“You love (him) like words can’t explain, for (him) to feel the same is all you want to gain.”
While the occurrence of infidelity is nothing uncommon amongst men (especially in Atlanta, where the ratio of women to men is 10 to 1) some of the excuses and rationalizations you hear from men these days may have women feeling as if they’re better off single than in a relationship. Just the other day a group of guys said to me, “You NEVER want to be the girlfriend, the side chick gets more benefits”. Of course my immediate response is that it’s the man who's getting all the benefits, but that’s the obvious. Anyways, so I began to compare and contrast the two roles. Here you have a side chick who pretty much gets everything that the girlfriend gets...EXCEPT that one thing……the TITLE, which comes along with what?..... Public acknowledgement? .....Lovey-dovey pictures posted on social networking sites? .....And a relationship status verification via facebook?......I mean HOW MUCH is that TITLE really worth? Is it worth your freedom….the freedom of talking to other people and being able to do what you want with no questions? Because that’s what the side chick has that you don’t. While you’re at home with that TITLE, being the loyal and faithful girlfriend you’re supposed to be, there’s a single non-committed woman out there getting everything else you get FROM YOUR MAN. And we all know that what’s in the dark always finds a way to the light, ESPECIALLY with today’s technology and social networking sites, and when it does…that same title that you worked so hard for and invested so much time and energy into, that once made you feel so special and exclusive, backfires and in the end has you looking like Mashonda after Swizz Beats left her for Alicia Keys.
Now the question really isn’t whether it’s better being the side chick or the girlfriend…to each her own. The question is: HOW DO YOU deal with the situation?
#1) NO WOMAN IS INVINCIBLE.
Take your man off a pedestal. “Show me a beautiful woman, and I'll show you a man who’s tired of sleeping with her.” With that said, there are two types of cheating. There are the random one night stands, and there are the love affairs. The love affairs are the ones you really need to look out for because unlike the one-night-stand cheater, they involve more than just a physical and sexual attraction, they involve a mental and emotional connection, and the majority of the time the only thing keeping them apart are their current circumstances. In this situation, although the woman and the man have this secret relationship, it is still a relationship that is built on truth and trust, whereas the trust and honesty you two once had is fading more and more as the affair continues. Plus remember what Tyrese said to Yvette in Babyboy when he got caught up, “I tell these hoes the truth...I lie to you to protect your feelings.” Well if that's the case, I don’t know about you, but I much rather know the truth and handle my own damn feelings, because while he’s out there protecting your feelings, he sure as hell isn’t protecting your body while he's messing around, nor is he protecting the future of your relationship.
#2) NEVER BLAME THE FEMALE.
If you spend all your energy and time blaming another woman, what are you going to do the next time he cheats? Keep going after the woman while your man is consistently messing around on you? Remember the woman doesn’t owe you anything. Its not her responsibility to ensure that your man is faithful…its yours and your man’s. Therefore, before you analyze what she’s doing…you need to analyze what it is you're doing or not doing that could be influencing him to look elsewhere. Besides we all know men like the chase…so 9 times out of 10 its not her who's chasing him, its he who’s chasing her, so even more of a reason for you to be holding your man responsible and not the other woman. So let go of that whole home-wreckers myth (which was probably created by a man who got caught cheating and couldn't take responsibility for his actions so he put it on the other woman), and stop blaming the Alicias.
#3) KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE & YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER.
Believe it or not women can often sympathize for each other if approached respectfully. If you have an idea who the side chick is, it would be to your advantage not to come at her wrong and immediately become her enemy…for two reasons. For one, because you never know when you may need her as a source of information and two, instantly becoming her enemy is just making it more of a competition for yourself and giving her more of a reason not to spare your feelings and to disregard you and your relationship completely.
#4) WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEONE, SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LET HIM GO.
Sometimes girlfriends and side chicks get so caught up with the competition that they never stop to think whether the man they're fighting for is even really worth it all. Obviously, if it has lasted this long, the man clearly doesn’t know what the hell he wants and doesn’t really respect either woman as much as he should, which means he probably doesn’t even respect himself. A cheating man is a representation of weakness...and a person who is inadequate and not complete themselves cannot give their all into a relationship with someone else, which is why they use other women to try to satiate that feeling of incompleteness by replacing the things that are missing from their lives with other women. Even in Steve Harvey’s book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, he stresses that a man never wants to get seriously involved in a relationship until he has his shit together and is financially stable and content with his life. Sometimes the man just needs to be left alone so he can be single. This way it can be up to him to decide who he wants, and he won't just remain stuck in a situation because he feels obligated to. Instead, the time and energy that this man is putting into a girlfriend and a side chick could be spent on getting his career and finances together because if not, both of you women are going to end up stuck being used as a crutch and will prevent him from focusing on what he really needs, and eventually both of you wont be satisfied. Then eventually, when he does get his shit together, he's going to want a woman just as successful as him, and since you and the side chick were so occupied with him, you lost grip of your own life and future, and somehow he's transferred his inadequacies and incompleteness onto you.
Therefore, at the end of the day you just have to ask yourself, is he really worth the bullshit that you're dealing with and creating for yourself?…...And the answer to that question, well of course, depends on your self-worth.
