Answer to why some of our relationships fail, and how we can correct our mistakes.

It’s been months now sense I saw Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself but Taraji P. Henson words are still affecting me. She said something to the fact that she did not know how to love because she had never been shown how. At the time I thought it was just so powerful because she is an outstanding actor and she was making me really feel the emotions of her character. As the days went by her words stuck with me and I started evaluating my past relationships as well as some of my friends.



Were some of my relationships doomed from the start? Was I the one actually who sabotaged them? It dawned on me that I had no idea how to love those men because within my immediate family I had never seen a loving relationship. Now let me clarify, I have a wonderful loving father, however I do not know what it was like for he and my mother to be in a relationship. My mother dated men and every once in a while one would outlast the others and I would get to meet him, but that was about it. The man would never be fully integrated into our family. My mother’s reasoning most of the time was, “child I can do bad all by myself”.



The other examples around me were my older siblings. I am the youngest by 8 years. Let’s see my one of my brothers fought with his long term girlfriend on a daily basis. When I say fight, I mean straight physical violence by both parties. Way more that what the Color Purple even hinted at. There were times when bricks were used as weapons. My other brother had so many different women coming and going that it would make your head spin. No sooner than one would leave and another would be coming in the back door. I learned from the first that if someone loved you that had to fight with you to show it. Thank goodness none of the men I dated felt that way. I recall one relationship in which I argued with my mate over the time I should have come home from hanging out with my friends. It got so heated that I was I in his face going toe to toe with this 6ft 2in man, with my 5ft 5in, barely weighing in at 120lbs frame. Thank goodness he was the one with the common sense and told me to calm down and left me and my madness alone. I had no idea what I was thinking. He could have put me in the hospital with one blow, but I did not care. My theme song for my 20s when a relationship ended became “I can do bad all by myself”.



After that, I tried to date several men at once, well how the heck can you call that a relationship? No man wanted to deal with it. I would be on a date with someone and boldly answering my cell phone for someone else. I was always honest and told them I was dating more than them. I felt if they didn’t like it so what because “I could do bad all by myself”.

After several failures I started getting advice from a few of my friends, who were no better off than I was. Some did have long term relationships, but they were ones that should have ended years prior. A very close friend of mine used to insist that all men will cheat so that was why she was sticking with hers. She even implied I should quit dumping mine for cheating on me. Basically I needed to accept it and deal with it. My response, “honey I can do bad all by myself”.

Now that I reflect back over the years I see that not only did my brothers and I not have a loving and healthy relationship to base ours on, but neither did my friends. They all had come from single parent households as well. Some just like Taraji’s character had even dealt with molestation, something I myself had not been spared from. We all had let some good and some not so good relationships fall by the wayside do to our unwillingness to love ourselves in order f or us to love someone else. The good part is once I entered my 30s I came to the realization that the issue was not every last male I had dealt with; the common denominator was me. I had a brick wall up so high that I could not even see when someone was trying to love me. No matter how nice someone was to me I dismissed them or thought they were weak. I even had the nerve to think that someone should have been happy to put up with my attitude in order to be with me. It took some hard lessons and lost chances to learn that I was wrong in so many ways. Now when I look at relationships I realize that yes, “I can do bad all by myself”, but I can do better with someone to love and treat with respect and allow myself to receive it in return.



Omegia Keeys

www.omegiakeeys.com

www.passionatewriterpublishing.com