Emotional Slavery

I have a friend who may be the most beautiful person I know. So much I feel slightly uncomfortable talking about her in this manner. She is one of those people who are perpetually in relationships, and she tends to have the same boy problems. There are so many other girls like her who feel the need to validate themselves through relationships that are really only destructive and all they get out of it is another number to their list of exes. I have been wondering why it is that the most beautiful people are the most insecure. It may be because people tend to value them only for their beauty and beauty is a fickle friend. Owing to the fact that she has not been single since before she was a teenager, this friend of mine subconsciously believes that she could never be complete without having someone fulfilling a romantic role in her life. So basically she enters herself into these seemingly voluntary, dysfunctional relationships because she is so afraid of being by herself. Isn’t that the saddest thing you have ever heard?

Society attaches such a stigma to single women and we all fall for it. I was talking to another friend the other day and I have come to the conclusion that we need to sort out our priorities. We are all always so relationship-inclined! That is what is on everybody’s mind. I went through a phase of complaining about my singleness at every waking moment and I have friends who actually feel sorry for me because they think that as a girl, it is a great failure on my part that I haven’t managed to find someone to love me. Why is it that being single has such a negative undertone? Why do we all feel like it is this venomous, demonic cancer that needs to be fixed? Girls feel like they need to be in relationships to be happy because the society has fed us this lie that we are all halves of a whole and you haven’t truly achieved anything if you have not found someone to fill in that gaping hole in your life. The guys on the other hand, believe that they are doing girls a favour by choosing to be in relationships with them. I believe that being lonely is not a good enough reason to date, it just makes you needy in the relationship. Finding a guy only fixes the symptom; you will still be lonely even if you find romance if you are not first and foremost sufficient in your independence.

After saying all this, my friend still wasn’t convinced so she says to me, “even Beyonce needs a man!” I just want to clarify that I am not here to preach that I am too much of a strong woman to ever want one of those. No. I am merely saying that if a relationship isn’t right for both parties then it needs to be aborted. In any case, I don’t see why we need to be comparing ourselves to Beyonce when it comes to the standards we set for our love lives; she gives us no information about how she handles hers! I don’t know if you listen to her lyrics but I don’t even agree with how Beyonce has often chosen to define love.“Eat the cake, Anna Mae” really? That’s what little girls are using as their gospel? I agree more with how Mumford and Sons define love. “Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free. To be more like the man you were made to be.”