Don’t Waste Your Energy Being Hung Up On Your Trash Ex

One woman’s trash is another woman’s trash—please don’t believe the hype, sis.

There’s this myth that a man can treat you terribly and it’s not because he’s terrible or incapable, but instead it’s because you simply weren’t the one or that’s just how he wanted to treat you, and if he found the right one he would be good to her. That’s only half true. Yes, men have different interest levels in different women. One woman may catch a man at a better time in his life than another caught him or one woman may experience a slightly different version of the man, but generally, a wholeheartedly trash-ass man to you is going to be a wholeheartedly trash-ass man to the next woman. He might package it differently but he’s still sewer juice, trust. When someone is fundamentally fucked up, no matter how they dress it up, their foundation is still fucked up. Don’t allow people to keep making you think that there’s some special woman blend that just magically changes bad men. Bad men are bad men no matter who they’re with.

I think breakups can be difficult for a number of reasons, but an understated issue I think a lot of people have in moving on is just being pissed off about a failed investment. Often we have exes that we know aren’t shit, never been shit, never gonna be shit. We don’t miss them and we don’t want them back, but something about the idea that he’s treating the new girl like a queen and doing the things he wouldn’t or didn’t do for you really gets your blood boiling because you feel slighted. You invested in a man and a relationship and you didn’t reap the benefits.

Listen to me ladies, don’t believe the hype.

I had a boyfriend for years and he was the king of raggedy men everywhere for the entire relationship. During our relationship, he never posted a single photo of us anywhere, but in his next relationship, he posted at least 965 pictures of them all over social media. I was sick about it just on principle. I couldn’t get past the idea that this man that I’d spent years with and had accepted was just a defective product who was simply incapable of being good to anyone, simply couldn’t be good to me, because he was more than capable of claiming this girl and showering her with massive public displays of affection.

The following week I found out he was cheating on his girlfriend with at least three different women and had contracted and spread chlamydia amongst them. Never been shit, still wasn’t shit, never gonna be shit.

What I learned from that is you can’t spend your energy being hung up on spilled milk and failed investments, comparing his next relationship to the one he had with you and wondering whether karma is going to catch up to him or not. Chances are trash will be trash wherever it goes, but it shouldn’t concern you anyway. You have to just accept him for what he was when he was with you and be resolute in understanding that he isn’t for you. Your relationship is best dead. As hard as it can be to let go of things and people we’ve spent a long time investing in, the best advice my daddy ever gave me was, “When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.”