Listen for the Lie

by Amy Tintera

Let this be a lesson to all the men out there who can’t handle conflict—man up and dump your girlfriend, or you might end up living with a suspected murderer indefinitely.

Men are such babies. They’re too scared to actually break up with you, so they just get mean or fade away until you get mad and dump them.

They’re usually some version of “How do you live with yourself, you heartless bitch?” or “You’re going to hell,” except almost always with the wrong your, which is extremely distracting. An insult doesn’t have the intended impact when spelled incorrectly.

Dad’s so good at that Texas thing where you act polite to people’s face and then talk shit behind their back.

I guess it’s mostly women who do it. But sometimes you meet a girl who is just, like, your soulmate. Not in a romantic way, but in a friend way. Which can almost be more intense. You could tell that Savvy and Lucy were in one of those intense friend-soulmate relationships.

“I should have controlled my temper,” I said softly. I should have just cried. Taken the hits and crawled away to show my scars. I should have been a better victim. The truth doesn’t matter if you fight back.

Men don’t protect us, not really. They only protect themselves, or each other. The only thing men ever protected me from was happiness.”

And people hate that quality in a young woman, don’t they? They don’t know what to do with a girl who isn’t looking for their approval. They feel like they have to bring her down a peg.

In the end, life is just sweatpants and children who resent you and all your choices. But no one wants to hear that.

People don’t believe women who fight back. When a man lashes out, people say he’s lost control of his temper or made a terrible mistake. When a woman does it, she’s a psychopath.