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Women get a bad rap for hearing men say one thing and thinking they can convince him to do otherwise down the line—a strategy that has been proven time and time again to not only be ineffective but also unnecessarily disappointing. Looking at scenes from VH1’s new “Couples Therapy” show, I can’t help but feel like this factor is in effect in DMX and Tashera’s relationship somehow.

DMX hurt my feelings so bad with the words he said in the previews for the show that I knew I had to watch to see if what I heard was what was really going on. I ended up missing the whole episode, but I caught the part I wanted to see in a video clip and unfortunately what I heard was right.

In a session where Tashera tried to tell DMX how she felt about his infidelity over the years—which produced six children by multiple women—he essentially told her this is how it’s always been and this is how it’s always going to be. After telling a story about apparently pointing out another chick he was sleeping with the very first time he took Tashera out, he told her,

“I’m just showing that I haven’t changed. I been the same f***in’ way since day one and I made you aware of it. I’m going to f** as many as [expletives] as I want to until my d*** falls off. And that’s what it is. I’m grown! I make my own f***ing bed, and I’m gonna lie in it!”

As if that weren’t enough, he then dealt, what would have been for me, the final blow.

“You want honesty?” he asked her. “You’re going to get it right now. I didn’t want to get married. I did not want to get married.”

CUT!

In my head I’m thinking, it’s a fine time for you to say that now, but I don’t doubt DMX has told Tashera he never wanted to be married many times over the years and probably before they walked down the aisle in the first place, either explicitly, or through his actions. You can tell by her using the “we were very young when we met” excuse as a way to justify why she;s tolerated his behavior. To be clear, DMX saying he never wanted to get married is no excuse for his behavior. If you didn’t want to get married then you shouldn’t have gotten married, but now that he’s boldly given her the honesty that she was seeking, it’s pretty much time to leave the set. I’m honestly surprised they will appear on the rest of the season because if you tell me you never wanted to be married and you intend to continue to sleep around like you’re not married, with no regard for my feelings, there’s not much else for me to do but count my losses, collect my one episode paycheck, and draft the paperwork.

It’s far easier said than done I know, but any man who says something that bold to your face has to mean it—and is probably on something—both of which are highly likely in this case. I’d like to think men know there aren’t too many women who would stick around for that mistreatment so if he stands there in all his boldness to say I don’t care that you’re telling me what I said is disrespectful and hurt your feelings, I’m going to do me. You have to listen and do you accordingly.

Unfortunately, at this point Tashera is nearly 13 years into a marriage and has children with this man, and although they’ve been estranged since 2005, it clearly isn’t easy for her to take DMX’s words at face value and cut her ties. Even in MN’s exclusive interview she called the experience on the show life changing and claimed that DMX never “got it” on the show but when the cameras stopped rolling he changed, although “he’s in denial a lot.” He’s obviously not the only one.

A friend of mine had a somewhat similar situation recently. She was upset that a guy she’d sort of been talking to and had slept with was being really distant and hadn’t been around to be intimate with her again and we were trying to figure out, for several weeks mind you, what the deal could be. One day she happened to mention something along the lines of, “I know he told me he’s not what I’m looking for and that he didn’t want to get involved with me because he felt I was too clingy and would get attached but…” I was like, what? What a minute, he clearly told you he doesn’t want to be involved seriously and he’s not the man you’re looking for, why are you confused? I’m usually not so insensitive in situations like this but I was sort of caught off guard by her behavior. I’d honestly thought the idea that women don’t believe it when men say they don’t want to get involved was more based in myth and men trying to escape accountability for leading someone on than fact, but here I had a real life example. She was searching for an explanation for his behavior when she’d already been given one several months before, she just didn’t want to believe it. And, as she admitted later, she thought he would change his mind. Again, if a man is bold enough to tell you to your face he’s not the one for you, knowing he’s risking any type of causal, non-committal relationship with you when he says it, then he means it, and we need to listen.

I’d never dream of telling a married woman to up and run from her marriage but I do hope as this season progresses we’ll see Tashera listen with her ears and not only her heart. It’s one thing to be blindsided by infidelity, it’s another to be told it’s going to happen and then watch and wait to be disappointed and disrespected.

Check out the clip of Tashera and DMX’s argument here. What do you think about their relationship? Why do you think women have such a problem believing men when they tell them the truth?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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