Thou Shalt Not Hold When You Should Fold

Complimentary Chapter One Of The Girl Talk Chronicles: How to Manage Love, Lust & Situations

Thou Shalt Not Hold When You Should Fold
It’s gonna burn for me to say this, but it’s coming from the heart / It’s been a long time coming, but we done been fell apart / Really wanna work things out, but I don’t think you’re gonna change / I do, but you don’t think its best we go our separate ways. – Usher, Let it Burn

One of my favorite movies of all time is Love Jones. The movie is fictional but the underlining elements in it are real. Every scene leaves you wanting more because it feels like the perfect love story. The poetry is outstanding. The dynamic shared between Darius Lovehall and his friends is perfect. But no other scene compares to when Nina and Marvin were in his New York apartment living room having the break-up talk.

From what the writers revealed, Nina Moseley and Marvin Cox were in a relationship for several years. On the outside, they looked happy and comfortable with each other. Nina (Nia Long) was the total package: beautiful, artistic, caring, and smart. She seemed like the type of woman who’d be down with her man till the end of time regardless of what happened; kind of like Myra from Family Matters (this comparison will make sense later.) Marvin (Khalil Kain) was an easy-on-the-eyes professional that seemed like he could give any woman the world if he loved her enough. On the inside, we know that they experienced woes that can make or break any relationship, like we all have. Eventually, they broke.

Nina reminds me of myself and several other women that I’ve had to pleasure of interacting with. We’ve got all the credentials to be an amazing wife for an equally deserving man. Somewhere along the lines, we’ve gotten emotionally tied up with the wrong man who’s content with playing house and relationship games. Usually, their contentment for the playground leaves us unhappy and often times, unmarried. Statistically, Black women are the most single gender and race in the world! The made for TV film turned series Being Mary Jane taught us that 42% of Black women end up being unmarried, not because of divorce, but because we haven’t been given an honest opportunity to become married. Let that resonate!

Any woman with a warm heart has put it on the line time after time for the sake of her relationship. That’s just how we women work. You think that if you love just a little longer and a little harder that things will work out. You often pray to God to change your mate so they’ll realize how good you are to and for them. You’ve put yourselves in situations that you said you could never see yourself in. Your heart has endured for as long as you can remember. You’ve been called weak, naïve, stupid or even desperate for submitting to debauchery all for the sake of your love.

Often times, exhibiting these characteristics will yield to you never becoming married because:

a) Your boyfriend won’t propose or follow through with the tired proposal he made in 12th grade.

b) You’ve finally had enough and called it quits.

c) You’re afraid to jump back on the dating scene to find a “good man”. 

d) You blame every “good man” for what the “wrong man” has done to you.

Chronicle Questions:

1. Do you see your girlfriends exhibiting these behaviors?
2. What advice do you give them when experiencing these situations?
3. Has this ever happened to you?
4. Does this still happen to you? If so, have you ever realized it before now?

Don’t feel bad, sugar! We’ve all been there. The unfortunate part is that many of us are still there, putting up with the same old, comfortable and unnecessary games and mess. What’s even sadder is that we hope and believe that we’ll get different results from the same behavior.

They say that ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink’. Well, follow me and choke on the water that I’m about to shove down your throat! The relationship that you’re stressing yourself about won’t change. Here’s why: because you haven’t changed, don’t want to change, and probably won’t change if that change was free, shiny and dangling in your face! Many of us claim that we want our lives to drastically improve but are more scared than a hooker in church to do what’s necessary for the said change. Instead of cutting your relationship losses with your mate of 8+ years, you decide to stay with them because you’re comfortable, don’t want to start over, and/or don’t want “all those years” to go to waste.

Back to Nina and Marvin.

One of Marvin’s arguments to convince Nina to stay in their long term relationship was the fact that they’d been together for so many years.

“All we have Marvin, is all these years. And it’s just not enough…Anymore.” –Nina, Love Jones

He wasn’t expecting that response from her because her behavior towards him was always the same. Marvin could mess up, go missing for days at a time without notice, and flirt with other girls, but Nina would still be there waiting for him to come home because she loved him. I’m sure Marvin loved her just as much. What I’ve learned about most men is that if they’re serious about having you in their life, they’ll do what’s required to catch and keep you. (Be mindful that YOU have the power to set those requirements, girlfriend!) We can talk about how powerful, pure and important love is all day, and I agree that it is all of those things. But if all you have is love and “all these years” with no level of respect, boundaries or requirements within your relationship, things are set to go downhill fast. Until drastic improvements are made, your results will remain the same as they’ve always been, leaving you and your partner unhappy, miserable and comfortable. (And possibly unmarried.)

With several obvious red flags waving high in the sky, Nina accepted Marvin’s marriage proposal off the strength of love and the idea that things would surely change. Though they broke up momentarily, she still went back to him when the reality that she was falling in love with Darius (Larenz Tate) had presented itself. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that she and Marvin fizzled off shortly after her return to New York. By the next day, Nina had high tailed it back to Chicago to satisfy her heart’s [and her vagina’s] desire to be with the oh-so-sexy Darius, a local poet and author.

Like her previous relationship, Nina and Darius had their problems. They even broke up for one year. In that year, Nina moved back to New York for a well-paying photography job while Darius finished his book in Chicago. The difference between Nina and Marvin and Nina and Darius was Nina’s ability to fold instead of hold. She’d developed a level of respect, some boundaries and mandatory requirements for Darius to adhere to. Though she was madly in love with Darius, and he with her, she knew that this time around she must make changes to derive at different results, or drastic improvements. (Disregard the fact that they slept together on their first date. Who knew they’d be each other’s soul mate? Movies.)

This time around, Nina wanted answers to Darius’ whereabouts and prepared herself to leave if they weren’t to her liking. Instead of blindly accepting Darius’ proposal to rekindle their relationship on her visit from New York in the rainy last scene of the movie, she asked how they’d make it work beforehand. Regardless of how much she loved him, she wasn’t going to tolerate crap and leave that good paying job just for the sake of it.

When I thought about this aspect of the movie, I began to reflect on my own past relationships and wonder why they had failed. The good thing about hindsight is hindsight itself. Time away from the situation makes you look at your involvement in it and take the situation for what it truly is. Sure, I’m a likable, ambitious, pretty young woman. I love hard and have always been head first for my man. I’m seeking drastic improvement in my life. I deserve respect, boundaries and requirements. In the pursuit of answering my own question, I realized that I wasn’t getting what I deserved not just because my past few dudes were duds, but because I wasn’t requiring them to prove themselves and their intentions to me. I’ve seen Love Jones a million times, yet it took the 999,999th time for all of this to click for me.

(Selfie) Chronicle Questions:

1. Why haven’t I been requiring more of the men I date?
2. Do I feel like I deserve their respect as much as I claim that I need it?
3. How and why did I allow this to happen for so long?
4. Where along the way did my confidence fall astray?
5. Why was I afraid of change?
6. Should I have folded sooner instead of holding on?

I asked myself these questions in the mirror and soul searched for the answer. I had to figure out how and why I allowed myself to put up with so much simply for the sake of no bills paying, may break your heart in half, and possibly mess up your credit kind oflove. I had to realize that though some of my past experiences may have been due to the wrong person / time / place, or bad luck as some may call it, that I still played a part in it. Somewhere throughout my journey, I had allowed for me to feel sorry for me, and at that moment, that was OK with me. The vulnerability of that time in my life caused emotional distress and outrage. I experienced every emotional negative one can endure: depression, anxiety, irritability, stress, fatigue. For a while, I thought I was experiencing all of this because of what the other person was putting me through. It took a while for me to realize that I was feeling this way because I allowed myself to and because I’d given other people the authority to harm me emotionally. Though it didn’t happen overnight, I finally got bored at my own pity party and decided that it was time to fold. Every emotion that I fought so hard to maintain; the relationships that I thought were more important than my own life when the other person meant me no good; the time I spent making other people happy no longer meant anything to me once I made up my heart to fold.

Aren’t I worthy of my own standards? 

If you’ve ever played Texas Hold’em, you know the importance of holding and folding; it’s the determining factor of your game’s lifeline. A skilled player knows immediately the decision they’re going to make as soon as they see their cards.  Holding is what you do when you’ve got a good hand. You hold on to it and continue playing the game with the hopes of winning. (A win in this case usually means money in your pocket, or a bet). The key to holding is knowing which cards, or hand, are worth holding on to. When one’s hand isn’t worth holding, losses are cut by folding. Folding means that your time in that game has run out and that it’s time to move on. Perhaps the next round or game will have your name on it, but this one simply does not. Though you may lose out on your bet, you still have the opportunity to strengthen your skills and play another night. That’s the beauty of playing these kinds of games. There’s always the option to learn from your mistakes to polish yourself as a better player, who will eventually win the intended pot of cash!

Now, think of your life, with your relationships in particular in mind, as that card game. How many times have you held on to a person and their foolishness just because you’re used to being around them? Speaking in terms of an intimate relationship, you may keep your mediocre man who often acts up around simply because you’re accustomed to his mess. I’ve read comments on multiple online relationship forums and have heard women say that they’d rather stay with their dog of a man than break the relationship off, or fold, because they’re afraid the next man will do the same things anyway. Even worse, they fear being alone. In a twisted way, they feel that ‘yes, he might be a dog, but at least he’s my dog’. Or that ‘I may wake up with fleas, but at least they’re his old, tried, and familiar fleas, than the fleas of another scum bag’. Instead of removing themselves from their familiarity, these women have owned the ill decisions of their partners for the sake of him or her hanging around, perhaps to fill the void of loneliness. Have you uttered these exact words from your mouth? If you haven’t, perhaps the women around you have at some point in their lives? If they haven’t, you’ve at least seen this type of settling in the movies. At one point in my life, I embarrassingly (and briefly) believed those same lies.

I’d overheard many married people, family members even, say how much hard work goes into actually being married to one another. (A family member of mine would publicly degrade her husband; with him often returning the favor and her discuss them getting a divorce as if it were something as simple as doing laundry.) I’d seen in movies (like Love Jones, Waiting to Exhale, The Brothers, Best Man) and reality shows (like Real Housewives and Love & Hip Hop), that relationships often require hard work. I believed that dealing with mess and playing games was a rite of passage in my long term relationships and convinced myself that I was paying my ride-or-die dues to my man and the relationship gods. Surely, I’d be rewarded for being strong and enduring the fight of love and ‘holding him down’, right? One day, he’d see that I was The One and spend the rest of his life paying homage to me by making me happy. I believed this not only because of what I’d seen on TV, read about on blogs, relationship forums and magazines, but because this actually happened to real life, ordinary, everyday people. In fact, and not to give too much insight on their personal life, I watched my parents go through this very thing. Sure, circumstances, details and the time period were different. Still, I watched my mother endure a few certain things that today’s modern woman just would not put up with! I must say that it worked for her, though, because ever since he’s ‘got it right’ my daddy has turned her life into a genuine fairytale. Many times I used this as an excuse to hold on to dead end relationships instead of folding when I knew I should have. I blamed the way I was treated on what I’d read, heard, and often seen.

Like I mentioned earlier, being the only attendee at my own pity party started to snatch the skin off my bones. A part of me wanted to hold on to one long term relationship in particular because I saw so many other couples of mine and his tenure ultimately demise. I didn’t want to be like them, going from being in a relationship and seemingly happy to being…single. What would people say? Though I was no longer interested in enduring and love fighting, this was my ordinary. After gaining weight and becoming emotionally exhausted, I grew tired of wondering about someone else’s whereabouts, who they were talking to or texting on their phone, the intriguing and inquiring women sucking up their attention on their social media profiles, why they weren’t home when they should have been, who they may have had in the passenger seat of my car, etc. Enough was enough and I finally began to realize the power of folding! There was nothing left for me to hold on to and the “all these years” sentiment was no longer endearing to me. When I made up my mind to no longer hold, but fold, I felt myself taking my power back. For the first time, I started to feel like a [grown] woman who could do anything, because my goodness, I’d just done it! THIS is what every woman who’s painstakingly blind in love deserves to experience.

Unfortunately, the other party might not want to see you go. They might not want to see you truly happy, especially if you’re happy with someone other than them. They’ll do and say everything in their power for you to give them that 900th chance, and for many of us, this is the trickiest part of all. I’ll admit that I’ve fallen trap to the break up niceties and convinced myself to give it another go. I don’t know about you, but in my experiences, I’ve had to remind myself of why I chose to fold in the first place to keep me on the trek of moving forward. For some people, that one last try to work things out proves successful and that’s totally awesome for them. But the way my experiences were set up, those last tries left me comfortable, unhappy and unmarried, because of my unwillingness to seek drastic improvement and actually change, develop a sense of respect, boundaries and requirements, and fold. Where do you stand?

Apply the Fold to Your Life (LESSONS LEARNED):

• Most of our time is spent being in some kind of relationship from the intimate ones to friendships to workplace relationships. For now, focus on the present relationship between you and your man (or woman, if she’s your preference). If you can attest to the countless hours, emotion and hard work that goes into this intimate relationship,write down your partner’s name on an empty piece of paper.
• Next to their name, write down how and where you met them. Consider whether or not this is a good thing. I don’t believe in judging a book by its cover, or a location in this sense. That’s equivalent to saying that just because you met a man at a seedy gas station doesn’t mean that he’ll be a prime perv. However, I am a woman who recognizes patterns and coincidence. Like, how I’ve coincidently ran into wide eyed, crazy haired mad men at a few specific gas stations at certain times of the day. After realizing this, I decided to stop at those places a lot less if at all. When I do, I don’t look at anyone while I’m there.
• Record how much time you spend with them each week whether in person, by phone, email or text. Describe how the time shared makes you feel. Do you leave them feeling happy, exhausted, sad, depressed, inspired?
• Finally, jot down why you continue to communicate with them. Are you married to them? Engaged? Have children with them? Own a business or property with them? Desperately want to work things out?
• On another sheet of paper, write down the pros and cons of your boo. You need well thought out visuals as to why this person is in your life so you can determine if they’re there for the right reasons. Think again about how you’re left feeling when your conversations with them are over. Chances are if you’re feeling shorted, slighted or in a bad mood when your time with them is done that their cons are longer than their pros. From here, you must decide if your happiness should continue to take a hit with every encounter you have with this person. If you’ve completed this exercise, my guess is NO! At this very moment, take drastic measures for your happiness and fold on that relationship unapologetically if necessary.

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Header Image Credit: Model, Isabeli Fontana