Beautiful Liar, Beautiful Lies
We women be lying about our relationships all the time. Well I won’t speak for y’all. I’ll just speak for myself.
I’m a liar.
Take a look at an actual conversation I had with my sister about a guy I had been dating for five months in my mid-twenties.
“He’s so great. He just picked up some Chinese food on the way home just for me.”
Did you spot the lie? My sister certainly did.
“Are you sure you like him? The entire time you all have been dating, this is the first time I heard you talk about him.”
Well she was right. I didn’t. I didn’t like my own boyfriend. Then why was I with him? Oh I don’t know. He was...handsome, and...nice, took me out to dinner frequently, called me consistently and told me I was beautiful every day. I craved to hear that. He checked off the boxes, performed textbook boyfriend behavior. He came to the door and picked me up, grabbed my waist and hand in public, went to church when I asked him, and was genuinely excited when I told him my dreams.
But no, I didn’t love him. We had little in common. He didn't even read. Like, he didn’t like books but dutifully read tepid articles from Facebook. He hadn’t even read Harry Potter. The international children’s book sensation that I was and continue to be obsessed with, and he just had....no idea. (I know I’m being difficult here. I just need to emphasize how we didn’t mesh.)
The only thing we had in common was our love of all Black music genres. He put me onto MF Doom and Herbie Hancock and Georgia Ann Muldrow. Our car rides were always, “have you heard of this one?” and melt my ears with a breath of soul and funk that even us self-professed “underground music only” lovers wouldn’t know.
I told everybody that I loved him. I loved the way he woke up and rushed to get to work to appear responsible, because we all want someone who is responsible right? I loved the way he talked about funk music samples and old jazz records and horn players from the 70s. I loved listening to him say “can I play something for you?”
I loved it when he cooked, or when he offered to wash my car, or just hanging out watching Netflix. I loved the company. I told him I loved him. I just didn’t love him.
I lied. It showed. My own sister called me out.
“Why are you still dating him? I don’t think you really like him like that. “
No! I love him! He! Is! Everything! Lie.
Truth is, I liked quiet in the morning and the first thing he did was turn on ESPN at 7 am and the noise disturbed my peace. If we went out, it was something he, and only he was interested in. No Beyonce concerts. (In fact, he dragged me to a symposium which, by the way, was cool but I wouldn’t have chosen it. Instead of asking me what I liked about the show, he decided to antagonize me. He had the actual gall to berate me because I wasn’t overly enthused. “I bet if it was Beyonce you would be hype”. Well yes! It’s BEYONCE. Men are so unimaginative.)
He would call me after work and ask if I wanted to “ride out”. I loved road trips. They just ended up at a 40 year old rapper’s concert, where I had to stay up until 3 in the morning until these men were done chopping it up and reminiscing about high school days, and I just wanted to go to bed.
One time I asked for flowers. “Where are the flowers?” as I sunk into the couch. He rolled his eyes. “What do you need flowers for?” Walking away, he returned with something small and paper slipped between his fingertips.
“I spent $200 on these tickets to Wicked. And you want flowers.”
I shut my mouth. My eyes begged forgiveness. My hug reached for gratefulness. And I still wanted the flowers.
I’ve sat through countless Sunday football marathon sessions, old ass comedian’s sets with outdated, sexist perfomances that relied on one very masculine narrative (women love shopping and we don’t put out enough, you know the story), and the YouTube hotep commentators talking about what Black women “need to be doing.”
I was a mere accessory. He wanted me there as proof that I existed, so he could talk loudly around me and about me, knowing I wouldn’t protest, knowing that he can grab my hand or kiss my cheek as a testament to his ownership. I was a hostage in his life. Not once did he ask me what I liked, what I was interested in, what I wanted to say.
It was hard to love that.
We broke up eventually of course, but I didn’t stop lying about the men in my life.
The next man I loved. Like actually loved. Like actual butterflies. Like I would laugh just hearing his voice. I called him as soon as I woke up while walking to my car to drive to him. I played hooky way too many times from work so we can sit around and play video games all day. Like an obsession. He was an obsession, an addiction. He once told me I was the funniest person he knew, and we would make up entire narratives about passersby and laugh all day. If we were bored at 10 pm we’d go to Whole Foods just to walk around and talk about the stars. I just loved connecting with him. And I can’t put it in words like the previous relationship above. There wasn’t a thing, there wasn’t a hook, it was just him. Just him.
The love made me overlook his quick anger. I witnessed him yelling at a group of adults in a group project because they were taking too long. That was the first weekend we met. I mean, they were doing the most. but I wouldn’t have went off.
The anger, I told him once, was, interesting. “You’re hot headed,” I observed early in our relationship. He asked if that was going to be a problem.
“No. It’s just a part of your personality.”
I am not sure how I thought that temper was just for other, annoying adults that made him angry, not for me. But sure enough, his temper quickly turned on me. Unexpected things made him angry. I would often ask him to meet me somewhere after work, and he would come, but have an attitude if he didn’t like the activity. He would leave early, and I would have to brace myself for the argument or the iciness to follow. He snapped when he felt like I wasn’t “helping” him, for example, if I didn’t explain instructions clearly enough. Or if he was recounting a conflict he had with someone at work, sometimes I would try to get him to see if from their point of view.
“I need you to support me!”
Nothing was ever his fault.
“Have you noticed that every time he yells at you, you always go back to apologize?” My best friend pointed out to me at brunch one Saturday. I had just left him for the night and just made the decision that I would return after breakfast and I would apologize for making him angry.
“But, I was in the wrong, wasn’t I?” There was always a reason for him to be angry. In order to seem fair, I would highlight the things I did to make him angry. “I didn’t let him know how many people were going to be at that event”, or “I absolutely could have been more supportive.” I told her. I repeatedly pointed out something that I did.
My friends, I know, talked about this relationship behind my back. He deflected blame for his conflicts on everyone else, but himself. I knew it too. I had the same internal argument with myself.
My lying wasn’t a secret. As much as I wanted it to be.
When I moved to DC for a new job, I asked him to move with me. Because I loved him. Because we couldn’t be apart. I asked him to come when I knew it was after campaign season, when I knew he was having a hard time finding a job, when I knew costs were going to be high, and it would be stressful for the both of us.
(See? I’m even apologizing to you in this essay.)
We were never clear enough on how expenses were going to be split in a shared apartment in DC.
“Hey, can we talk about you paying half the rent?” That’s how I started the conversation, out of the blue, it seemed, for him, but I had been having internal arguments, conversations, calculations for weeks.
“HALF! How do you expect me to pay half? I thought moving here was supporting you in your new job!”
He screamed and slammed his fists on the red couch. I got jumpy and began apologizing.
“I am sorry, I know, but I can’t do this by myself. Have you tried looking for a job?”
Whenever I stood up for myself with him like this, I was met with anger. Screams, and hitting objects. In one conflict, I must have said the wrong thing, again, because he actually stepped to me as if he were going to hit me. I stepped back, anticipating the slap, the shake, that would surely come. Instead, he recoiled. “I can’t believe you’re afraid of me.” He refused to speak to me for three days. Until I apologized, for being afraid.
Are you still wondering why I kept my goddamned mouth shut? Really?
I kept lying to myself. I repeated that story I had from our butterfly inducing, can’t-keep-the-phone-out-of-my-hand beginning days to myself, constantly. He makes me laugh. He makes sure dinner is hot when I come home. He sends me cute texts throughout the day. I repeated it to myself over and over like the Beyonce songs from her debut solo album I’ve been singing for 20 years. “I’m in Love With You!” “I Rather Be With YOU!”, because I had been waiting for my day to sing them with enthusiasm and it be true. It was true. Aloud, it sounded rehearsed. Those old Beyonce lyrics helped me overlook what was actually happening so I can keep the peace.
“I just wanted to tell you, I never liked him. He seemed, angry.”
“He was insecure. And he took it out on you.”
At the conclusion of our relationship, these were the conversations I had with my friends, friends I had never disclosed the above like I’m doing for you right now. You see how they knew anyway? The lies I told myself, I left out for others, were never secret.
It may be obvious to you why I attempted to keep this secret. Did I need to feel loved? Did I need validation of a man, this one or any one? The truth pried through the door of my life and I pushed back, holding it in like an overflowing closet. But everyone saw me force it closed, hiding the messiness so I could stay and maintain the facade.
Now you may be asking, why did you stay? If you knew you were lying about it to yourself? That’s a great question! Don’t act like you haven’t been in a similar situation. Noticing little things, and making smaller and smaller excuses until they add up to excuses that are large. No? Never done it before? Either you haven’t lived long enough, you are extremely lucky, or you might be the lying ass bitch I’m writing about.