“He has childhood trauma.” So do I.
“He’s under a lot of pressure at work.” So am I.
“He’s just overwhelmed.” Me too.
The only difference is that we excuse men’s behavior, and shame women for not carrying it.
@FashionNova why do y’all be scamming because I have multiple orders that I’m trying to return & you give me the option to say add more orders on to return it all in one bag or but everytime I go to the payment it says it’s a problem y’all trying to collect multiple payments 4.99
As you get older you realise that first red flag that you ignored will be the reason you break up 2 years later.
And you will regret not walking away that first time.
In 1998, I was fired from my corporate job while 9 months pregnant because and I quote, “my priorities would be elsewhere after the baby is born.”
The lawyer I hired told me I didn’t have a case because discrimination like “that” was almost impossible to prove.
So I got pissed.
Took the LSAT. Went to law school. Passed the bar. Had 3 more kids.
Twelve years later, another woman from that same company was fired for the same reason. She sued them for a million dollars, and won, partly because I had kept every piece of evidence from what happened to me years prior demonstrating a systemic pattern of discrimination against women.
That company no longer exists. My law practice is thriving. And that baby they said would derail my priorities? She’s a brilliant attorney now working at my firm.
Turns out my priorities were indeed, elsewhere.
I've actually tasted trying to fix people, and I've tasted forcing the truth down their throats. I highly recommend not caring more about people's lives than they do. No one is your assignment.
Not even the ones you love.
Call it a millennial crisis if you want.
But in my 30's, I realized l don't actually want the life I worked so hard for. I don't care about titles. I don't care about climbing anyone else's ladder. I care about time. I care about slow mornings. I care about peace. I care about bare feet at the beach with nowhere to be. I still want to make money.. just not at the cost of my life.
I think every woman hits that season where she's not angry anymore, just aware. You see people clearly. You move differently. You don't explain.. you just shift. That's maturity mixed with grace.
I didn’t call my husband crying.
I called him angry.
It was 11:47 PM. I was sitting on the kitchen floor, laptop open, staring at an email that said my contract wasn’t being renewed. Just like that. Two years of overtime, weekends, skipped holidays — gone in one paragraph.
When he answered, I didn’t even say hello. “I lost my job.”
Silence. Not the awkward kind. The steady kind.
He said, “Okay. I’m coming home.”
He was on a night shift. I told him not to. I said I didn’t want him to risk it. I said I was fine.
He said, “You’re not.”
Twenty minutes later, I heard the door.
He didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t start giving solutions. Didn’t say, “You’ll find something better.” Didn’t minimize it.
He just sat on the floor with me.
He ordered food because he knew I hadn’t eaten. He closed my laptop because he knew I’d keep rereading the email. He made a list the next morning not of jobs for me but of bills he could cover alone “for as long as it takes.”
The next week, I found out he had quietly moved money from his personal savings into our joint account.
Not because I asked.
Because he anticipated.
Months later, when I apologized for being “a burden,” he looked genuinely confused.
“We’re married,” he said. “There is no yours and mine when things fall apart. There’s just us.”
That’s when I understood something about marriage.
It’s not about who plans the best anniversary or posts the sweetest captions.
It’s about who sits on the kitchen floor with you when your world collapses.
It’s about who absorbs your panic without adding their own.
It’s about who turns “your problem” into “our plan.”
Marriage isn’t loud.
It’s steady.
And when it’s real, you don’t have to beg someone to show up.
They already grabbed their keys.
i've tasted being the bigger person and i've tasted matching energy. i highly recommend choosing people who never make you act out of character. there's wisdom in remaining grounded.
How he treats you during conflict is more important than any romantic gesture ever.
Flowers or dates won't matter if he raises his voice at you. Sweet words won't matter if he ignores your feelings. Love is shown in the hard moments, not just the happy ones. It's in how he listens when you're upset, how he stays calm instead of hurting you with words. It's in how he tries to understand, not win. Someone who truly cares won't make you feel small, scared, or silenced. He won't punish you with distance or make you beg to be heard. Real love feels safe, even during disagreements. It chooses respect over ego, patience over anger, and care over being right.
Sometimes I accidentally accept the bare minimum trying to be considerate of what others are going through and that’s a habit I need to let go of expeditiously.