BIG MAN: A Wake-Up Call for Women

Chapter 12 - He Doesn't Love You

.. and let's face it: you probably don't love him either. Maybe he chose you because it's better than being alone. Maybe you merely give him a sense of purpose in life. Maybe he needed you to be the one on whom he acts out his grievances with his mother. Maybe he suffered childhood trauma and you have the backward privilege of being the recipient of all his pain. Maybe you both fell legitimately in love in the beginning, or maybe it was just airs and graces. Does he not feel manly when he controls and dominates you, as if this is the only way he can connect with his own masculine power? You love love. You love the idea of love. You love the idea of marriage and companionship, of romance and happilyever- afters. Did your romantic notions blind you to the nature of the man you chose? If you are currently single, do you plan on viewing every possible partner through rosecoloured glasses, even after he shoves you against a wall for the first time? The answer to all these questions is 'So what.' So what if he has childhood issues. So what if he learnt it from his father. So what if doesn't know any different. So what if you hit him first, with your feeble girly slap. So what – to every excuse he will give you, every attempt he makes to gain your forgiveness, every time he apologises for going too far, saying things he didn't mean, doing things he never meant to do. So. What. He doesn't love you.

In twisted circles of relationship advisors we often hear "Well you know, we tend to hurt the ones we love the most." Excuse me? This isn't love. This is egoic love not getting its own way, like a child who finds it necessary to throw a 3-hour tantrum because the last scoop of ice-cream was denied him. It's the screaming and wailing of a toddler at his parent because you turned the TV off, or took his favourite toy away because it's bath time. The child does not view his parent through the eyes of conscious love. The parent is the life-support system that nurtures and sustains his life. The toddler perceives the parent as only this, until it is old enough to consciously understand what love between human beings really is, and the many ways it can be expressed. You are not this man's mother, and no, he does not love you.

I won't bore you with spiritual speculations about what I think love really is, there's enough of that out there already. It is probably better that we understand what love isn't if you are at all interested in having a long and relatively happy life. Yes every relationship has its ups and downs, yes sometimes people cheat, yes sometimes things get ugly but you work through it together, and the reason you work through it together is because he recognises there is something that needs to be worked through. This is love: the admission of both parties that both parties need help maintaining a healthy productive relationship. He's open to the counselling sessions and makes it obvious through his actions that we wants things to be better, and so do you. Yay. If he doesn't want to do any of those things, he doesn't love you. If you stay with him regardless, you don't love you either. He knows this by the way, that you don't love yourself. He senses it in your lack of self-esteem, the way you stumble to find the right words, those little insecurities you have about your appearance. It works for him. He's made you frightened enough already, or maybe he's convinced you that all the trouble between you is all your fault. He has a way of placing all the focus on how you react, to shift the focus off himself. What kind of woman are you to not know how to express yourself properly? Idiot. I've been working all day and I come home to this mess? Useless woman. Don't bug me while I play video games, it's the relief I need from all your bullshit. Don't nag me for sleeping until 2pm every day you knew I was like this when we moved in together. So what if we have a child now. That was up to you, not me, you unreasonable cow. Stop grinding me about how I haven't done that thing you asked me to do even though you've asked me 5 times already, that same thing I happily do for my boss, my mates, or my own family, but won't do for you, because I respect them more than I respect you.