I Beat My Man!…. Then, I Left!

This weekend, Ray J's girlfriend Princess Love was arrested in New Orleans for attacking him. The attack is said to have resulted in several cracked ribs, a burst lip, and a torn ACL. In other words, Princess WHOOPED HIS BUTT!  While I don't condone domestic violence, I can understand her!
Number one, Ray J is one of the most annoying H-list celebrities ever. His claims to fame are being the younger brother of Brandy AND the infamous sex tape with Kim Kardashian, the latter he still tries to use to his advantage. Remember his 2013 hit, "I Hit It First," featuring a Kim Kardashian lookalike?

Anyway, moving along....  As I said, I can understand Princess's attack on Ray J.  Why?  Because I've lost my cool and struck an ex before too. Yes, I admit it.  I hit my man.
Right swing, knocked him dead in the left jaw. I got in a good two blows before he said, "You got one more time to hit me."  I quickly remembered that I was a woman (not a lady at that point) and I couldn't handle a blow from him even though I may have deserved it, and I didn't hit him again..... Until I caught him cheating AGAIN. At that time, I was working two jobs. He knew my schedule. Just didn't know I'd be getting off early from one of the jobs. I walked in on him in the bed with another woman. SLAPPED him so hard I felt stinging in MY hand! You know the saying, "I slapped THE FIRE out of him?"  Well, I really think I did. Fire was all over my palm.

Soooo, let's talk about it.  We often call a man a punk if he hits a woman.  We wonder what could make a man so upset that he resorts to violence. Why not look at it from a female perspective?  What caused me to strike my dude?  Honestly, it was a combination of things: anger (of course), frustration, pain, and as much as I hate to admit it, part of me felt like he deserved it. I felt like it was up to me to give him the discipline he'd never gotten. Sure, his mother may have taught him not to lay his hands on a woman, but she'd never taught him about not inflicting emotional pain.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't make a habit of beating on him, but I did punch him square in the jaw, slapped him, and I think I MAY have put another boyfriend in the choke hold after that. Okay, if I'm going to be honest, I'm going to be honest. I did it.  And part of me wants to say he deserved it too! He was hateful, mean-spirited, and did all he could to break me.  He criticized my smile, picked out my clothes to make me look matronly, and made me feel bad about myself.  The crazy thing is that when I started dating him, I told him I wasn't ready to date. He told me he wanted to be the one to help me forget the pain I'd endured in the past.  I guess in hindsight, I can see that he wanted the new pain he caused to overshadow any I'd ever experienced. LOL

I laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny then.  I was ashamed of the fact that I'd let them get the best of me.  I didn't even know the person I'd become, and this unrecognizable person was one I didn't like.  The crazy thing is that I was only this way with them. To everyone else, I was a totally different person.  I think that once I saw a person's negative intent with me, I started to treat them the way they treated me rather than remove myself from the situation.  I couldn't inflict the same pain upon them that they'd given me, but it manifested itself in my actions, which I justified by telling myself that they didn't press charges because they knew they deserved what I did.

I eventually came to the realization that they didn't deserve to be hit. They deserved to be LEFT! Have you ever eaten a meal and threw up? Did you retaliate against the place where you got the food because of the investment you lost? Of course not. You simply got something else to eat when you felt you were strong enough to hold it. Such should be the case when we're in relationships that don't go the way we think they should. It's not up to us to beat our "partners" into submission. We should instead let them experience the pain of our absences. There's too much life to live and too many happy moments waiting to happen for us to allow our anger to cause us to do something that could have us arrested, paying fines, or even attempting to force people to be with us. If you're that upset, leave.

It's never easy when you realize you've lost an investment; but after watching the decline for so long, at some point, you come to realize that you should've invested elsewhere.  Withdraw, evaluate, and invest elsewhere starting with yourself. Your peace is worth much more than the presence of someone who causes you to act out. And this is not placing blame on the victim by "causing" what happens to them. I'm only saying that if you're not getting what you think you should from them, violence is not a solution. If your emotions can't be controlled, you owe it to them and yourself to leave.