I Would Have Married A Monkey…
At one point in my life I was so lonely, desperate for marriage, and afraid of being alone I would have married a monkey if he gave me the time of day. Okay I’m joking about the monkey, but I’m not that far off.
I was so afraid of rejection and of being alone for the rest of my my life, I clung to relationships I knew wasn’t what I wanted and definitely not what God wanted for me. I was with someone who made me an option and not a priority for years hoping and wishing he would change. I knew I deserved better, but I clung to that relationship because I didn’t want to be alone. Then after being with him for years my excuse became, “Why give up after I’ve invested years in him only for another woman to reap the benefits of my hard work.” So I stayed in a relationship I knew wasn’t going to end in marriage.
Listen to how ridiculous that sounds… “I’m afraid of being alone for the rest of my life so I’m going to stay in this non-productive relationship that I’m unsure of, with no possible future of marriage, just so I won’t be alone.”
The bottom line is, I was gripped with fear and found myself in a fear-driven relationship. Fear he would leave me and I would be alone; fear that if he left me someone else would get him and he’d treat them better than he treated me. After all, I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed he would change and things would be different. But, they never were. I was on a merry-go-round passing by the same issues over and over and over again, but didn’t want to get off because of fear.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting different results. I was insane. Not insanely in love, but insanely in fear. That merry-go-round in my life wasn’t called “love” or “relationship”, it wasn’t even called “marriage”… it was called FEAR!
Funny thing is fear can move you to do one of two things; face it to remove the fear, or run from it and keep fear in your life. The fear I had about being alone was constricting my life. The more it squeezed the life out of me, the more I clung to it. Until one day I realized, I don’t need this. I deserve better. God has someone very special reserved just for me, and while I’m wasting time and giving the best of me to an undeserving one, the man who really deserves the love I have to give is out there waiting.
So with the help of God, daily I found the strength to face the fears in my life. It didn’t happen overnight. I realized one thing, the guy in my life at the time was not my issue. It wasn’t his fault that my fear chose him. It wasn’t his fault that I allowed him to neglect me. He wasn’t to blame for treating me like an option instead of a priority, I was.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is – how we treat ourselves inadvertently teaches people how to treat us. The truth is, I neglected myself and made myself an option long before that man walked into my life. I always put my own needs to the side to please everyone else except myself. I said yes to everything and everyone except me. Other people took priority over my life and I always put myself last. So, this guy treated me the same way I treated myself. Did he love me? Deep within my heart of hearts I have no doubts he loved me. But he couldn’t express a love to me that I hadn’t first expressed to myself. In essence, I attracted a mirror image of myself and I got exactly what I was giving (or not giving in this case).
So, I finally let go of the fear of being alone and the fear of being rejected. I finally learned the love I seek begins with me. Now that I love me, I can/will teach others how to love me. It’s a process, and I know it will never be perfect. But I trust God in the process. One day the right one will appear, and this time he will reflect the perfect love that casts out all fear because I’ve perfectly loved me first. Until that time comes, I will allow love to draw him to me, not fear.
In her book Tapping Into the Power Within, Iyanla Vanzant wrote, “Every person, situation, circumstance and experience in your life is a reflection of some aspect of who you believe yourself to be.” If you’re reading this message and you’re in a fear-driven relationship ask yourself, “What is this relationship reflecting about me?” Sit and really think about that. Then choose you! You deserve a love-driven relationship, not a fear-driven one.
The thing about fear-driven relationships is, you’ll find yourself doing crazy things just so you won’t be alone. You’ll tolerate all kinds of foolishness and compromise your standards so you can say you have a man. We should never have to compromise. We must trust God by building a relationship with Him first. Then we must develop self-love and self-respect. Once we do that, and trust God’s timing the right man for us will appear. In the mean time, we must work on being the right woman.
