Social media has become our news, our way of gaining information & looking to gain momentum for our brand or getting our career started. As you all may know, a video called “Hurt Bae” has been circulating social media; the video is about an ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend coming together once again where the ex-boyfriend reveals his numerous infedelities. Some people are siding with the girl and some people are siding with the man, but most everyone came to the conclusion that both the man and the woman are at fault. As you watch the video, you notice the woman’s pain and how she’s holding it in. Their dynamic is almost as if many things were left unsaid.
And although we were able to witness this in video, one of the things we have to keep in mind is that there are many couples out there who have similar stories that weren’t broadcasted the way. Kourney Jorge, as everyone calls her “Hurt Bae”, is the woman who confronted her ex, Leonard Long lll, and asked what he had done to be disloyal to her. His response? Everything. We all wondered: why? She’s gorgeous and Leonard himself admitted she was pretty much the perfect package and that there was nothing she could have done to prevent him from cheating on her.
In order to get more opinions about this video, I interviewed my fellow students. “At least he was man enough to tell her, it was wrong and messed up,” Anthony, Junior, told me. “There will always be someone better who comes along.” Long did confess his disloyalty to Jorge, there was no emotion, no remorse, and no guilt behind his actions. However, him telling the truth so publicly is something we should learn to appreciate. Many others would lie or ignore the questions altogether.
“I think she let that happen. He’s an a**hole. You allow what you allow, but both are to blame,” Andrew, a senior, said. There is only so much a person can take. If anyone disrespects you, it is your job to bring that disrespect to the person’s attention and teach him or her how to respect you. Now a days, respect isn’t something to be earned. Sometimes, you need to demand respect or else people will think it’s okay to disrespect you. In Jorge’s case, she tolerated what came her way out of love. But love isn’t a compromise, it’s a companionship.
“I felt like he was wrong, he did her wrong, but it cancels out because she ended up forgiving his actions. She basically said it was okay for him to do that. She shouldn’t have gone through his phone,” Dre, a junior, said. With love and relationships, comes trust. Without trust, the foundation of any relationship is broken before it can be built. Jorge felt the need to look through Long’s phone because she didn’t trust him. In response to that, people on social media said she should have left if she felt the need to check his phone. What if she didn’t know she was in a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship? She was young. She didn’t know what she wanted and needed from a man.
A big lesson I took from this video is that you must know your self worth enough to walk away from toxic relationships. Love goes both ways, but that doesn’t give anyone a reason to stay if they are being mistreated. But sometimes, it takes more than seeing the person you’re with being disloyal for you to walk away. It takes self love, self worth, and knowing what you want and what you deserve.
Many times when women are in abusive relationships, they tend to block it out mentally. We don’t want to look back at the time we walked in on our partner with another person and how we were humiliated. We don’t want to look through our partner’s phone and find out that he/she was talking to someone else or engaging in disloyal activities. We don’t want to look back at the time we caught our partner cheating and the fight we had that almost ended our relationship. We look at the makeups after the breakups, and we tell ourselves that our partner will change when in reality they don’t love us. We are in love with the idea of a person rather than the person themself. We fall for potential and stay because we know who our partner could be. But at the end of it all, it’s much better to just walk away rather than waste your time, energy, and love on someone who didn’t deserve an ounce of you. You keep giving and receive nothing in return. You’re left with hurt, confusion, anger, baggage and fear of another person hurting you again.
That’s one of the many lessons Jorge took from her relationship with Long. She learned her self worth as a woman, as a woman who deserves love, a woman who deserves a man, and a woman who knows what she wants and needs from her partner.
Build yourself and grow. As hard as it is, learn to love yourself and become comfortable with your singleness and the right person will come along. Work on your relationship with yourself. It’s okay to cry, it’s okay to vent, it’s okay to reflect on the past. But don’t dwell into the “whys” and “what ifs.” Take the lessons from your broken relationship and build yourself. Find an outlet and build your craft through that. It could be through religion, an extra curricular activity, or even talking to someone about what you’re going through. Be selfish. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t achieve anything in life. Let that fire ignite through your soul to push you to be the person you were meant to be. Yes, at times you’ll fall, you’ll wonder why this person hurt you, but as you look back and see the person you were versus who you are now, you’ll appreciate your strength for walking away even though if it was something you didn’t want to do at that moment. Take care of yourself, love yourself and don’t go looking for the right person to come along. Whatever is meant for you will only be for you.
Until then, do you and shine through the good and bad.