If he say’s to you “I’ll love you to the moon and back, and back to the moon, and back, but beats you until the moon is Black. Is that love ?

If you tell him that you would rather save your body for marriage, when the topic of conversation changes to sex, but instead of him respecting your wishes he forces you.

Maybe it’s not penetration, but oral isn’t any better. Is that love ?

The answer to both of these questions is simply No.  

That is not Love at all.

These are actions of another guy that has camouflaged himself so well to fit in with “the good guys” that you have fallen for.

You have now become numb to the red flags that your friends pointed out to you in the beginning.

They knew that your heart was unavailable and that he would only feed off your weakness.

In the back of your mind you knew this was true.

You knew this was true because Papa raised a beautiful, strong, Black Queen.

And he would always say “if you are searching for love you should be looking for someone like me.”

You should have been reminiscing more about the way Papa treated you, as a young girl, so that you could always have a fresh and vivid image of how men are supposed to treat you today.

Papa was a good man.

Papa’s relationship with me was not a relationship where he would beat me until I became numb to the truth either.

Papa’s relationship with me was a beautiful healthy one, but now that he is gone I seemed to have lost all contact of what common sense in a relationship looks like.

Here I am 9 years later, today, after papa’s death. Restoring all of the pieces of my pride the young man broke down.

Continuing to look at myself every morning asking:

What is a healthy relationship?

What is Love ?

Looking back I realized that I held the answer to this question in my hands so long ago.

Somehow I let it slip out of my hand without any concern.

Today I define a healthy relationship as Love.

Love doesn’t beat or force you, but instead Love fills your stomach with butterflies.

A healthy relationship is an overwhelming feeling of affection that gives you butterflies.

So when another man comes around saying “I’ll love you to the moon and back, and back to the moon, and back” he better say it because he loves you.