Cruelty is Not Love

My daughter came home upset that a boy was being rude to her.

“He is always making fun of how skinny I am. My friend said he is doing it because he likes me.”

This got me thinking of all the times I had heard that advice myself. Hell, I remember saying it myself as though it was etched across my brain like common knowledge.

How many times did we excuse the behavior as immaturity? These impressionable minds soaking up our wisdom and blindly believing we spoke the truth. Boys do that when they like you. Boys will be boys.

I don’t want my daughters growing up thinking cruelty is how someone shows love. I don’t want them clinging to false ideas of what love should be like. I fear they will grow up and find someone abusive and tell themselves that this is love. I don't want them to one day wake up married with kids and feel trapped in a relationship where she is disrespected and mistreated because she kept telling herself that he really does love her and things will get better.

Society is quick to judge. Why stay? Why not leave him? Why put up with it? What is wrong with you that you stay with a person like that? What are you doing that makes him act that way?

Our daughters are confused. Isn’t this love? I’ve heard all my life this is how it is.

My hope is that there is a shift in dialogue with our young girls. He doesn’t know how to show you he cares yet, but one day hopefully he will. We need to teach them to look for respect, kindness, thoughtfulness, equality, compassion.

My hope is that parents can set the example of what marriage should look like for their children. They are watching. Daughters tend to find men like their fathers. Sons find women like their mothers. What expectations of love and devotion are we showing our children?

If they don’t see it at home, where will these expectations and relationship goals develop from? Tik Tok? Their friends? TV? The trouble with social media and its hold on our children is a whole other disaster…

Someone told me yesterday that a man they work with had been frustrated due to the lack of connection and sex in his marriage for the past few months. He always complained that his wife was negative all the time and showed him no affection. This man went on a business trip recently and met a woman with whom he had intimate relations for the four days that he was out of town. When this man came home, he told his wife that she has given him no sex or attention for months and that he had cheated on her every day he was gone on his trip and that she would start putting out and get her act straight in this marriage.

Do you know what happened? She is dressing up and putting a smile on her face and doing her husband's bidding. All I could think was... "why didn't you throat punch that bastard?"

I get that many men are sexual creatures and need constant attention in that arena. I get that they want to feel strong and powerful and adored. At the same time, many women are emotional and mental creatures who need to feel respected and loved, and cherished in order to feel sexually in the mood.

It made me think back to when my husband cheated on me 12 years ago. To her, I was a hateful wife who gave little affection and little sex and was moody all the time. In my defense, he was drunk all the time and out at bars most nights rubbernecking women and disrespecting me in my home and leaving me to raise our son by myself. Why would I want to jump that in the sack? So I wonder... what was going on in the marriage that cause the wife to not be giving affection as much as this man wanted? There are usually two sides to the story. Now she is bullied into putting a smile on her face and acting like her husband's infidelity was motivation to be happy in their marriage so he doesn't leave her.

I have a friend of the family where communication has fallen to the wayside in their marriage. To listen to him you would think he does everything he can and she just doesn't want to try anymore. That she is "sick" all the time and complains about everything and is never happy. To listen to her you would think he is an alcoholic who can't get his life together. They are both really great people who are losing sight of each other... both are unhappy and neither is making a move to try to fix or repair. Abuse and neglect can go both ways. It's not just our daughters we need to coach and protect... our sons deserve respect too!

What men and women will do or accept to not be alone...

I want my daughters and my son to be strong enough in their self-worth, that if they find themselves in a relationship that is not healthy for them they have the strength to do what needs to be done...

So baby girl, maybe he does like you and is trying to get your attention and is doing it in the wrong way. Let’s talk…