Real estate agent Charisse Tyson has a chronic case of “Wrong Men-Itis.” Laugh loud and often as she searches for the cure.
Excerpt
One
Self Therapy for Dummies
Her words played in my head like a scratched LP. “Charisse, a good man is like Santa Claus, believing in him feels real good until you find out he doesn’t really exist.” Although I ignored most of my mother’s attempts at wisdom, this little gem stuck with me . . . like gum on my shoe. No wonder I was nearing the big four-oh and home alone on yet another New Year’s Eve. No bubbly to pop, no confetti to throw, no love to kiss at midnight’s stroke; only me, my remote control, and six goldfish, one in desperate need of a trip to the porcelain god.
Why was I home alone on New Year’s Eve again? Because of Mar-cus damn Mathews, “the one.” You know “the one,” right? The one who cheated. The one who lied. The one who broke my damn heart. The one who kept calling my house begging me to take his conniving ass back. That “one.” I had finally settled in for the night and tried to forget that I flushed three years of my life down the toilet of wasted time and squandered heart when my doorbell rang.
He’s baaaaack!
“What do you want, Marcus?” I asked, exasperated by his unwil-lingness to accept that our relationship was over.
“I want you. I need you, Charisse,” he pleaded, his eyes resembling those of hungry puppy dog begging for his next Scooby snack. I guess he didn’t see the sign on my forehead, No Dawgs Allowed!
“No, what you need to do is go find that bitch I caught you with and ring her damn doorbell. Love don’t live here anymore.”
He let out a sigh of annoyance and aggravation as if I was the one ringing his doorbell unannounced and uninvited. “Why are you doing this, baby? You know how sorry I am.”
“Yes, Marcus, I know how sorry you are . . . and that’s precisely why I’m doing this. Now, you can leave voluntarily or I can call five-oh. In my neighborhood, you know they’ll be here before you can back out of the driveway.”
“Alright, Charisse. I’ll leave for now. But this isn’t settled, not by a long shot,” he declared as I slammed the door in his face.
Damn! How could I let this happen again? I am suffering from a chronic case of Wrong Men-itis and it has to stop! I thought. Shaking my head in confusion, I walked back to the disaster area that formerly served as a family room.
Now, how am I going to entertain myself until I pass out in a drunken stupor?
I turned on the stereo determined to avoid any sappy love songs to send me deeper into my emotional upheaval, so R&B -out, Pop – out, Country – way out, nowadays you couldn’t even trust Rock. Finally, the disco station, XM-83, what a relief. “Night Fever” by the Bee Gees played, a perfectly non-suicide inducing song.
Thought a gripping magazine article might help take my mind off my troubles, so I grabbed a few from the coffee table. My preferred sub-scription was Z: The Zaina Magazine, published by talk show hostess, Zaina Humphrey. Between hosting mind-numbing “hope you didn’t come for the cookies” open houses; helping delusional “my home will sell for ten thousand above market price, even with the lime green carpet and Barney-inspired purple paint” sellers; and showing homes to unrealistic “will the seller spring for a Sub-Zero in this trailer?” homebuyers, my days were consumed. I kept her show on TIVO for occasions I needed my fix though.
Forty locked its jaws on me like a Pit bull, so my interests broa-dened far beyond the “Six Ways to Have an Orgasm While Balancing Your Checkbook” articles. I craved pithy, spirit-lifting, soul-feeding, personal-growth inducing, psycho-therapeutic edutainment in under sixty minutes or for less than five bucks an issue. Zaina delivered. She taught me how to improve my relationship with myself and the people forced to tolerate me.
After perusing a couple of editions and glancing at a few nuggets here and there, I decided to return my attention to the disappointing plasma if I didn’t stop to read anything in detail. Near the last pages, I glimpsed an article that piqued my interest: “Stop Attracting Toxic Men: Five Steps to Unpacking Your Emotional Baggage.” I studied it with a level of focus I hadn’t been able to muster in weeks.
Common Signs of Emotional Baggage
Do you have a difficult time opening up even when the new guy in your life makes you feel safe to do so?
No. No difficulty. It’s none of their business.
Do you test him every chance you get or maybe try to catch him in the act to give yourself an excuse to remain emotionally distant or break off the relation-ship?
Eeeeh, that’s a bad thing?
Do you carry around stereotypes and hang-ups? If all your boyfriends cheated on you, you assume all men lie and cheat?
Hmph, well if the shoe fits. . .
Do you avoid taking responsibility for your mis-takes? You blame your partner for the demise of your relationship and for every bad thing that has happened to you.
So not true. I only blamed them because it was entirely their fault.
Do you have a lingering ghost from your past his-tory you’ve tried to forget, but never put to rest?
Hmmm, maybe I better keep reading.
If any of the behaviors above sound familiar, you’ve got emotional baggage. Follow these steps to unpack your baggage for good.
1. Analyze every failed relationship you’ve ever had, but don’t focus on what he did wrong, assess your role too. Use the information to decide what you need and don’t need from a partner.
Every failed relationship? Jesus, by the time I’m done, I’ll be too old to remember what I was trying to do in the first place.
2. You have faults too. Face them. Take responsi-bility for your own mistakes. Stop wasting energy on the blame game and conquer your “poor victim” mentality.
Piece of cake. I have no faults.
3. Take a little time off from dating. Give your-self some time to heal. Starting a new relationship without dealing with old hurts and bad relationships simply sets the stage for a repeat disaster.
When they say dating, I’m sure they don’t mean sex.
4. Don’t compare your current man with your ex-boyfriend, and don’t burden him with sob stories from your past relationships. Resist the urge to tell him how your ex-boyfriend cheated, lied, or destroyed your trust in men.
Well, what the hell are we supposed to talk about?
5. Cut your new man some slack. Give him one hun-dred points and only deduct when he makes major mis-takes.
I’ll give them two hundred points, and they’ll still find a way to muck it up.
Entertaining the prospect of dumping my bags and losing my bum magnetism filled me with excitement. But my stomach sank in fear of what might need to come out of the closet in the process. That’s a bridge I’m not quite prepared to cross.
Copyright 2008 K. L. Brady. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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