The rain falls, the wind blows, the sun shines and moss grows. Time and erosion take their toll. Then one day you realise that she’s changed so much you can hardly remember what she used to look like. You love her anyway, so there she stands, just a shadow of her former self. A disappearing woman.
Sometimes, we remember our younger selves; idealistic, self-confident, full of vinegar and spit, and wonder if we aren’t being worn away, not by wind and rain but by the men we love. When you going to do something about your weight? You have to laugh so loud? Aren’t you a little…old to wear that dress? Why you have to smile at men whenever we go out? So we diet, we bite our tongues when we should speak up, we settle for men who aren’t right for us just because the clock’s ticking. We stop wearing bright red lipstick. We fade.
Trinidadian life coach, Narda Mohammed, says that we should never change to please others, as in doing so, we surrender our power. “Whatever decision one makes must always come from the self. Doing anything to make someone else happy and negating your own happiness is handing over your power to be happy to someone else. It gives that person control over who you are and become.”
One woman shares her story.
“I grew up Catholic, but I fell in love with a man who was a member of a small, very strict church. Next thing I knew, my hemlines started getting longer and I stopped wearing makeup. He wouldn’t let me celebrate Christmas or take part in Carnival. Before I met him I used to have my costume booked by November! I remember watching Poison on TV one Carnival Tuesday and crying. I put on my clothes and took a maxi into town. And that was the end of that.”
Give and take is essential in any relationship, but sometimes, the giving is all on one side, and the taking on the other. A taker’s most trusted weapon is to erode your self-esteem, so you look to him for approval rather than affirming for yourself how wonderful you are. “A woman must never put aside her true self for someone else” Mohammed says.
“You were created a specific way, with certain likes and dislikes, for a reason. If someone doesn’t love who you truly are, then that person needs to be re-evaluated.” Sometimes, the leverage used is the relationship itself: Change, or I leave you. Another friend of WomanWise remembers her new lover hacking into her private online journal, where she recorded details of her previous relationship with a man she had truly loved. Jealous, he insisted she delete it, because he didn’t want her “holding no tabanca for no man”, as he put it. She deleted the file—and with it, an irreplaceable chunk of her life.
Instead of giving in to threats, we need to discern how much we’re willing to bend, if at all, and that comes from listening to the voice within .
“Instead of following someone else’s guidance, it’s important to detect if it is right for you, not from a human level but a spiritual one. We are ALL spirit beings having a human experience not a human being having a spiritual experience. So it’s important for us to follow that peaceful inner guidance that is ALWAYS with us,” Mohammed said.
The question is, should we stay in a relationship with a taker? Should we resist him, try to change him, or cut bait and leave? Every situation is different. “Sit by yourself in a place that brings you most peace and ask some valuable questions: What do I really want? Is this person treating me the way I deserve? What is my definition of a relationship? Sometimes we draw into our lives a certain type of man due to our belief of what a relationship is...or what a good man is…. So that is a great place to start. Change your beliefs about a relationship by thinking more supportive thoughts of what you truly desire. Stop saying negative things like all the good men are dead or married!”
It’s all well and good to become more aware of takers and their strategies, in order to protect ourselves from their manipulations in the future, but what happens when we wake up and realise that we’ve changed so much that we hardly remember who we were before? How do we recover from this?
Mohammed advises that you simply pick yourself up and move on. “See your past experiences as wonderful experiences to make you a stronger and happier person than you have ever been. You may not be able to go back but you can certainly go forward.”
