I’m Not Your Bonnie, Clyde

A woman should never have to prove her love, loyalty and relationship worthiness for a man by how well she can deal with the bad choices that he’s made for his life. There is this crazy assumption that dealing with this kind of behavior makes a woman a “ride or die chick”, but actually a woman that puts up with a man that consistently makes bad choices and cleans up after his mistakes makes her more like his mother and less like his helpmate.

Some men are emotionally constipated. An emotionally constipated man is an adult man that has never fully matured. One of the reasons men can become emotionally constipated is by not having a healthy relationship with their mother. The mother either babied him well into his adult years; giving in to his childlike behavior at every whim which stunted his emotional growth or she leaned on him to be her man when no real man was present in her life or perhaps she abandoned him physically and/or emotionally as a child and left him to figure out how to process his emotions on his own. Usually this kind of mother-son relationship is absent of responsibility for proper decision making, accountability of actions and consequences for both. As an adult, this type of man is looking for a woman to pick up the slack from where his mother left off. You are not his mother. There is never a good reason why a grown woman should have to mother a grown man that she did not give birth to. A healthy relationship between a mature adult man and a mature adult woman requires equal communication, understanding and reciprocity. Otherwise, it’s like being in a relationship with a teenage boy in a grown man’s body.

A woman’s love for a man should not be measured by how much shit she can tolerate. When a mature woman enters into a relationship with a mentally and emotionally constipated man he will take her through a bunch of emotional changes until he reaches emotional maturity. She will have to be the leader, the caretaker, the decision maker, the disciplinarian and the bread winner. If you add some children to this unbalanced relationship she will be raising them along with him. She will be mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted throughout the entire relationship. His immaturity will have her scolding him at every turn instead of praising and respecting him.

Most women think that if they love this kind of man long and hard enough he will eventually see the wonderful woman that she is because she unselfishly stuck by his side to hell and back. She thinks that he will give her the accolades that she deserves for enduring the long term misery. Unfortunately, these types of men don’t feel that way. They are happy that you tolerated their bullshit and they believe that because you did you must really love them or else you would have left them a long time ago. When a woman tolerates a man’s bullshit he doesn’t think it’s admirable nor does he feel remorseful. He will actually give you more bullshit to deal with because you let him. Children don’t understand consequences until you enforce them. This is the same for an emotionally constipated man. This type of man believes this is what a woman is supposed to do when she loves him. This is what his mother did for him… loved him no matter what the cost despite him being right or wrong with no real consequences for his fucked up behavior.

Love and respect should be reciprocal in a healthy relationship; not ride or die. I don’t want to ride out with a man in an unhealthy relationship until I physically, spiritually or emotionally die and then call that love. That is quite the opposite of love. Love is an intense feeling of affection, but love is also an enacted emotion. Love is what you do over and over again. An emotionally and mentally constipated man will disrespect the hell out of you and hurt your feelings with his actions and his words then congratulate you for being his ride or die chick. That. Is. Not. Love. That my darling is dysfunctional thinking followed by dysfunctional behavior.