I will never forget the day that I found out my ex-boyfriend was going around telling people that I was crazy. We had broken up because I discovered that he was cheating with multiple women, but instead of being honest with people about why our relationship ended, he chose to be a coward and paint me as an unstable and irrational person. I didn’t find out what he had been saying until a year after the fact when someone felt the need to drop that bomb on me. I believe that I was over the breakup and by then, but hearing those words made me furious all over again. As ugly as things got, I remained calm and kept my composure. I have never even raised my voice at him or called him out of his name. But after hearing those words, I began to second guess my decision to leave and even my sanity.
“Am I really crazy?”
“Did I overreact to the situation?”
Thankfully, I came to my senses after a few minutes. However, according to Washington Post writer Harris O’Malley, that self-doubt is exactly what men want you to feel when they drop the C word.
“What we really mean by ‘crazy’ is: ‘She was upset, and I didn’t want her to be,’” writes O’Malley. “It’s a form of gaslighting — telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way that they do. Minimizing somebody else’s feelings is a way of controlling them.”
During Thursday’s episode of “The Real,” the ladies of the panel discussed men and their tendency to inappropriately label women as “crazy”—and why it’s so very frustrating.
“This makes me insane. I’m talking about being called ‘crazy,’ said Tamera Mowry-Housley. “Do you hate when a man calls you this? Right? Does it just end up making you more ‘crazy?’ Ladies, does getting called crazy drive you crazy?’”
“I’ve said this before, anytime a man goes, ‘Yo, my ex-girlfriend, she’s crazy.’ The thing that I’ll always say to them is, ‘What do you do to make her crazy?’ added co-host Adrienne Bailon.
So ladies, does it upset you when men call you crazy?
