For the first five years of my life, I grew up in a two-parent household. My mom and dad had been married for four years before I was born, and although things were far from perfect, we were a family. Along with my sister and half-brother, we lived a pretty decent life. That is until my dad got involved with a crazy, desperate woman who did everything in her power to split our family apart.
My mother deal t with all kinds of disrespect, from random phone calls at her job to narsty messages on her answering machine. But her breaking point came when she’d discovered that my father would be welcoming an outside child with this woman. Then all of her hopes of sticking it out with my dad to give us, her children, the family she never had, all flew out the window. And she left.
Even then, the drama continued. I remember walking outside with my mother early mornings as she prepared to drive me to school and seeing slashed tired and headless birds lying lifelessly atop her burgundy Hyundai. This homewrecker was still taunting my mother, making sure that all thoughts and chances of her and my dad getting back together were dead. She sent voodoo dolls to my grandmother’s house with threatening messages, unleashed black birds in my father’s apartment and did everything else she felt necessary to get what she wanted, and she got it (along with a few a** whoopings too).
As a kid, I never fully understood what was going on, but as a young woman who has seen it happen over and over again with friends, family, strangers and mildly in my own relationship, I am fully aware of what these type of women are all about. Yeah, I know, it’s been said a million times, and it’s very true: a good man is hard to find. And with drugs, gangs, and the prison system swallowing up our brothas, this is especially true of black men (sorry, I love y’all to death, but let’s be real). Therefore, some women are so deprived of love and afraid of being alone that they’ll go above and beyond to get a man, even if he is married with children.
If you are this type of woman, here is what I have to say to you: it’s very clear that you have issues, particularly with self-esteem. To get involved with a married or committed man is one thing, but to deliberately try to take him away from his wife and family, or to intentionally do things that will ruin his life at home is on a whole other level of disrespect. If you love and respect yourself enough, you’ll know that you shouldn’t have to fight to have a man, and that you shouldn’t battle to get something that’s not yours. You would understand that you deserve someone who isn’t solely interested in sneaking you around for sex. Someone whose family you can meet, who will put you first and do things to let you know that you come second, third or fourth to no one.
If you truly respected yourself, you couldn’t bear even the thought of causing another woman pain and watching children suffer over a half-a** relationship. And yes, the men in these situations are just as guilty. If not, they’re even more to blame for stepping outside of their commitments, and worse, allowing their girls, fiancés or wives to be disrespected. But you have a choice as well. You can choose to try and come between what he’s established with his lady (and their children, if they have any), or you can walk away. For any woman who cares enough about herself and is raised on respect, there’s no question that the best option is number two.
