This Girl's Worth

I like calling everybody sis. I already have four sisters, but as I’ve embraced my own womanhood, I’ve been appreciating sisterhood more. So sis, we need to have a conversation.
Too many of us are with men that say they want to marry us, but the relationship and his actions show otherwise. I’ve been there before. It wasn’t until now that I examine my past relationship I realize my ex had no intention of actually marrying me. I’ll tell you all the reasons why below.
For context, in my head, I never wanted to get married until I was 30 years old. Why? I wanted time to work on myself and have experiences without being tied down to a man or with a baby on my hip. So when I met my ex-boyfriend, I was nowhere looking for a serious relationship, I was only 20 years old. But he was fine ✔️ smart ✔️ laid back ✔️ ambitious ✔️ family oriented ✔️ could hold a conversation ✔️ and knew God (or so I thought) ✔️. I was honestly astounded. He was everything I could have wanted in a man on the surface and I definitely wanted to know what he was about. He gave me a sense of calm because we just meshed together. I knew he wasn’t perfect. I saw his flaws, but I also know we all have them. He expressed very early on how he wanted me to be his wife, and that’s what he was working towards. Amen! A man with a vision.
Sure, the next 3.5 years was all of that good stuff with lies, unfaithfulness, manipulation, deceit, triangulation, gaslighting, and more, but he was working on himself, he was my best friend, I was deeply in love, and well, at the end of the day, he said he will never leave me, and he wants to marry me, so I would do everything I could to make the relationship work.
C’mon Domonique, don’t you know actions speak louder than words? Well, I was as naive as a Disney fairytale because everything about what he did proved the opposite. Let me put you up on game.
There is a such thing as future-faking. I knew guys said I love you to get with you, but I didn’t know men would fake an entire serious relationship. That is just evil. Future faking is when someone promises to work towards a commitment, but literally sabotages the entire process. The purpose of this manipulation is to keep you stringing along until they either 1) can’t any longer and they are forced to make a real decision, or, 2) they are done with you.
When a man is intentional with you and wants to marry you, he will make sure to reach certain milestones in his life to make it happen. He will build finances, establish reliability, trust, intimacy, have conversations about when marriage makes sense for both of you. He will demonstrate consistency and assume the role of giver in the relationship. Some of these men would even go through marriage counseling or couples counseling to strengthen the relationship.
My ex may have done a couple things right on the road to marriage, but he wasn’t serious about us getting married. How do I know?
1) He showed up but never did the work.
We went to both marriage prep counseling and couples counseling at the nadir of our relationship. I believe they were his attempts to redeem the relationship without doing the work and I wanted to go to figure the relationship out, to salvage us because I was at the end.
He was dedicated to showing up to sessions, picking me up so that we could attend, which made me feel like he really cared. However, we never actually did the work that was assigned to us in any of our counseling sessions.
If the counselor gave us homework to discuss in the next session, even something as basic as a question to think about, he never actually thought about it. When I wanted to discuss sessions after the session, he would ignore me, deny my experience about the session, or refuse to talk about it altogether.
If I could turn back time (Cher), I would have definitely called that out and let him know I peeped his laziness towards salvaging our relationship. I was just too exhausted to keep fighting him. Who wants to argue to get someone to care? So instead, I convinced myself despite his half- a** efforts, that he cared, he just couldn’t show it. Basically, I accepted his bare minimum.
2) Our relationship got worse whenever we tried to fix it.
My ex is the definition of stubborn. If he wanted something to happen, he’d do what was possible to move mountains. I’ve seen this man will his way, read books to be a pseudo-lawyer, and nickle and dime his way through many situations. Just like how he drove 100 miles in a busted car just to see me when I broke up with him the first time. He was good at the dramatic and manipulating. Sometimes, I even admired his tenacity, over time, it began to frustrate me, because he crossed everyone’s boundaries to get his way.
So you could imagine that I’d be confused that every single time we went through some sort of couple’s counseling, our relationship continued to get worse. We went to counseling at two different times. Each time, we argued more and communicated less. At a certain point, I prayed that he would just stop chasing me, and we’d just break up. The pain of missing him would be less than the pain of staying with him.
I tried to believe that he really wanted things to work out. It became clear that counseling for him was, well, going through the motions. Something he could say he did to try and fix our relationship.
Going through counseling with him was such a negative experience for me, I didn’t even want to go to individual counseling. I did go to individual counseling, but there was some anxiety about it.
He didn’t take counseling seriously. He had no plans for what counseling would “accomplish”. When I finally called it quits on June 29, he probably figured, “About time” 😂.
Do not think just because someone goes to premarital and couple’s counseling with you means they care enough to make it work. Some people will do things just because it seems like the right thing to do and so they can wipe their hands clean when it falls apart.
3) He makes no attempts to be stable for you.
If you intend to bear the full responsibility financially, mentally, or emotionally, this is of no concern for you. I never wanted a husband I had to coddle, so the ability to create stability was something I looked for.
I am a big dreamer, a legacy builder, and a goal achiever, so I want someone who thinks the same. Ideally, my husband and I would come up with plans together and go out, encourage, love, and build one another to conquer our dreams.
While my ex had all the talk, his version of the story went a little differently. He was financially irresponsible and emotionally disconnected. He wanted to have money because he didn’t like being broke, but he would never do what was necessary to be stable. As a matter of fact, he was inconsistent in every single aspect of his life, besides working out and following sports.
Now, we are in our early twenties. I would never expect him to have everything together. Heck, I didn’t have a car throughout our entire relationship. I was and still am figuring things out. But I’d Uber, bus, catch the train anytime I needed to. I was financially capable of doing what I wanted, I didn’t have a car because I had a plan for other things and I was being picky. Me not having a car never stopped me from getting to work every day, going grocery shopping, attending colleges, or going to events. My ex, had trouble keeping a job, always found himself in tight spots financially, mentally, and emotionally. He never really completed anything. He always gave up right before it seemed like he was going to turn a corner. Most areas of his life didn’t bear much fruit, and it’s because he was inconsistent. What’s strange, is that if I believe anyone was going to be successful and make it, it would be him.
In the entire time that I knew him, there was no consistency or stability in any aspect of his life. So why would I believe that out of the blue, a man like this would figure it out, love me consistently, propose, and be a stable husband and father? Because I was delusional. He proved he just wasn’t ready.
I can never speak for him, I can only speak to the story his actions tell.
4) You’ve invested in his stock, but he hasn’t invested in yours.
Ah, my favorite! You spend years playing build a man. You now have stock in the company.
He was like an investment. He wanted you to risk your time, resources, money, and brainpower supporting, loving, and understanding why he can’t give you what you need. It’s a simple trade-off, you support him in his development and when he gets on and gets it right, he will give you the world. You’re a lender who signed for a large loan, without any terms or guarantee on return on investment.
The ways in which I have invested in my ex emotionally, mentally, professionally, financially, I can never get back. I’ve been his therapist, his emotional punching bag, his spiritual advisor, his business partner, I let him basically live with me my senior year of college, and I’ve even given him business ideas.
I encouraged him to tell his story. I encouraged him to utilize social media as a platform. I took the pictures he has on his profile. I directed videos and gave him ideas for videos on his YouTube channel. I’m the reason he has a podcast and I even helped him with the story structure of his podcast when he first began. What did I get? Money for a few editing sessions of his book (which we never completed), and a shout out on one of the episodes of his podcast.
What did he invest in our relationship, you ask? He’s not a monster. He wasn’t completely absent. He actually was pretty sweet about 50% of the time. He did help me move to my apartments. He drove me to job interviews and even allowed me to stay at his place for a month as I was looking for a new apartment. Did he give me business ideas? No. Did he ever take an interest in my passions? No. Did he ever allow me to work out my past traumas with his support? 😂 Sure, he listened for as long as his attention allowed. He gave what he had. He just wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself, like he expected from me.
While I cashed in all I had for what I believed was a surefire investment, I lost everything in the process. All I had left was me. He’s still reaping off of the love I gave. It’s like watching your ex drive that new car around that you’re still making payments for.
My ex admitted in counseling that he’s just not that interested in what other people say or do because he’s focused on himself. He has to “remember to care”. No sh*t Sherlock. We had those arguments a few times. I am just glad that this time you admit it.
A man who is serious about you is going to invest in every part of you that’s within his boundary and power.
But we can’t completely blame the men. It’s our job to be the architect of the love lives we want. We need to read the signs and trust our God-given intuition. So on the note, here are a few mistakes that I made.
1) I didn’t assess his life patterns versus outliers. Does he have one area of inconsistency or does his life reflect inconsistency? The latter means abort mission. He could be the love of my life, but he was not ready.
2) I trusted his words and doubted myself. He may do all of those things someday, but what are you giving up in the process by staying? Are his promises restricting your freedom to live in the now? How much are you willing to invest in that stock?
3) I told myself I had no right to have feelings about his life choices. God loves us all and will exchange beauty for ashes, which means God can turn even our mistakes around for good, BUT, sis, is God doing that in his life or is he his own demise? Sir, sometimes God is not testing you, you are just hardheaded.
I could go on and on, I’m just saying. If a man wants you to be his wife, he will make it happen and will have you in mind in every decision he makes because he is committed.
Don’t get mad at me, I’m just telling you the truth. 🤷🏾‍♀️. Stay encouraged, if he wants you, he will get it right. Or, you might have to find someone else who will.