Sorry about the time between posts here. Between school, work, and the holidays, I have been incredibly busy. Hopefully I will be able to post more frequently once the holidays have passed.
Recently, I have been seeing a lot more of this. Perhaps I just notice it more because I’m looking for it, though that is beside the point.
Have you ever seen someone in a nightmare relationship? It seems like a similar story every time. Someone you know is in a relationship with someone who has a tendency to treat them like dirt. You really want to ask them the obvious question: “Why do you stay with that person?” But something tells you to leave well enough alone. Or perhaps you do ask, but the answer is the same every time. “I love him/her.”
Sound familiar? It is all too familiar to many people. I have seen a lot of this, and I’ve decided to take another look at it. Let me share a story.
Back in high school I used to sit by this girl in one of my classes. We would have some interesting conversations, and she often talked about her relationship with her boyfriend. Some of the terrible things she told me, I will never be able to forget. She spun a tale of desperation and despair, a never-ending cycle of breakups and makeups. And while I can’t go into much more detail, I will say that I was confounded from the beginning. It took a lot not to ask her the burning question. “If he’s so unstable, why do you always get back together with him?” I didn’t bother to ask, since I already knew the answer.
Or how about a more recent story…..
Over the summer, after I had graduated high school, I got to texting with a girl from one of my senior year classes. We discussed a lot of different things, but when I asked her why she always stayed up so late, the truth about many other things came out. She told me that she only got a few hours of sleep per night. When I inquired further, she revealed that she hadn’t been eating much either. Being a bit of a health-fanatic, this worried me. She didn’t seem hesitant to tell me the reason for her purposeful starvation. Her boyfriend had called her fat. I was tempted to inquire further, but I held back. Was it possible she had misinterpreted something he said? Or had he simply told her straight up that she was too fat? Something she said the next day answered that question for me. She and I had gotten to talking about Facebook. She eventually told me that she had removed a bunch of content from her page because her boyfriend was getting upset over pictures she was posting for other people.
Yes, you read that right. He was upset over other peoples’ pictures. While this isn’t exactly a nightmare relationship from what is shown here, it really makes me wonder… Why does he get to dictate how thin you are, or what you can and can’t post on Facebook? Sure, having a few pet peeves is ok, but seriously…. Getting angry over pictures of other people? That sounds a little low. Though, as I said before, this is far from a nightmare relationship. This next story is the most recent one, and the reason for this whole article.
So, I have become really good friends with a girl I work with. She is an interesting and opinionated person, and we talk about many different things. One of the most common things we talk about is her boyfriend. I work the same job he does, and so I had thought I had gotten to know him pretty well. From my perspective, he seemed like a really nice guy. Her description of him painted him in a whole different light. For starters, she claimed he was always jealous, to the point where she could barely talk to other guys without having him chew her out for it later. She also said that he was always angry about something; that he would get up and toss objects around, scream at her, etc… According to her descriptions, he was also practically addicted to his video games. He never paid for anything, instead opting to use her money. She never wanted to make him any food because he could never decide what he wanted, and when she finally made it for him, he didn’t want it. And most recently, she told me that she hadn’t even bothered to get him a Christmas present for several reasons. First, she had no money (refer to earlier statements for the cause of this). Second, he wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. And finally, he probably hadn’t bothered to get her a gift either. Can you say…. Dysfunctional?
Now, this actually isn’t nearly as bad as it gets. I have read about many cases of violence in relationships, and I know that it can get much worse. However, this is about as bad as a non-violent relationship can get. And yet, she stays with him. Why? Perhaps I will never be able to answer that question completely, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to figure it out. Now, I’m not trying to single girls out here. Remember, the main problem in each of these stories is the boyfriend. I will get to talking about this in a later post, but right now I’m just trying to understand why these girls opt to stay with guys like these.
So what about the obvious answer? If you were to ask any of them, I could easily tell you what they would say: “Because I love him.” Seems like a simple answer right? The question I really want to ask is: WHY do you love him? Especially when he treats you like that?
I have found a pretty simple answer from an all-too-common source: Facebook. Just the other day, I saw a “like” page entitled: Best relationship? Its when you have a hundred reasons to leave him/her u’d still look for the ONE reason to fight for him/her. I was tempted to like it, but I decided not to. No matter how noble it might sound, I still don’t believe that one right makes up for one hundred wrongs. To me, that’s like saying, “its ok for him/her to treat me like a jerk 23 ½ hours out of the day because I’ll just live for that ½ hour that he/she doesn’t treat me that way.”
I realize that nobody is perfect. This is a simple fact of life. But in each of these stories, the last one especially, it seemed like there was more harm than good being done in those relationships. A relationship should be fun and exciting, not dreary and degrading.
To me, love represents two people’s hearts being connected by an incredibly strong bond. However, for things to work out, that bond has to be strong both ways. This means that BOTH people should, at the very least, treat each other with compassion, respect, and love. All of the stories I told earlier had something in common. This was the lack of respect, compassion, and love that the boyfriends had. Does that sound like a healthy love to you? I will not disagree with the fact that being in a relationship means forgiving some flaws. However, when one person is being treated like dirt, this is more than a flaw. If that person really loved you, would they treat you that way?
Situations like these are becoming like an epidemic. And the people involved don’t even know how much they are being wronged until they have wasted years of their lives forgiving someone who never loved them back. If you are in a similar situation, come to your senses! My hope is that, having wrote this, I will now have the courage to speak up to the girl I mentioned earlier. Perhaps I will be able to save several years of her life.
A bit of a side note here.... A day after I posted this, the girl from work whom I mentioned earlier told me she finally broke up with him. Hmmm, perhaps I am psychic. Nah, it is probably completely unrelated. But you still gotta gve me credit for seeing and predicting. Either way, she ended up wasting four years of her life on that loser. She knowingly admits that. Anyways, the point doesn't change. Don't be the one who wastes four years of his/her life on someone who could care less.
