Emotionally Abusive Boyfriend Crushing Her Self Confidence

Dear Ms. HeartBeat:
May I ask you a question?

If a woman wears makeup (subtle) makeup. However the man she is seeing doesn’t like it, and even makes comments about it should she no longer wear makeup when around him?

Also if he makes comments or suggestions about her clothing like “Your doing too much” or you are “over dressed” does that mean she should tone it down? Even when other people tell her she looks pretty?

The reason I ask is I met this guy offline. He lived in a small Missouri town, and I am from San Fransisco. When I went to go meet him the fashion there was WAY different from here in Cali. He was black but lived in an all white farmland community.

Anyways it just made me insecure some of the things he said.

He and I are no longer talking, however some of the things he said about me I can’t seem to get over.

When he and I were in public together he would sometimes look at other women and that would make me feel even worse.

He also made comments about my skin tone (he said my pictures looked lighter online when really it was just the lighting).

He has said I looked thinner online also.

I am so confused because ALL my friends say I look just like my pictures he is the only person that said I looked nothing like them. He and I slept together (I know bad move, and I regret it).  I just don’t get it.  What was so wrong with me?

Signed,
Questioning Myself

Dear Questioning:
The guy you met is the type of guy that wants control of a woman’s mind, heart, body and self esteem. What you met was an emotional abuser.  The goal of men of his ilk is to do and say whatever they can to inspire a woman to question and doubt herself.

By making little sniping, negative comments their goal is to make a woman feel bad about her figure or other physical characteristics, her attire, her bodily scents, her choices in hobbies and interests, her skills and even her friends.  The behavior you described is the typical behavior of insecure little punks that need to bring women down. He cannot feel large and powerful because he knows he is nothing. The only way he can feel “like a man” is to bring you down. Once he believes he has made you feel worst about yourself than he does about himself, he has achieved his goal of positioning the relationship so that he feels superior to you.

But such tactics only work on women that need external validation, such as yourself. There is no logical reason in this world you should be doubting yourself and asking “what is wrong with me?” based on the statements of a cretin from the country! It saddens me that your letter is riddled with comments about what OTHER people think, what OTHER people say, and what OTHER people believe about you. There was nothing in this letter that directly related to the positive things you think of or believe about yourself.

Your sense of who you are is apparently defined by others opinion about you, which means that you have very little to no SELF esteem. If you had high regard for yourself, the words of an idiot would roll off you like water on a duck’s back.  The words of others, whether praise or condemnation, should never change or impact what you feel about yourself.  When a woman has high self esteem, she does not question herself relative to what said idiots say! Instead, she immediately banishes from her world any males that seek to destroy her.

Too bad you didn’t write me when you were out there so I could have provided you with a few things to say back to his country bumpkin ass, and helped you avoid getting involved in a dead-end relationship.

Here are a few examples:

When he said you were doing too much with your attire, you could have said “I understand you live in the backwoods of nowhere, so you are used to seeing women in croaker sacks or fine polyester fashions from WalMart. But I’m a sophisticated beautiful Black woman from the West Coast, Lil Abner. And this is how we dress in the big city!”

When he said that your complexion seemed lighter in your pictures, you could have said back to him “and you seemed more intelligent in yours.”

Or, when he said that your complexion seemed lighter in your pictures, you could have said back to him “the good thing is no matter what skin tone I am, I will always be lighter than you!”

When he said you seemed thinner in your pictures, you could have said “I was going to say the same thing about you. I was thinking about how you are looking Poohish about the midsection!”

When he was intentionally disrespecting you by staring at other women, you could have found an attractive YOUNG man then elbowed him in the ribs and said “Wow, look at his muscles and chest and legs. You need to hit the gym and do some squats so you can get a butt like that. Yours is a kinda flat.”

You must also never let a man get the last word. LOL! When they say stupid stuff, you take it one notch up and hurt their feelings right back. Most women are too afraid to do that though, because most females focus on keeping the relationship instead of focusing on what kind of man they are dealing with.

When you are dealing with an asshat like him, take the kid gloves should come off and morph into an MMA fighter! Use everything you’ve got in you to bring him down.

Finally, this guy should most certainly never have been “rewarded” with access to your body. The only men that should have the privilege of making love to you should be men that have demonstrated that they have your best interest and well-being at heart.

No woman should ever feels that she owes a man anything because he takes you out, because he wants sex, because he bought you romantic gifts, nor even because you are his girlfriend or wife. Only men that consistently demonstrate that they respect and value you in every way should ever have the privilege of sharing intimate moments with you.