Confessions of an Ex-F*ckboy
If you want to do better, you have to put in the work to unlearn. Here’s why you should.
“Time to heal our women, be real to our women / And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies / That will hate the ladies that make the babies.” There might not be a more famous line from Tupac’s entire catalog — yet it took me 20 years to fully understand it.
Depending on who you ask, you might hear that I’m a womanizer who manipulates women, or a gentleman who respects women as equals. Both are true. But those truths represent very different points in my life. I love women, but it would be a lie to claim that I’ve always treated them well, whether mentally, sexually, or emotionally.
I didn’t notice my problematic behavior until my early twenties, and even then, I didn’t acknowledge it; I just accepted it and kept doing my thing. When I reached 25, though, I started to connect the dots, and realized my relationships with women weren’t the best, in part because I’d mimicked the actions of the men around me for years.
I apologize to the women of my past; it was never their job to teach me how to treat them. Their lessons did not fall on closed ears.
