I'm going to make one of the most obvious prefaces ever: One of my exes was crazy. Like absolutely bat-sh*t crazy. Not the normal type of crazy we like to deem girls when they do "normal crazy" things, like go through our phones or stalk our other exes on Instagram.
All of that is run-of-the-mill compared to what I used to go through. She was the type of crazy that they make straight-to-Redbox movies about. I mean a type of crazy that could only be contrived by the morbid mind of Tyler Perry.
But she was my real life girlfriend at one time. And I loved her. Damn near unconditionally.
I'm not going to completely play the victim and proclaim my absolute innocence. I'm no saint, and at times, I would do things that probably would upset the average person. But the means don't always justify the ends.
I'm not going to get into all of her transgressions, but you pretty much just need to know she was insane and made my life, and the lives of those around me, difficult, even impossible at times.
But I still loved her.
Destroyed property, compromised privacy, uninvited home visits at absurd hours of the night, physical and virtual confrontations with other exes, suspected exes or any person with a vagina she may have suspected me to have come in sexual contact with and visits to my job were all a part of the routine. Yet I put up with it, until my well-being, as well as the well-being of those around me, was at risk.
But why didn't I run away earlier in the game before things reached a boiling point? Why was I so drawn to this insane woman who was sucking so much life out of me?
I'm pretty sure there's some scientific reasoning behind it, and somebody will probably pen an article on that one day. But this isn't it.
I'm only speaking from raw, first-hand experience as someone who was in such a situation. Being able to look back on the situation five years later shows there are a few rather dark reasons I chose to put up with it.
As much as we don't like to admit it, males need validation, too. A lot of us are insecure and have huge egos. I was most certainly guilty of being this at one point in my life. The fact that I had this beautiful human being who could certainly have any man she wanted chasing ME down boosted my EGO to outrageous levels.
Don't get me wrong; it was never hard for me to attract girls, and rather attractive ones at that. But to have a girl who I once placed on a pedestal be so obsessed with me certainly did something for me. At one point in my life, I walked around with sort of an arrogant air about me. In retrospect, I'm able to see that was just an affront. There was certainly a huge void somewhere within my being that would allow this girl to fill it and have so much leeway to maneuver around it with such reckless abandon.
We like to act like women are the only creatures that feel as if they NEED a certain kind of love. The reality is some of us often feel that same need. We just mask it, and some men, such as myself, do a damn good job at it. The fact that I knew I had someone in my corner who “loved me” and would stand by me no matter what I did gave me a sort of false sense of security. Even if that love came with inconvenient and, oftentimes, destructive repercussions.
In his song entitled "Passive Aggress-Her," rapper Wale brilliantly postulates, “My homegirl told me I have an issue with women with issues. Maybe it's cause I have my own, and we can relate."
I'm not sure any quote could have hit home any harder. I'm far from perfect, and I definitely have my own dilemmas. I think this is what has always made me shy away from the go-with-the-flow, laid back, nice girl. I tend to like my women with flaws and a lot of them. I'm non-judgmental to a fault almost. So what's a little bit of crazy, huh?
The bottom line is guys have many of the same insecurities that we tend to persecute women for having. These insecurities and voids often lead men and women to stay in toxic and destructive relationships.
We say things like “crazy women have the best sex,” but that's not always the case. Don't get me wrong; the sex was absolutely fire. However, that's never really the glue that keeps people in such a situation.
At the end of the day, she filled a void, which took me way too long to admit I had.
Never again though.
