Not Your Doormat

QUESTION: I need help. I love my friend so much. He is a fine brother, tall, dark and handsome with a big smile and this deep sexy voice. He is everything a woman could want. But it is so so so hard for him to love me the way I love him. I know he loves me but with him he hardly says it and he gets mad at me for every little thing. if I forget to call when I get home, or I want to go out too much with my girls, or if I want to spend too much time with my mom, he gets mad. He yells, I yell we fight and then its all good, we're happy for a few days. I know he loves me but he just trips out over trival sh*t. If I get a call on my cell, he has to know who it is. If I talk to someone in the store or in the club, he's got a million questions about them. He says he's like this because women have cheated on him before and he has to know what I'm up to so he can trust me. Why can't things just be chill between us? What can I do to prove I won't cheat on him?

GARLAND: "What can you do to prove you won't cheat on him?" You can start by leaving him.

I read this question about 10 times. I started forming these great flowery answers like:

• "talk to him and remind him that you're not the women in his past..."
• "he's just insecure, help him work through it..."
• "don't argue back with him, just tell him it is what it is..."

But, I couldn't write any of these answers - because I'm not gonna' bullshit you and I'm not gonna' hold your hand and cry like I'm you're girlfriend or Oprah or somebody!

This dude of yours... mister Tall, Dark and Pathetically Insecure - is a trip to the emergency room waiting to happen. The day the guy in the seafood department says, "Hi," to you OR the day a man accidentally hits a 5 on his cellphone instead of an 8 and calls your house by mistake, OR the night you forget to turn your cellphone on while hanging with Brenda and the girls... HE is going to snap and hurt you! And, I promise you - he's going to tell you that he only hit you because he loves you AND you know how he is... This is the mantra of the WIFE BEATER, and this is what he sounds like.

If you doubt me, just check out this website:
http://www.hruth.org/engine/content.do?BT_CODE=RUTH1030

Frankly, it's time to leave homeboy. You can try and convince yourself that he loves you until the cows some home. But he doesn't. He treats you like crap and you hope and pray that your love will get you through. It won't. Far too many people give 'love' a bad name by using it as justification to stay in bad relationships. Love is NOT to be used by you or ANYONE as an excuse to let yourself be treated like shit. Please stop doing it.

Drop this bum. Do it nicely so he won't freak out... tell him it's YOU not him... get rid of him. NOW!!! Go buy that new CD you heard about, pick up a nice bottle of wine, grab a good book and find a shady spot in a nice park and spend the afternoon 'loving' yourself. It sounds to me like you haven't done that in awhile.

CHUCK: I don't necessarily want to say your man is on the verge of becoming physically abusive. That's an easy discussion: The day he puts his hands on you... LEAVE. But he's obviously psychologically abusive, and sometimes that can be just as bad. He's possessive, angry, spiteful, and jealous. Where's the upside in this guy? Oh, wait... He's tall, dark, and handsome, he's got a big smile, a sexy voice. I'm sorry, but given the circumstances you describe, THAT'S NOT ENOUGH. If this guy split the atom, cured AIDS, and invented a car that got 77 miles to a gallon, maybe. But not as it stands now.

He's obviously got some trust issues that need to be resolved. If you can, try to get him to open up about what specifically turned him into the closed-off person he is now. Hopefully, by opening up, you can convince how different that you are from the women who trashed his self-esteem. If you can't get through to him and make him see that he's pushing you away from him, please move on from this man. Life's too short for two people to be miserable.