Ladies, it’s time for us to have a chat.
I’m going to talk to you about something I’ve been seeing more and more on social media lately. It is a harmful idea that people of all genders and races have perpetuated, acting as though it is normal and acceptable. This is, the “crazy girlfriend” trope.
Now, I’m not talking about women acting rationally and reasonably in a relationship, and their boyfriend labelling any behavior they don’t like as “crazy.” That is a very real problem, and could be a different article all in itself. No, rather, I’m talking about the typically self proclaimed crazy girlfriend who doesn’t trust her boyfriend for no good reason. The girl who gets mad when her boyfriend doesn’t text back within five minutes. The girl who looks through her boyfriend’s phone & social media accounts when he’s in another room. The girl who refuses to let her boyfriend even talk to any other girls, much less be friends with them. The girl who thinks it’s okay to key his car or destroy his xbox when she gets angry at him. The girl who makes jokes about slapping, punching, and beating her boyfriend if he were to leave her. The girl who screams at her boyfriend when he’s not acting exactly the way she wants him to.
Cut that out.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Men can’t be trusted. Just as the crazy girlfriend trope is populating Twitter, so are all the tweets about cheating! If I don’t act “crazy,” then how am I gonna make sure he’s acting right?
But the thing is, a lot of this behavior you’re doing, is at its least harmful: a gross invasion of privacy. At its worst? Actually abusive.
Your boyfriend is entitled to privacy. You do not own him. Your boyfriend has things to do. He can’t be texting you every five minutes. Your boyfriend should be able to have friends that are girls. Men and women (even straight ones!) can be friends without wanting to rip each other’s clothes off. You are his girlfriend, not his mother. You cannot tell him what he’s allowed to do.
A lot of girls, actually, a lot of people in general, are under the impression that women cannot be abusive to men. In truth, it isfar more rare, but that does not mean that it doesn’t happen. A lot of this self proclaimed “crazy girlfriend” behavior can be chalked up to abuse. Most people seem to know that if a man demands his girlfriend does not talk or spend time with any other men, it is a red flag. However, when a girl says her boyfriend can’t be friends with any girls, we laugh, roll our eyes, and chalk it up to being a “crazy girlfriend,” without any alarms being raised.
Why is that?
Trust is hard, especially in this day and age where someone can have thirty different lives through social media and “alternative facts” is a real thing said by someone who counsels the President of the United States (I said the President. Not our. Y’all can have him). When every other tweet is about side hoes, and society is telling us that age-old lie that men are obsessed with sex and incapable of sticking to just one woman, it’s hard to believe that your boyfriend really wants to be with you and only you. But, if the absolute only way you can trust that your boyfriend doesn’t cheat on you is by going through his phone, or making sure he doesn’t have any female friends, then sweetheart… you need to let that man go. Relationships should be founded on trust. If you don’t believe that your boyfriend cares enough for you to respect your relationship, that is a loyalty problem that should be addressed at the root. Knowing what’s happening in his DMs or preventing him from speaking to other women won’t fix that. Besides, do you want your boyfriend not to cheat only because he knows you might find out about it? Or do you want to have a boyfriend who won’t cheat because he loves you? Because cheating is wrong?
And yes, it doesn’t always work out. You may love your boyfriend so much, think he feels the same, and be sure that he would never do that to you. You may never invade his privacy or make demands on who he can spend time with. And then down the line you’ll find out that he was flirting with a bunch of other girls in his text messages, or that the the girl you thought was his “best friend” was a little bit more than that. And you’ll be so hurt, and feel so stupid.
But that still doesn’t make it okay. Relationships are a risk, and they always will be. You are risking getting hurt, and ending up heartbroken. But, you shouldn’t be doing the hurting in your relationship in an attempt to avoid that.
Stop going through your man’s phone.
(For the record, everything I said was pretty heteronormative, and that’s because this trope is pretty freaking heteronormative. For some reason, it’s typically heterosexual couples that are constantly worried about cheating and going through phones. Straight people, get it together.)
