An Excellent Piece of Prey

I was okay.

I had finally gotten over the hurt those other guys had caused. When I met him, I knew I was stable enough to be in a relationship and it was something I wanted.

It seemed had the same desires and that each of our hearts were equally tired of being broken.

Conversations filled with laughter some of our best defining moments and I throughly enjoyed the proclamations of protection. Oh how he swore he would be my protector. Keep my heart from being broken...how I rested in his words like a foster child who believed their new family was finally their home. I felt so okay being his baby.

I remembered bragging to friends about how different he was. Just about everyone got a chance to meet him and it didn't seem like he was pretending.

He seemed to enjoy my children. My youngest really loved him and my oldest secretly admired him. He would tell me all the time that he thought he was pretty cool. He had already been through so much with the last misleading individual...and my youngest's father. He had seen his fair share of neglectful, irresponsible black men. I knew that, if it didn't work out, it would probably affect him worse out of my two children.

There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me. It seemed he picked me up in the spirit...he was so attentive and he listened to well...everything seemed so perfect except for one thing...He craved the attention of other women and kept his past "women" as friends. He seemed to love to keep doors and windows open...wedged open. I didn't seem to be enough for him.

He flirted with them openly online...I knew I wasn't the only one he talked to and I feared I would lose him eventually...when I did, it was one of the most painful days to date and thereafter I officially became bitter toward men. I'm admitting it so that I can heal from it.

I posed a question to a friend:

Why is it that, many black men abuse us, use us and render us damaged (nearly all of them have done it), but, when they find one of us who has been damaged, they refuse to stick with us?

We will accept them with nothing: no degree, no direction, no real investment in the future and sometimes not even their own car...we accept their baby-mamas and ambiguity about how many children they really have...we mend their wounds from wasted time...encourage them when they get out of prison and support them through school. Then, when we have done all of that, even if they didn't create the damage, when they walk away, the new man can't stick with us through the pain; however, we accept soooooo much of their insecurities!

Many of us try our best to explain what we need so that the relationship can work. Still, when it comes down to it, we are the ones who lose out.

I lost out because I explained to him that I couldn't feel secure if he was flirting with other women and saying the things to them that he would NEVER say to me...the result wasn't for him to make me feel better, it was for him to talk to someone else.

Somehow I will find some sort of solace in standing up for myself...right now, I regret I ever said a word. The hallmark of a woman who is accustomed to settling.

Selah!