I had this friend. Yes, I said I had, because we are no longer friends. He had or rather has an issue with women. Something to do with a heartbreak he had three years ago, as he told me. It wasn’t his issues with women that troubled me, it was his mindset
One thing that kept recurring in our conversations was: women this, women that. My ex this, my ex that. Mind you, I am a woman, and I had to bear with him talking ill about women because that's what he knew best.
At first, when I got to know him, I had trouble understanding him and I had to withdraw the friendship and look at the situation well. I wondered, "Was I the issue, or are we just not understanding each other? Or maybe I should use his lenses to see his point." After a while, we got to talking again, but this time, I was charged with a mindset that, no matter what, I wouldn't rush to get angry or judgey.
But again, one thing was constant. He was bent on revenge, and when I say revenge I mean the physical kind, the brutal kind. He'd tell me, "My ex doesn't know me well, I can send her goons to ambush her and there's nothing she can do." The ex we're talking about has his son. This guy is jobless, he plays video games each day, unless, after our fallout, he got a job, so he ain't paying no child support!
All his energy was subjected to the wrong thing. Instead of growth, he focused solely on revenge, bad-mouthing and games. Maybe that's how he copes, I would tell myself over and over again. But honestly, his toxicity was a little bit higher. Three years is a long time to focus on the same thing that will only bring loss to him and the world in general.
I kept telling him, based on my experience with my father's child separation, that he had to channel his energy to build himself, rather than focusing on the same spot his ex left him. I'd tell him, the best revenge he could give his ex, who'd already moved on, was focusing on improving himself. I'd tell him nothing soothes an ego like acquiring the mindset of, "I can still make it without you in the picture," rather than a fist fight.
But things kept going back to revenge until his last message before our fallout. That message was kinda hurtful and directed at women, which I will be sharing with you on this post.
Our last conversation screenshot
Dealing with him required a lot of patience, maybe more than he deserved from me. It made me realize one thing: Maturity is never about age. He is older than me, but his thinking level is that of an eighth grader, sorry to say.
Maturity will never be scaled by age, never! Maturity is all about emotional intelligence, like knowing how to deal with emotions in a more constructive way, knowing when to act on them, when to stop. I disagree with people who think that walking away from a fight is cowardly, while in the real sense, it shows maturity, because the person walking away has viewed and weighed the situation only to realize that no good will come from it, either verbally and/or physically and mentally.
Thank you for reading❤️!