious time that I’ll never get back.
My goal in sharing this is that my experience not be totally in vain. My goal is to encourage women to heed the warning signs. LISTEN and WATCH what a man is saying and NOT what you want to hear. Steve Harvey said it best when he said men are not complicated. A man clearly knows what he wants and what he doesn’t want. Ladies: we must grasp the fact that we can’t analyze men in the way we analyze ourselves. They are not like us – they don’t think like us and they don’t react like us. They are uniquely different creatures and that’s the way God made them. If you’re saying to yourself, “but I love him, I say “love him enough to let him go,” but importantly, love yourself enough to let him go!
My story does have a happy ending. Thirteen years ago God blessed me with a man who DOES want to be kept!
