Vixen Manual - Karrine Steffans [51]
Back to why you shouldn’t be waiting for a man to save you and allow your life to truly begin. Take it from me…I’ve tried living life that way. It’s never a good idea, not even under the best of circumstances with the most successful man. Even though you’re in a relationship, you should always have your own thing. If you don’t, you may find that the very same man who came along and swooped you up and promised you heaven and earth might eventually begin to view you as so much dead weight, not nearly as exciting and vivacious as that smart little cookie in his office who’s such a go-getter and is able to converse with him about everything under the sun. Men compare what they have at home to what they see out in the world. If you’re not competitive enough, if you can’t make him believe he’s got a real treasure on his hands (and that starts with how you feel about you and the steps you take to expand your own life), he may begin to think of you as just a liability and a taker. You may not even be fully aware of it.
How do you know you’re a liability? Do you have any power in your household? No? Hmmm. Can you make important decisions that are adhered to? No? Wow, this looks bad. Okay, how about standing your ground in debates with your mate—can you do that? That’s three nos, ladies. This is not looking good at all. (If you’ve answered yes to at least one of these questions, then you’re on the right track.) When you cannot do any of these things, your stability decreases exponentially. Your life could very easily be uprooted at any time. What’s to stop your man from asking you to leave home because you have not contributed to its upkeep, financially or physically? More than likely, your name is not on either the house or automobile titles, and your bank account is dependant upon an allowance. Under any or all of these circumstances, your man is in complete control and this can be potentially dangerous to you and your quality of life.
You should be aware that some men are insecure and need to have a woman of liability in their lives. This gives him power over you and, in short order, you may find yourself made subservient and dominated. Don’t be lured into this type of arrangement even if the man is wealthy and promises to take care of you. Financial abuse is a very real form of abuse; it is one of the most subtle, and easiest, ways to gain power over another person, whether the relationship is business or personal. If you are a woman of liability, you’ll lend yourself readily to this form of abuse. A woman who is an asset, however, will always have the resources necessary to stand on her own.
Again, I would never tell you something that I didn’t know for sure. Everything I believe in has come from experience. Financially relying on a man was, at one point, my life plan. I couldn’t see past the immediate gratification of a shopping spree or a night on the town. I must have done this with every man I dated from high school until I was about twenty-five. I know that while a man is taking care of you, it feels as if you’ll be set for life and that nothing can go wrong. But in a world riddled with divorce and single parents, the chances of you and your partner being together the rest of your lives are less than fifty-fifty. Relationships are tough enough without compounding them with liability. You have to be able to bring as much of yourself as possible into your relationship, with the condition that the man you have chosen is worthy of having all of you.
We live in an age of entitlement where many women seem to feel as if men owe us something. Many of us want the world