3 Redefinitions of healthy love.

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As most of you already know, I have had a cycle of unhealthy relationships. My last one ended last June with me realizing that I had some healing to do. I had gotten so used to being manipulated and emotionally abused by people that I loved that I had started believing the lies. Now, for all my women who think that only men can be manipulative, that is incorrect. All people have the capability of manipulation, lying and acting from an insincere place. 

If you need a refresher of my past, check out my former articles of how I released the last relationship which was the icing on the cake and when I decided to let go of people who speak to me and don’t listen, those who wait for me to do wrong in order to get back at me and, some who have seen my kindness for weakness. Not only in romantic relationships but also in family and friends. I am proud to say that I have created a healthy distance from abusive and manipulative people. I also forgive them because holding onto pain and mistreatment leads to more of it. 

Through this process of healing, I have learnt 3 redefinitions of healthy love: 

1. Letting go of perfection and fixing:

I have spent a lot of my life giving in. This stems from my childhood. I am a middle child from a divorced family and have always carried immense guilt, basically over nothing but being human, making mistakes and learning. Through my healing, memories of my childhood have come back and I had memories of my younger sibling and I fighting, like most kids do. My Mother’s response would be to get me to say sorry first because she said I was the elder and had more responsibility than my younger sibling. This conditioned me to always say sorry; even if I wasn’t in the wrong. I felt a deep burden to always be right and if someone had an issue with me, I would try to get them to like me. 

Recently, I found myself crying when I thought of one of these memories as I realized that I have taken on a role that I never wanted, ‘the fixer’. You see, fixing means correcting even it abandons my emotions and feelings to make things right. In other relationships, I became the friend everyone called on when they needed something but few reciprocated the same gesture, I became the girlfriend who would be cool in order to not rock the boat and, I became the family member who wanted to be seen as perfect because it was my responsibility no matter what the other person did to me. 

This role is heavy and often impossible to implement all the time. So, as I free myself of this role, I open myself up to relationships where I don’t need to fix anything and get back what I put out with feeling guilty about it. 

2. Healing emotional abusive patterns: 

Physical abuse is easy to spot but how about when someone chips away at your spirit or your soul for years and years? This creates cognitive dissonance- where your brain starts questioning if what was true is true. Which I suffered from for many years and as a result, I would attract abusive people into my life. I had such little self-esteem that I accepted unkind words and actions towards me because I thought that that person didn’t mean to or feared being left alone if I confronted them. 

Over the past decade, I have healed (and am still healing) the need to be in unhealthy dynamics to feel like I am loved. Love can be healthy and love can be kind, not all the time but most of the time. I am done excusing people who don’t honor my boundaries or acknowledge that I am human because I am willing to respect others’ boundaries and see people as human. 

3. Not being tied to another by force but by respect and kindness. 

I am no longer afraid to shed disrespectful people from my life. I come from an African family where we put immense pressure on one another because we are expected to always be around. It was recently that I decided to shift this thinking. If being around someone causes me anxiety, pain and hurt then I am out. I am not a martyr. I, just like those who are respectful, deserve to be respected. 

Last year, I read a book about narcissistic and empath relationships and it asked these questions, how do you leave each relationship that you have? Do you leave feeling fulfilled or drained? Do you leave feeling heard or unheard? Do you leave feeling go you the respect that you deserved? 

I had to answer that question with a lot of people around me because the answer was no. I had to start all over again, it felt like. Most of what I had learned about relationships was fake women empowerment disguised as manipulation and getting the ‘guy’ to see me and hear me at all costs. I had to re-learn that love isn’t about getting anyone to do anything, it just is. Now, when I don’t feel heard, noticed, respected or acknowledged over a period of time, I let that person know and if it continues, I create distance between the relationship and me because my focus is not on forcing; it is on acceptance, honesty and being present. 

3 Things that I wish I’d known before I online-dated.

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I was never really into online dating but I had gone through an on-and-off again relationship with someone and felt depleted. I felt like having someone new in my life would add a lot of what I was missing, adventurous and fresh energy. 

Although I had formerly attempted a popular dating website which ended with some random guy insisting to go out with me despite me declining, I decided to give it another go. I had heard great things about a dating app where the women reached out first. 

I thought that this would be different. So, I gave it a shot. I loaded the app and began to reach out to men who I was matched with. 

As always, I don’t regret anything because living is how we learn. But, these are 3 things I wish I had known before I had my first online dating experience: 

1. Don’t force anything. 

The first and only person I dated through this dating app, was a fairly decent guy. However, the difference between him and most (if not all) guys that I have dated, we had no friends or acquaintances in common. I am used to dating someone who shares friends so that I trust them more and we have more in common. 

On paper, he seemed like a good match. However, I got the sense that he was hiding something. I kept waiting for him to drop a truth bomb on me and I would suddenly discover that he was not for me. So that I could blame him for being the reason why it wasn’t meant to be. When I noticed my thought process of doing this, I came to realize that I didn’t have that have excitement for him and was forcing it because I was concerned about not being alone. 

After I ended it, I decided to date myself and took myself on amazing dates and focused my energy on becoming the love that I was asking someone else to give me. 

2. Just because someone is a good match on paper; doesn’t make them a good match for life. 

When the guy that I had online-dated told me that he went to the same school as my dad, I was overjoyed. I have always wanted to date someone who is in tech. Partially because of financial stability but mostly because I love how most people in Tech think. At heart, I am a nerd. I love comic books, superhero movies, mathematic equations, scientific theories, thinking outside of the box, conspiracy theories and playing video games. 

So, I have always meshed well with people who choose Tech as their jobs because they think like me and how I was raised. I am always learning and I am not proud of how I handled every aspect of how I dealt with him. But, my biggest takeaway from this is that there was no electricity. 

I had previously dated men that I had a lot of connection with and no future. So, I wanted to try something different. This situation reminded me that love is not logical and we can’t look at it from a practical point of view. The heart and head are at two different points of the body. Although they are separate, they need each other. They work together in the body and they should also work together in love. 

3. A picture and profile can’t tell you how you will feel. Only intuition can. 

After this learnéd encounter and after moving to Los Angeles, I re-loaded that app, just for fun and began chatting with an older European fitness professional. My intuition told me not to give him his number. But alas, I did because I thought, what’s the worst that could happen? I can always block him. 

I can laugh about the following events now but at the time I was low-key scared. After I gave him my number, he sent me a video every 10-15 minutes of him working out. One night, I was in West Hollywood with my friend dancing and singing. When I picked up my phone after a few hours, I had a few missed calls from him and over two dozen videos. I knew then that my initial intuition was right about him so I blocked him and thought that that story was over. However, I would ‘bump‘ into him after yoga or cycling class and was angered that he appeared to be following me. 

I confronted him and he ended up leaving me alone. But, I learnt (and am still learning) that my intuitive voice is a gift and it is up to me to listen to it for my safety, sanity and overall well-being. 

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The 3 Things that I have learnt from being in an almost decade-long cycle of emotionally abusive relationships.

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As we end the year and another decade, I have found myself having nostalgia of the great memories from 2010-2019. I am (without a doubt) blessed and grateful; however, within these years, I have definitely experienced some deep emotional pain and relationships that were not ideal.

I am here today, proud of who I am because I decided to make the most of what was dealt to me. Sometimes, being in a cycle creates survival; however, I choose to thrive. The two are different. In honour of living the best life that I am able, I must be honest about my past. In my honesty, I hope to heal myself and others by revealing truths that we are usually too afraid to reveal.

Here are 3 things that I have learnt from my cycle of emotionally abusive relationships:

1. I can only save myself.

My first memory of wanting to be a saviour is when I was six and my mom came back from the hospital, after giving birth to my sister, with stitches on her belly. I deeply wanted to relieve her of her pain and kept asking her questions about how she got into that circumstance. I wanted to cure her of her stitches and make her fine right then and there. I was a kid, yes! However, I have always had a need to take people out of pain- hence why I am a yoga teacher and wellness coach. This attribute has been an advantage most of the time; however, it has sometimes been a disadvantage.

I have found myself wanting to relieve people from emotional pain and taking on their burden or relieving them of the work that they have to do to heal (themselves). I am able to influence another person; however, I am not able to do the work for them. We are all meant to work on ourselves, which is karma. Everything, including inner peace and wellbeing, requires our own work and self-healing.

2. I can say no.

In previous articles, I touch on how it has been difficult for me to say no in the past. This has been the most challenging thing to learn in my life because we do not live in a society that acknowledges boundaries. One could argue that we live in a society that promotes the lack of boundaries. As a black woman living in America and often being in corporate settings, saying no comes with a price. In fact, for anyone living in a corporate setting, saying no comes with a price because there might be someone else for the job who is cheaper and more available than you are. Corporations tend to feed into our insecurities.

In a corporate society, our personal lives follow suit. If you say ‘no’ to someone who you are romantically involved with, you risk them leaving you and finding someone else who will say yes. That instills fear within us which continues the cycle of self-doubt and lack of self-worth. It has taken me a long time to be able to believe with every fiber of my being that if I work hard enough, am truthful enough and open enough, everything that is meant for me will find me. This knowing has helped me release people, situations and things that feed off of me not feeling good enough.

3. I always have a say.

I’ve been pretty honest about how my last relationship highlighted how I had been in emotionally abusive and manipulative relationships in the past without even being aware of it. You might be asking, how did she not recognize it? Because when you live it, it is challenging to step away from it. I am grateful for every single former relationship because it had a purpose. Particularly the last one because it helped me heal the trauma that I had developed as a kid. I have also mentioned how I grew up with an emotionally abusive older sibling that subconsciously taught me that abuse is okay as long as no one else knows about it. There were no bruises but my self-worth was compromised.

As an adult, in romantic relationships, I would hide when my fiancé would call me fat, when my boyfriend would disappear for two weeks or when another boyfriend and I decided to get pregnant and, he disappeared. My silence festered this cycle. And, we all know that darkness is the prime location for breeding negativity, toxicity and secrets. It took me being in a relationship with a well-known Producer who would lie, cheat and blame me for his actions for me to see the pattern that had been going on in my life. I had attracted and entertained emotionally abusive people.

It took an exaggerated form like this where I still have to hear the music that he made about me on radio and public places to remind me of the role that I played. Who I am today is very different to the person that I was when we met, two years ago. I used to think that someone who I admired knowing me, being influenced by me and seeing me meant that it was cosmic divinity. However, now I understand that me seeing myself, recognizing my self-worth and my truth is the most magic that I will ever experience in this lifetime.

The 4 roles that I am done playing in partnerships.

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I’ve been single for the past six months and have had a chance to really dive deep into my thoughts, my own interests and my purpose in life. Not to say that this is not accomplishable if you are in a relationship; however, the type of partnerships that I had previously been in, I gave more to them than what I got back.

I have no animosity towards any of my exes. I love them all dearly and I wish them well. They are fantastic people and they have helped shape me into who I am today. I don’t communicate with most of them, which I sometimes get sad about because I believe if you have shared a beautiful journey with another person, there is no need to be spiteful or resentful towards them. Every relationship has an expiration date.

My last relationship, which ended in June, solidified some of the biggest lessons that I had previously touched on the surface. Part of the reason that it did is because my former partner was well-known and sometimes, with fame comes disorder, toxicity and people attracted to the idea of a facade. Although I still have love for this man, it is very clear that we are not meant to be together for the long haul, which is fine. Not everything significant and life-changing requires long-term commitment. Sometimes people and things come into our lives to teach us a thing or two and then we part ways.

Through these past relationships, I learnt many things. In most of them, I played a role. Whatever title I played came with a sacrifice, of myself. I used to believe that I needed to sacrifice a part of who I was/am to be loved- which is a big lie.

True love begins with acceptance and now that I have found that kind of love for myself, I would be honoured to share it with another.

Here are the 4 roles that I am done playing in relationships:

1. The ‘perfect one’.

It was on my fifteenth birthday that my father called me to tell me that he was on his way and never showed up. Not only did he not show up but I never saw him ever again. He decided that he didn’t want to be a part of our family anymore. This pain I hid for many years in the form of needing to be perfect because, subconsciously, I had thought that I was the reason why he left. I kept what had happened a secret from my close friends because their lives seemed perfect and I was afraid that if I broke the ‘perfect’ mould, I wouldn’t be lovable to anyone. This belief is what I held onto until recently. I believed that if I showed anyone my tears or let my guard down about my true emotions and pain, they would run. Contrary to what I had believed, it does the opposite.

Creating a mould of perfection of who I am, the person that I should be with and, how we should look to everyone else is a lie. One that is not worth living because while we put up facades, we sacrifice ourselves, relationships and the people that we love.

2. The ‘martyr’.

Maybe this is middle-child syndrome or being a child of divorce; however, I have frequently felt like I am the one that everyone needs to rely on. This martyr-type of thinking attracted and entered into relationships with people who were comfortable with dumping their load onto me because I would take it. I would get dumped on, over-and-over, until I would leave or break up with my partner.

I used to believe that true love meant being someone else’s saviour; however, I have come to understand and learn that we are the only ones who can ever really save ourselves. I can support, encourage, influence and leave an impression on somebody else. But, if that person doesn’t want to change, I can’t force them.

3. The ‘cool’ one.

Even though I am very feminine, I have always been inclined to male-driven and competitive activities. As a result, I had a lot of male friends, many of them I would end up dating. Because we were formerly friends, they felt comfortable with me. Sometimes, they were so comfortable with me that they would say inappropriate things to me about how attractive another woman is and our boundaries became blurred because we acted more as friends than as partners. A friendship is important in partnership; however, partners and friends are different. We choose partners to live with, to possibly have children with and, to grow old together- this is not usually the outcome with friends.

A healthy partnership requires boundaries and I am done playing the role that I am okay with a broken boundary or disrespect when I am not. Playing along and not speaking up only leads to bitterness and resentment down the line.

4. The ‘settling- one’.

Maybe it’s because I’m an Aquarius but I believe in freedom and being with someone who enjoys my company, not someone that I have forced to be with me. I fully admit that I have previously fallen trap into the idea that love is jealous, mean and unkind when my intuition has always told me otherwise.

As women, we are raised with sayings like, ‘You need to keep him in check’, ‘He can look but make sure he knows where his home is’ or, ‘He’s a man, he is going to cheat’. Believing these sayings has caused me immense pain and suffering because they affirm that women should settle for less and expect less from men. I’m not sure why I believed these sayings because I was raised by strong women who believe the opposite of this. When I did implement these false sayings into my life, I would always regret sacrificing my self worth and integrity just to be in a relationship with someone who I probably shouldn’t have been with in the first place.

Once I found true love for myself, I released the need to be with another person. Particularly if that person is someone who doesn’t respect me, my values, my culture and what I believe in.

Forgive him

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Why do I want to forgive him?

 Because it is not healthy to hold onto anger. I want to forgive him because I am tired of questioning why he hasn't responded or put forward actions, instead of merely talking. I want to forgive him because I am tired of feeling rejected and he doesn't have as much power in my life as I have previously given him. 

I want to forgive him because he is not a bad person- merely human and, just like I, he has issues. I want to forgive him because it is the best way to move forward from this. I want to forgive him because I cannot force him to change, I cannot re-write the past and I don't want to. I learnt so much about life and loving, which is even more reason for me to forgive as I am grateful and pleased with the outcome.

I want to forgive him because my next chapter is too promising to be ruined by feelings of bitterness, worry and uncertainty. I want to forgive him because I am certain that I deserve a love that is not heavily burdened by insecurities; that reassures us when we are not sure. 

I want to forgive him because I cannot force the truth. It is not forced or jaded. I want to forgive him because he has served his purpose in my life, it may not have been how I wanted it but I am here. I am here to forgive because there is nothing more beneficial.

4 empowering things that I have learnt from dating

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I've had a few long term relationships and dated in between them. But only since my last break-up have I been able to understand what I did wrong in them. 

After seeking professional help through therapists and mentors, I was shown why my relationships didn't do well. 

It has empowered me. And, whether you are female or male, I would like you to feel empowered too. Therefore, I would like to share what was revealed to me to you: 

1. Don't sleep with someone before 60 days. 

This may work for some people but it definitely didn't work me. I read Steve Harvey's 'Think like a man, act like a lady' and his rule can be applied to both men and women. He says that we should wait 90 days before having sex with the person that we are dating. I think everyone's time frame may be different; however, we all know that when you sleep with a prospective , it may cloud your judgement at a very critical time: the formative stage. I recommend keeping things simple and sex-free in the beginning of every relationship to find out if you really like someone. 

2. Don't make up excuses for someone that you are dating. 

There is a clear difference between an excuse and an explanation. If the person that you are dating's behaviour doesn't align with what you think is acceptable, give yourself permission to ask yourself what might happen down the road if that behaviour continues. For example, someone not replying to your texts or not calling when they say they will could be a symptom of a deeper problem and, as a result, probably might happen again. Don't excuse it in the beginning, hoping that they will see the light and change. See the person for who they are not who you want them to be. 

3. I don't need to convince someone to be with me. 

I recently made date arrangements with someone who I saw as a potential romantic partner; however, he flaked on our first date twice . I have learnt from my past that, if the other person is not willing to meet me halfway, I will find someone who will. Instead of me allowing him to potentially flake on  me again when I am emotionally and physically invested, I empowered myself by blocking and deleting his number as soon as he flaked the second time.Simply onto the next, nothing personal.

4. Love yourself first.

In the dating world, we become afraid to have preferences because I think that we fear not being loved. If you love yourself first, you don't need to fear not getting it back from someone you barely even really know or who isn't treating you with the respect that you deserve. One of my mentors, Iyanla Vanzant says, 'You alone are enough'. If you love yourself, you are able to depend on yourself more than you would someone else and don't really need to depend on others. It may sound isolating but it is very empowering to understand that you are enough for yourself and for someone else and you don't need to desperately cling onto people and relationships that aren't healthy for you to fill a void that you can fill for yourself.