Remember the first time you really liked someone who was completely wrong for you? The guy who you would cry to your friends about every time he wronged you…just for you to be right back in his arms a day later? The guy who your parents absolutely despised but nothing they could say would ever cause you to stray from him. While you’re head over heels with your bad boy, you’re likely blinded by love. Either that, or some really bomb dick. Nevertheless, the blinders are up until he breaks your heart for the final time, to the point of no return. Now you’re left to face all of the “I told you so’s”. It’ll hurt like hell at first. You’ll feel humiliated. You’ll feel lost without the person. You’ll feel like you’ll never find someone to love you again. Just about every woman has been there. Luckily for most women, they’ve experienced this in their late teens, early twenties and by their mid to late twenties, they have completely rid themselves of the scumbag and discovered self worth. If I could talk to my younger self, I would scream at her to run far away from men with no vehicles, multiple baby mama’s, and no real income stream. Sadly enough, we cannot change the course of history. What we can do is allow these experiences to transform us from girls to women.

As we are all aware of by now, social media has created a space where everyone is allowed to create whatever reality they want for themselves. Everyone seems to be a love expert. No one is willing to admit their relationship fuck up’s. Instead, everyone wants to point to finger and appear so much more well-versed on the topic of love than others. This is sadly noticeable with women on the internet. One example could be seen with the constant criticism of Reginae Carter (the daughter of legendary rapper Lil Wayne for those of you that live under a rock). The twenty year old reality star and social media influencer had been involved in a very public relationship with twenty eight year old Atlanta rapper, YFN Lucci, whose instances of cheating and wild partying have run amuck on the internet. Their relationship had been the subject of constant dragging online, one example being after the infamous “cucumber” themed pool party hosted by Atlanta rapper, Trouble and his girlfriend Alexis Sky. During the wild and raunchy party, YFN Lucci joined in on some of the festivities. Reginae later took to Twitter to explain that she was only at the party to spy on Lucci, which resulted in an all too familiar brutal social media scolding. Women everywhere were tweeting about how “it couldn’t be me” or what they would do in her situation, calling her stupid, dumb, the works.  Let’s be honest, social media is a place where you can get your jokes off and take a few digs at the misfortune of celebrities, with Reginae always being an easy target, as she makes quite a bit of her life public. However, a twenty year old should be afforded a few mistakes, right?

Shitty relationships, partying and poor decisions are all growing pains of the early twenties. Let the girl live! Sure going to a party to spy on your boyfriend may be a bit on the crazy girlfriend side, but every woman has done her share of detective work to ensure that her man was on his best behavior. The only difference is there were no cameras rolling and don’t even get me started on the countless women who take their men back time and time again following a variety of disrespectful antics. Not to mention those who bare children from their trifling men knowing the history. The moral of the story is, those living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Every woman will have her share of trifling men. The objective is to learn from it. Besides, what ever happened to uplifting our fellow women, particularly the younger ones. Reginae is young, beautiful, rich and learning to navigate through a relationship, as we have all had to do. The only difference is, the majority of us had the luxury of going through it without the world’s eyes being glued to us.

Bad relationships are inevitable. The sad truth is that some men are just dogs. They aren’t fully ready to commit so unfortunately, women will get caught in the crossfire of that. And yes, many women will go back time and time again. However, what we have to do is stop tearing our young women down when they are in those situations. Begin with uplifting them before shunning them. Let them know how valuable they are, how beautiful they are. We all have a girlfriend or two who are so head over heels that they cannot see how neglected they are. While this can be extremely frustrating as a friend, the truth is, you cannot reason with a woman in love, especially if it happens to be her first love. She will only leave when she is fed up and ready to begin loving herself more than that man.  However, instead of lashing out, simply be quiet. Don’t worry yourself with her decisions. Be a shoulder to cry on and a listening ear. Do anything besides tear her down because we have all been there before.