Tri­cia St John

There’s this song; “It’s so good, lov­ing some­body, when some­body loves you back.”

But what about when the per­son you love does not or can­not open­ly love you back, what’s sup­posed to be your next move? A lot of times we get caught up in things we shouldn’t be a part of, or peo­ple we should walk away from. Sit­u­a­tion-ships that should not even have be­come sit­u­a­tions be­cause we know bet­ter. A sit­u­a­tion-ship is said to be a ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ship that lacks clear de­f­i­n­i­tions or com­mit­ment. It’s char­ac­terised by emo­tion­al in­ti­ma­cy, and spend­ing time to­geth­er, and of­ten in­volves a phys­i­cal and sex­u­al com­po­nent. How­ev­er, part­ners won’t de­fine their re­la­tion­ship, place it in­to a cat­e­go­ry, or set clear bound­aries.

When James and Cassie met, he was and still is liv­ing with his part­ner, whilst al­ready hav­ing an­oth­er re­la­tion­ship on the out­side. Cassie was sin­gle and had been for some time. Af­ter all the in­tro­duc­to­ry talk, flirt­ing, and play­ful ban­ter, Cassie as­sumed that con­sent on her part would equal a ‘one-off’ since James was al­ready in a live-in re­la­tion­ship. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it as it was not some­thing she’d ever done be­fore.

Cassie had al­ways made a point of stay­ing away from men who were al­ready in­volved, yet she found her­self strong­ly at­tract­ed to James. He was soft-spo­ken, in­tel­li­gent, and had a sense of hu­mour. He was hard-work­ing, dressed well, and made her laugh. Their con­ver­sa­tions were al­ways in­ter­est­ing and though she had no way of know­ing, Cassie took it for grant­ed that James was be­ing hon­est in their con­ver­sa­tions, as she saw no rea­son for him to lie since there was no way they were en­ter­ing in­to a nor­mal re­la­tion­ship.

Cassie knew that the sit­u­a­tion was far from ide­al but af­ter a year she had got­ten so ac­cus­tomed to James that she missed him in his ab­sence and wished he had more time for them. She al­so knew that al­though he made every ef­fort to be sup­port­ive, help­ful and present, that was no ex­cuse to hold on to him or com­fort her­self with lies.

Samai and Dean met at their com­pa­ny par­ty. Samai knew he was mar­ried and just had a ba­by, but she pur­sued him still be­cause she was lone­ly and he made him­self avail­able to chat and took her on lunch dates dur­ing work hours. The way she saw it, the onus was on him to re­ject her ad­vances, and since he did not, she con­sid­ered him fair game. The fact that he was mar­ried held no weight and they were soon ro­man­ti­cal­ly in­volved. Samai was amused by the ru­mours that flew around the of­fice, and al­though she ac­knowl­edged to her­self that what she was do­ing was wrong, she was not yet pre­pared to give up the mi­ni shop­ping sprees, their stolen hours at dif­fer­ent high-end ho­tels, and, most im­por­tant­ly, the way he made her feel just by look­ing at her.

Mar­jorie and David lived to­geth­er with their three chil­dren. Mar­jorie was aware that David was in­volved with Mil­li­cent who lived at the end of the street, but she had no idea how to get him to stop. She was ac­cus­tomed to tak­ing care of the home whilst David worked as a teacher and pro­vid­ed for their needs. Mar­jorie had no in­come of her own, and al­though she had fin­ished school, she hadn’t worked since the birth of their first child, who was nine.

Mar­jorie was no longer com­fort­able be­ing in­ti­mate with David, but when she re­fused it caused an ar­gu­ment that es­ca­lat­ed in­to him be­ing loud and us­ing ob­scene lan­guage. This caused her to give in to pro­tect the chil­dren from the stress and un­cer­tain­ty of their fa­ther be­ing an­gry and toss­ing in­sults and swear words around.

End­ing a re­la­tion­ship and let­ting go can be in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult no mat­ter how tox­ic it is. Lov­ing some­one is one of life’s feel-good mo­ments, but it can al­so pro­found­ly af­fect our judge­ment. For this rea­son, it is of­ten dif­fi­cult to kick ro­man­tic at­trac­tion and feel­ings of love when the time comes to let a re­la­tion­ship go. It is ob­vi­ous that it will be painful, even if the re­la­tion­ship is not serv­ing your high­est good. Do not look at the time spent as wast­ed time.

If the de­ci­sion is to leave, try find­ing the les­son. What did you learn? What are you tak­ing away from the re­la­tion­ship? Recog­nise how you have changed as a per­son, and ac­knowl­edge that the next time around there will be things that can be done dif­fer­ent­ly.

Cassie, Samai, and Mar­jorie are all at­tract­ed to men who are not will­ing to com­mit to them alone. Men have var­i­ous rea­sons, ex­cus­es, and ex­pla­na­tions for their ac­tions, but most times it boils down to them just do­ing as they very well please and find­ing some­one to ac­cept their be­hav­iour. A lot of times, men give us on­ly as much as we will­ing­ly ac­cept. In sit­u­a­tions where their live-in sit­u­a­tion is not ide­al, the prob­lem is their will­ing­ness to leave the sit­u­a­tion as is be­cause it al­lows them the ex­cuse to do what­ev­er they want.

Recog­nis­ing that their ac­tions are wrong, even in terms of what Mar­jorie is ac­cept­ing, is the first step to heal­ing and chang­ing sit­u­a­tions and out­comes in each sce­nario.

The start of this new year is a good time to make new de­ci­sions if you are no longer sat­is­fied with the old ones. It’s a good time to let go of the me­men­toes that keep you locked in a time warp. Some­times when we recog­nise we are stuck in a rut, it may be a good time to shift fo­cus off of the re­la­tion­ship and back to our­selves.

Try new things. Put your en­er­gy in­to a hob­by, whether new or ne­glect­ed. Re­mind­ing your­self of why the re­la­tion­ship is un­healthy and fo­cus­ing on what it is you do want from a re­la­tion­ship can be em­pow­er­ing. If try­ing to work on your re­la­tion­ship with your part­ner isn’t yield­ing pos­i­tive re­sults or the re­sults you want, then work on your re­la­tion­ship with your­self. Start re­mind­ing your­self dai­ly that you are wor­thy of love and de­serve a healthy re­la­tion­ship. It is to­tal­ly ac­cept­able to rewrite your sto­ry.

You don’t have to stay in the mo­ment and live up to the la­bels you are giv­en or un­con­scious­ly ac­cept. We tend to be­lieve what we con­tin­u­ous­ly tell our­selves. Feel free to ex­am­ine your sto­ry and rewrite it in a more em­pow­er­ing way to be­gin mak­ing pos­i­tive changes in your life.

It isn’t easy to make changes, even when they are nec­es­sary for growth, peace of mind and hap­pi­ness. We of­ten strug­gle and hold on to re­la­tion­ships that no longer serve us. The goal is to re­frame our sto­ry and con­sid­er the fact that the cur­rent re­la­tion­ship may have just been one step on the jour­ney to­ward an even bet­ter re­la­tion­ship in the fu­ture.

Who is Tri­cia St John?

Tri­cia St John is a moth­er, au­thor, event co­or­di­na­tor, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor. St John lost her left fore­arm and two fin­gers on her right hand to a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence at­tack in 2004. In 2009, St John’s ex-hus­band was found guilty by a nine-mem­ber ju­ry of at­tempt­ing to mur­der her. He was sen­tenced to 25 years and ten strokes.

St John is mak­ing im­pres­sive strides as she moves on with her life. She was recog­nised by the Tra­di­tion­al Afrikan Women’s Or­gan­i­sa­tion with the Har­ri­et Tub­man/Clau­dia Jones Award on March 27, 2021. Here she con­tin­ues her sto­ry of abuse from No­vem­ber 12.