Love & Hip Hop Atlanta: Loving the Wrong Man
If we’ve learned anything from this season of Love & Hip Hop Atlanta is that hope springs eternal and the heart wants what the heart want even when what it wants is a low-down, no-good, lying, skeezy, slimy, whoring Son of a Bitch. It’s easy to watch Mimi and Joseline on Love & Hip Hop and think: What the Hell? I’d NEVER be that stupid. But the reality is most of us have been some version of stupid in out lives at some point
Lord knows I’ve kept men around past their expiration date. I’ve loved men who clearly didn’t love me back, and didn’t give them their walking papers when they did me all kinds of wrong. But watching the ladies of Love & Hip Hop Atlanta is especially painful. How many ways does Stevie J get to disrespect Mimi before she says enough is enough and move on. Erica seems to have woken up where Scrappy is concerned. She seems to be willing to move on, though clearly she still loves him.And Joseline. Well, I could write a whole dissertation on Joseline.
What annoys me the most where Mimi and Erica are concerned is how they use their children as justification for trying to make the relationship work. They want a family they say. But I call bullshit on that reasoning. Their children are just excuses to keep them hanging on to relationships that are bad for them and bad for their children In what world is it good to have Daddy around when Daddy is regularly disrespecting Mommy, so much so that Mommy is angry and hurt and crying all the time?
Do these ladies even stop to think what lessons they are teaching their young girls on how men should treat women? On what a healthy and loving relationship should like? On what being a real man really means? Two-parent households may be ideal, but not when one parent is clearly disrespecting the other. That’s never a good thing and their no positive outcomes from that family unit.
While it’s easy to pick and snicker and say how “I’d never do that, ” it’s much harder to take an honest look at your own life and relationship and see if you’re doing something similar to Mimi and Erica. Your man may not be disrespecting you on national TV, but are you be treated the way we all deserved to be treated? Are you allowing yourself to be marginalized and disrespected in other ways?
Are you clinging to a relationship that’s obviously done in the name of keeping a family together or “Because I love him?” It’s easy to point fingers, it’s much more difficult to admit you’re a little more like Mimi or Joseline or Erica than you want to admit.
And while we’re at it “Beacuse I love him” or its counterpart “But I love him” are not reasons to stay. So what you love him, the bigger questions is “Does he love you?” And no, I’m talking about what he says to you, I mean what he shows you. A man’s actions will always mean more than his words, simply the former is much harder to fake, while the latter is as simple as telling someone what they want to here.
If the answer than the question is no, then it’s time to move on. Contrary to popular belief love does not conquer all. And you only have to look at one episode of Love & Hip Hot Atlanta to understand that fact – cause really, what has all that love gotten any women on that show?
Exactly.