Disclaimer: While this blog makes it seem like women are the beauty and men are the Beast here, the roles could very well be reversed. While the majority of incidents are such, the author still understands that the roles are at times reversed too, and sympathizes with both genders.
The movies and series that have been fed to us since childhood by our Indian society, right from the childhood story of Beauty and the Beast, talk about how a good girl can make a bad guy fall in love with her and transform him.
I think somewhere subconsciously along the lines, girls stopped looking for good guys, but for bad guys to transform, because they had been fed the myth that he would change for her, be different for her, and become good for her.
Girls in relationships and women in marriages stay, giving numerous, countless chances to their partner to reform, not realizing how they are breaking themselves by doing so. By not sharing what they are enduring, by lying because they think they are protecting their guy, they are destroying their own soul. They don’t realize that what they are supposed to do is protect their own self, not him.
It doesn’t have to be physical abuse, could be mental, could be neither and merely some toxic traits, some demeaning comments, disrespectful behavior, could be anything, something as simple as lack of respect. He could simply be making you feel uncomfortable, or gaslighting you into believing things, making you lose confidence in yourself, manipulating you in different ways, it could be anything.
While your gut might tell you, you are not wrong, you still won’t share it with anyone because you don’t want to project him in bad light, and by the end of it, he will convince you the fault was yours, that something you said or did was wrong, that it’s about your lack of knowledge, lack of understanding or something. The same dresses he found hot earlier, are now not appropriate, he will comment on you for intentionally trying to wear short clothes, for having so much male attention and what not. He will make you believe you are wrong, and you, my girl, will believe him.
You will believe him not only because you love him and blindly trust him but because of how you have been brought up, what the society has taught you, the patriarchy you have lived in. You will believe you are wrong, your confidence will wither, your soul will break, your pain will enhance. While pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, my friend, don’t choose to suffer at the hands of those who don’t even deserve you.
And this stays, for days, for weeks, for months, and sometimes for years. And when you finally come out, you are so broken, that it’s hard to trust another again.
I wish that the moment it happens the first time, we would take our broken wings and fly. I wish despite everything, despite the scars on the body and the wounds on the soul, we reform, not to meet another guy, however good but for ourselves and for other girls, who can look upto us and gain the courage to break out themselves.
And those countless who don’t leave only, I wish they leave some day and take their broken wings to fly again.
Because this is reality, here beauty can’t transform the beast, she can just soak his darkness to dim her own light and shatter her soul from the broken pieces of the glass that he throws on her.
Girls, stop looking for a guy to transform. You have not grown up to be this beautiful woman just to meet a guy who breaks you apart and then the journey is about fixing your broken soul. No, your life is not supposed to be about that. You are supposed to grow, evolve, change things, push the human race forward, fulfill your dreams, and along the lines you will find such a guy who will be good to you from the start, who will appreciate, value and respect you for who you are, please don’t friendzone him now just because he doesn’t have bad traits so what will you reform now. You need that warmth, comfort only in your life. Just because you can endure the pain, it doesn’t mean you have to.
Boys, if you are waiting for some girl to come and reform you, please look again, deeper this time. You are responsible for your own actions, growth and thinking. It is not our job to teach you things. You deserve us only when you stop apologizing and start being accountable for your actions. Reform yourself, learn to be better and then come into our lives, otherwise stay single. No one gave you the right to ruin someone else’s confidence or life. I understand that you have been brought up in the same patriarchal society, you have been taught to be a certain way since childhood and have been friends with other men who revel in their chauvinism. But be better, for yourself and for the women in your lives. Unlearn what you have been taught to become a better version of yourself.
