Some of us grew up reading romance novels, some of us loved the ones where the man is always portrayed as a strong, handsome individual with excess money but a lot of emotional baggage and the woman innocent, chaste, pure often poor but with a heart of gold. The woman mostly falls in love with the man because she's in a helpless situation and somehow needs the man's help and the man oh bless God sees her as a challenge, an object, he rids her of her innocence, while tormenting her emotionally, but the woman stays taking care of him, helping him to deal with his baggage and when she can't take the emotional abuse anymore she leaves. Suddenly the man realizes that he loved her from the beginning and makes it his mission to get her back, he tells her he loves her and promises to treat her better. She comes back and they make beautiful love and the author makes us believe they leave happily ever after.
When I was younger, I read a lot of books with plots like this, I sucked and still suck at remembering names and titles so I can't cite an example. But narratives like this where some women are stuck with a savior's complex. Believing they have to stick around and the man will get better. even if he treats her like shit, she has to stay, she has to help him survive, she has to fix him because men can be fixable.
The truth is everyone is broken in different ways, no one is completely whole, but it is no one's job to fix someone else. Even if you want to try, you always have to remind yourself that it is not your job to, because you can only try but a man that doesn't want to be fixed cant be fixed. Instead of spending a whole lot of time fixing someone, it is ok to love them and still walk away because you know it is not your job too.
This same narrative applies to men, who were trained to believe that women can never be physically or emotionally abusive that they end up staying with an abusive partner because they find it hard to leave. It is never easy to leave or to unlearn things that we believe but we have to try, because that is what life is all about, learning and unlearning, no one should have to stay in a difficult position just because of past believes that no longer apply in this world we live in.
People tell you to be happy in the moment, forget about everything, just enjoy it, go with the flow. they do not tell you that the signs you saw when you were trying to be happy in the moment will come back to bite you in the ass. No one tells you that no moment can last forever. It is ok to leave, it is ok to unlearn and it is ok to love again.
Nice read, I enjoyed reading this.