I used to date this man who was mean. He wasn't your typical, overtly
mean guy, he was an undercover, sneaky kind of mean. He would find little
ways to be mean without you knowing it until you knew it. He was the kind
of guy who would smile in your face, say nice things, make you laugh and gain
your trust, then he'd do something super passively mean. It was always smooth,
calculated and so perfectly timed that you wouldn't know you had been cut by
his meanness - again - until you were bleeding. Then you would be
left wondering "Did he do that on purpose?"
"Surely he didn't mean to be mean by what he just said"...or
"I'm probably being over-sensitive, he didn't mean it that way..."
He was handsome, athletic, well-educated, creatively gifted. We would
have the longest, most fulfilling conversations about so many
things. He spoke my primary love language - words of affirmation,
was quick witted and incredibly funny. Parts of our personalities were
similar and I often felt when I was talking to him, like I was talking to the male
version of myself.
But the bad part was that he was also incredibly broken. He suffered
so much hurt from things in his childhood that carried over into his adult life.
He had been molested by his 3
rd grade, teacher, never really
had a relationship with his father, didn't receive any love from
his mother & was raised by a grandmother who beat him because his
looks reminded her of who she referred to as his “no good daddy”. He went
on to have a series of bitter-sweet successes through high school,
college and adulthood. Eventually, he had learned to push people away and
not allow them to get too close for fear that he would be crushed. So he
found little ways to try to keep people in his life around because he
desperately needed and wanted love, but he would simultaneously- and
ironically- push away the very thing that he was desperate for. He was
terrified of REALLY letting anyone in because he'd been so hurt and
disappointed by the people in his life who should have loved him the
most.
I thought I could be the one to love him through his pain and help him open
up to receive love. But, my attempt to love him through his hurt meant
that I was getting hurt. It meant that I'd occasionally have to
be on the receiving end of passive aggressive behavior, biting sarcasm, long
periods of the silent treatment when he got his feelings hurt,
being slowly lulled in by sweet words &
thoughtful gestures, then suddenly shoved back when he
feared that we were getting too close. He needed therapy
and Jesus, but he wasn't open to either, so I had to end the cycle.
No matter how much I loved and cared for him, I realized that he struggled to
love himself, therefore would never be able to love me in a healthy way.
In trying to make him love himself and me in a healthy way, I was going
to eventually become just as damaged as he was.
Hurt people hurt
people. We love out of our wholeness and out of our brokenness
just the same.
So the moral of this story is simple: Don't let people be mean to you.
Even if there are such great qualities about them that you hate to let them go,
you have to in order to preserve yourself. You will take on so much of
their baggage that you will in turn have baggage to get rid of later, and it's
not worth it.
If he's mean to you in the beginning, he will be mean to later on.
Don't ignore it or downplay it. You know what being treated well feels
like, and the person who’s not showing that to you, isn’t worth your precious
time. The right one won't hurt you on purpose. That's the one to wait
for.
