Slaves To The Past

“Behind every B(expletive) is a man who made her that way.”

I found this statement while browsing the quotes section of an acquaintance’s Facebook page. While I have some sharp disagreements with this quote (more on that later), the main point does have some validity to it. We’ve all had our bad experiences, especially in the realm of love and relationships. These experiences can and often do have lasting effects on our lives and ultimately on who we become. While the quote I mentioned earlier specifically addresses scorned women, neither gender is immune to these life-altering events.

Closely related to the quote above, there is an old saying that once a “good girl” goes bad, she’s gone forever. A woman may start out as a nice girl. Fairly attractive, sweet and innocent. Somewhere along the line, she has one or more bad experiences with men. She gets her heart broken by her first love. Or, she gets cheated on and/or lied to. Or, she gets emotionally and/or physically abused. Or maybe she never has any experiences with men because the men always ignore her since she’s the quintessential “girl next door” who’s not “hot” enough, “sexy” enough, or “easy” enough. Whatever the case may be, the “good girl” changes for the worse. She gets tired of being burned, so she turns into a “bad girl.” She begins to use men the way that they used her before, making them pay for the pain she felt. She treats men the way they “deserve” to be treated. She puts up a fortress of walls around her heart and vows to never trust men again.

Though the story is not quite as familiar, the same thing can happen to men. Enter: the “Nice Guy”. A respectful guy and always a gentleman. Somehow or another, he also gets burned. He’s told he’s “too nice”, or “you’re sweet, but…” He gets strung along or always ends up in the “friend zone” due to his niceness. He gets passed over for or cheated on in favor of the “bad boys”. To protect his heart from being broken again, he also turns “bad.” He becomes a womanizer or “playa”, so to speak, to avoid love and get revenge on women for the one(s) who burned him. Or, being tired of finishing last as nice guys always seem to do, he becomes an a-hole, since they’re the ones who always seem to get what they want from women. They’re the ones who women always chose over him.

I can’t say that my experiences were anywhere near as extreme as what I just described, but I can relate to the “nice guy gone bad.” I was baffled by the fact that even though the women I knew described me as a sweet and respectful gentleman, I was always slept on in favor of the “bad” boys; guys who they would eventually complain about when they were mistreated by them. Sadly, this sometimes occurred with the same women who assured me that I was such a “good catch” (“Why aren’t you trying to catch me, then?” I wondered). Fortunately, I was mature enough to realize that being a “bad boy” wasn’t the way to go, and that those women were making bad decisions.

I say that, not to say that I have all the answers, but to say that we all have our own parts to play in what we become. That is why I have such a problem with the statement I mentioned earlier. To me, that phrase implies a lack of self-responsibility, as if you have no control over whether or not you allow the quality of your character to digress. A man cannot turn a woman into a “B” and a woman cannot turn a man into an “a-hole.” Yes, others may have caused or been apart of your negative experiences, but it is not them who makes you into whatever you are. Contrary to popular belief, you choose whether or not you become what you are. Many may argue this point, but if I were a betting man (and not quite as broke as I am), I’d be willing to bet that those same people who claim that the opposite gender made them the way that they are would have a huge problem if you tried to tell them that they have no control over their future; that they have no control over who or what they become. However, in saying that “a man made me this way” or “a woman made me this way”, that is exactly what they are stating, albeit inadvertently.

Recently, I was involved in a twitter discussion about this very same subject. I made the statement that no one makes you bitter; that you choose to become that. Another tweeter (we would eventually follow each other) argued that no one chooses to be bitter, but that they do what they have to do to adapt, protect themselves, and move on. To an extent, I agree with her argument. We don’t directly choose to be bitter. No sane person likes being bitter and mad at the world (or just the opposite gender). None of us want to be that way. However, we do have a choice in how we react to our experiences. Maybe not our initial reactions and feelings, but we definitely have a choice in how we adapt and protect ourselves from then on. We can choose to react positively, making wiser decisions and realizing that, no matter how many bad apples we've bitten, the men or women we've encountered don't represent the rest of the gender. Or we can choose to react negatively, blaming the other gender for our misery and viewing all of them as if they are the same person who hurt us before. We are ultimately responsible for how we allow our experiences to affect us, and when we choose to ignore that responsibility, it is then that we indirectly choose to become bitter.

The unfortunate thing about all of this is that it is so easy to take the low road. It takes less effort to just cast all the blame on others and choose not to view your situations objectively. I’m not saying that you are to blame in every situation that goes awry, and I’m also not excusing the other party in each of your relationships from any wrongdoing. However, we’d all do well to realize that in every relationship we have – good or bad, romantic or platonic – we are the common denominator. You are the common factor in every interaction you have. That may mean different things for each person and situation, but at the end of the day we have to look at ourselves as well as the others involved so that we can make the right decisions moving forward. We all must realize that when we allow ourselves be slaves to our pasts, allowing our experiences to control and shape us, we make things worse for ourselves and those who come in contact with us. When we feel entitled to treat members of the opposite sex harshly just because the same has been done to us in the past, we do nothing but feed the vicious cycle, adding gasoline to an already raging inferno.