A Lady in the Streets, A Freak in Relationships.

When it comes to the way that I work with others, I've heard it all. The general consensus is that I tend to be a tad bit...um...pushy at times. I don't call it "pushy," though, since I like to think of myself as a real-go-getter-type-chick. My mantra is "Eff the B-S and let's get to the point!" When people object to my methods, I imagine myself grabbing them by their narrow-boned shoulders and shaking them while screaming "STOP BEING SO DAMNED WEAK AND MAN UP!" Alas, this isn't always the best way to accomplish your goals in a team, so I've learned to curb my so-called "pushiness" and strengthen my apparently lacking people skills. But this isn't a blog post about teamwork- I’ts about relationships, and I'm starting to learn that the R-word encourages pushiness and even worse, our inner control freaks.

My recent break-up with my boyfriend was long, drawn out, and just plain stupid. No matter how tired we both were of the drama, the back and forth, the tears, the hot mess we were becoming as people, it took six whole months to end things. What's even stupider is that we were only in an actual relationship for four months. This brings me back to my earlier statement that relationships encourage our inner control freaks to emerge from the dark place they hibernate in during the time that we aren't forced to co-exist with others. In short, every argument, evil look, push of the ignore button on your phone when he/she calls is an effort to control that other person, even if we are unaware of this simple fact. We think "If I argue point X better than he argues point Y, he WILL see that I'm right and just apologize." Even worse, we think, "If I ignore his call, he WILL feel really really stupid and realize how wonderful I am and how terrible life would be without me in it." The problem here isn't that we think we have some sort of influence over our significant other (of course you do!), the problem is that we tend to think we're magicians and can suddenly change another's thinking with a wave of our magic mind-control wand. Uh yah...not gonna happen.

For example, I have a friend who we'll call Jane who is brown-skinned, well-educated, and beautiful. She's also wonderfully caring and sweet, and will be (or do) anything for (or to) her man. Jane's story is one that I'm sure many of us share, in that no matter how hard she tried to please her man, he still managed to find a hoodrat (yes, she was a hoodrat...actually let's go ahead and put an "s" at the end of that too) to mess around with behind her back. I know many of you are rolling your eyes thinking "here we go again with a men are dogs story," but the greater point is that there were signs that Jane's man was cheating, though she kept being the fabulous, beautiful, and caring woman that she thought he needed in his life. No, her man's cheating wasn't Jane’s fault, but she was, in fact, waving her magic mind-control wand over him over and over again thinking, "If I keep giving it to him like this, and doing this, and being that, then there's no way he'll cheat on my fabulous, beautiful, and caring self." Of course, Jane's wand wasn't all that magic and, hence, here I am telling her story like it’s my own because her man was a dog, and there was nothing she could have done to save him from his current hot- mess- of- a- life without her in it.

Of course, some of you are sitting there thinking "B-please! I know how to keep my man/woman," while snappin your necks 'cause you got this magic wand thing down. To those of you, do you remember all of those years of teachin' and preachin' your mama did wavin' her magic mind-control wand all up and through the house? To those same folks, do you remember that time you woke up *insert random place here* without your *insert article of clothing here* next to *insert random stranger here*? Where was your mama's magic mind-control wand then, and why did it suddenly lose its effect once you decided it'd be cool to wild out in college? The point is that magic isn't real and neither is the idea that there's anything we can say or do to prevent others from doing what we don't want them to say or do like, "It’s over" or "I'm cheating," etc.

Now back to me: I still believe in Eff the B-S, which still leads to my pushiness or whatever you want to call it. I've redefined "pushy," though, to mean pushing the B-S- aside, putting down my magic wand, and just letting go.