(Truly) Faithful to a Fault: How Extreme Loyalty Keeps Women Bound

Him: “…You have no loyalty”.

seeing red as I read that

Nothing else he said caused a reaction. I was as calm as a sleeping bear during winter while reading his words telling me off about what I’ve shared on our marriage. But when I read those words about having no loyalty…I became as angry and defensive as that same calm bear who was sleeping in winter but has now been awoken suddenly out of hibernation in winter. No Loyalty? Who? Me?? It took almost all I had not to unleash everything I really wanted to say. Of course I ended up doing what I’ve always done when responding back to what I deem as a disturbing text, email or post. I write out exactly what I want to say and exactly how I feel…I just don’t push send. Then after I wrote it all out, I just sat there and breathed. And once I returned to that “bear hibernating calm”, I hit that backspace and delete several times until my response was edited enough to being acceptable to finally send because Lord knows that initial response could cause wars and not rumors of them. Learning how to breathe has been instrumental in getting over the panic attacks I started having in 2021 as well as the disruptive emotions I’ve come to have during this time of separation after 20 years of marriage. But let me make this clear;

No one is worthy of your loyalty unless/until you deem them to be so. You are not obligated to be loyal to anyone just for the sake of being loyal. Women have been conditioned since the beginning of time to be loyal even to a fault. We’re not always inherently told to do this but we are shown to do this right out the gate. 

Loyalty: a strong feeling of support or allegiance

support: bear all or part of the weight; to hold up

allegiance: devotion or loyalty to an individual, group or cause

devotion: loyalty and love or care for someone or something

I wrote all that out about loyalty so you can clearly see what loyalty is. Many times when I’m teaching or sharing, I love breaking things down so those I’m talking to can get a clear understanding of what I’m saying, so that afterwards, they can easily decide what part of what I shared is specifically for them and what’s not. So then they can apply what’s necessary to apply in their relationships in order to do what’s best for them. That’s what I do when I write you these LOEV Letters; I share in detail and break things down so you get it as easily as possible.

Anyway, we as women need to understand just what we’re getting into when we’re loyal and loyal to a fault which is another way of saying extreme loyalty. Loyalty is one thing, but extreme loyalty is a whole other beast altogether. And that’s what today’s letter is about; extreme loyalty.

Extreme Loyalty is defined as remaining blindly loyal to an individual or entity; staying in relationships, families and/or organizations when our nervous system is screaming for us to leave. Excessive devotion.

Please understand that extreme loyalty is actually a trauma response. We as women have been sold that loyalty is a good and positive thing and we bought into that. When it’s seen that we will stay no matter what, in the “right hands” they will take you up on that offer because they, just like you, are human and desire the benefits of one never leaving them no matter what it is they do unbecoming. When a man knows you ain’t going nowhere, he is free to do whatever his heart desires. My estranged husband never desired to physically hurt me or run tha streets. He did desire to risk it all when it came to income, employment and providing. Why? Because yes he had dreams and goals he wanted to accomplish like anyone else but he also had a woman who knew how to put out whatever fire his decisions in this area caused. He subconsciously knew he had someone who would hold him down no matter what. Don’t believe me? Go back and read any struggle post I wrote on him about not being unemployed/losing a job. Did he not come out as the hero even tho secretly he was the villain in those situations he caused? One thing about me, I was gon’ write him up publicly. It encouraged him. Made him feel good about himself. Empowered him to do better knowing he had a wife who had his back waaay back. But look what it also did; showed I would always be there no matter what. I remember a post he wrote about how I was there for him when he had nothing and all I had put up with from him. While I remember smiling about the post, I almost remembered I hated those kinds of post from men. Why? Because behind every single post/story I’ve read like that, was a story of extreme loyalty from the woman mixed with extreme hardship she had to chose to endure while staying with the man and making it work.

And this doesn’t mean he never had to endure or put up with anything on my end. He did as I often credited him with putting up with things of me I didn’t believe many men would. But that’s also apart of the extreme loyalty I had. We tend to think if a man does something different for us than what we believe most men would, we feel obligated like we owe them not only our loyalty, but the extremities of it as well. Even tho I had plenty of men to choose from to marry, he stood out in dealing with my brokenness that I believed most men would not stick around for, even tho most women have been known to do so with broken men. So when a man stands out to you from what you’re used to, we as women have a tendency to give more than what we should or even that we have in order to show gratitude for him to compensate him for staying with us. We are so appreciative that we will hold them down no matter what. Take the physically abusive man…we too often tolerate his abuse because something about him stands out about him from all the other men before him. It could be his intelligence that is just so different than what you’re used to. It’s so attractive we will overlook the abuse just to keep that. It could be his money. All the other men were broke, but at least he can pay for anything I want. His spiritual knowledge. This man knows the word like no other. And don’t let him get in public. He can sway the most cold hearted people in coming to church or being involved spiritually and you love that as a covering as you’ve always been the one to carry your relationships spiritually and now you finally got a man who can carry you spiritually instead. Or so we think, right? We as professional and high achieving women of faith with our college degrees, good jobs and prestige don’t just accept any kind of man, right? These men have something that stands out from the rest that we prayed specifically for in a man. Which is why when we get it, we don’t want to lose it. Look how we praise these men in those areas. “No man has ever treated me like him”. “No man is as smart and intelligent as him”. “No man has ever broke the word down like him”. “No man has ever sexed me like him”. “No man has ever spent money on me like him”. So we justify staying in what we don’t want to lose instead of looking at what we have to gain if we do leave. So…we stay at all costs because in all honesty, somewhere along the lines, no matter how confident we are about ourselves and our accomplishments, we subconsciously believe there’s no other man who will accept us fully for who we are and/or do those particular things for us too. And that’s where the extreme loyalty (from the conditioning we’re taught) comes into play. (Stick a📍 here for deeper context next time).

OK let me share another way.

One of the movies I loved so much when I was coming into adulthood was called Soul Food. The theme of the movie was said to be preserving culture through cuisine. In other words, there was a historical and culture importance of bringing (and keeping) families together through food, especially using what we call Soul Food. In the movie, one of the children is actually narrating and sharing the history on the traditions of Soul Food and the Sunday Dinners of their family traditions. This was something me and so many others in the Black American culture (especially us from the South ((Louisiana baby) could relate to. I remember the soul food, those southern dishes and them Sunday dinners my Grandmother would make. And don’t get me started on cooking for the holidays where it was like a cook off amongst Grandmothers on both sides of my family and the Aunties. Who make the best potato salad, mac n cheese or dressing? And please don’t try to enter into no competition on the peach cobbler. Nobody on the planet could touch my Mom’s peach cobbler and everyone in the family knew it. Which is why no one else really made it for those dinners and family events. smiling as I write this part 😊 

But the point is that good (soul) food brought and kept families together no matter what. And that ‘no matter what’ may actually be the problem in helping to create extreme loyalty in so many of us women.

Ok so if you’ve seen the movie Soul Food (***spoiler alert if you haven’t***), I’m sure you remember the infamous scene of Terri (the oldest of the trio of sisters) trying to stab her husband Miles, who she had caught having sex with her cousin at their home after coming home on a day out with her nephew Ahmad, the narrator in the movie. While she didn’t say anything the day she saw them, she let it out at the middle sister Maxine’s wedding anniversary they were all attending. Talk about intense hunty. I remember being in the theaters with my young friends having a fit during this scene. We were screaming for blood as we wanted Miles to not only be stabbed but the family traitor as well. If you’ve never been to a packed theater with inheritors of Soul Food and Southern traditions, baby you don’t know what you missing. We gon’ talk all up and thru that movie and it’s gon be giving emotional all day. And please don’t let it be a ’man cheating or beating on a woman’ scene on the screen…we gon almost rush the screen to cuss every character out that hurt our beloved protagonists. We do not play. 😆 

But the point in sharing about this movie is the extreme loyalty that was often shown and required of the eldest sister Terri all in the name of helping and keeping the family together. The way I see it, Terri was the epitome of extreme loyalty. She carried the family financially because she made the most money, took in relatives who needed a place to stay (even when she didn’t want to) because she had no kids and the biggest home, and, on top of that, provided free legal services to the family as a successful attorney. Yes, Terri could have set better boundaries with her family, but how could she when she was raised to believe that loyalty, especially to family, was everything especially when you have the means to help? So when you’ve been taught to be this loyal, it can be extremely difficult to shake. Especially when it’s your own Mother who’s taught and shown you this. (Stick a 📍 here).

While I can break down all the issues on loyalty from this movie alone, the most important thing is to share on how many of us women, myself included, have been and still are extremely loyal to the people in our lives especially the men.

If you talk to many women—whether married, divorced, separated, or single with a series of failed relationships—one common thread you’ll find is extreme loyalty. As I shared earlier, loyalty is one thing but extreme loyalty is a whole other thing that often deteriorates your mental health. While Soul Food is “just a movie”, let’s not forget why so many people can relate to the movie in the first place. Many women watchers of this movie have identified themselves with each of the sisters but more so Terri than anyone else. Why? We’re extremely loyal. Why? Because many of the women who raised and taught us lived the same way, and just as extreme loyalty showed up in their relationships, it’s now showing up in ours—often to our own detriment just as it was to them.

While I’m not married to a “beat and cheat” kinda man, I am married to one who can fall into that category of “Can’t Keep a Job” or stay employed etc, which can and has caused a roller coaster of a financial ride every woman hates but many cover for as I did.

In fact, to further prove the point I’m building my case on in this letter, every man in the outer circle of my support system, save for one, has said in so many words, “Since you’ve been covering for him in this for 20 years and you know what to do, why not work this out? At least for the sake of the children in keeping the father in the home? Because it’s not like he’s abusing you or the children from what you’ve shared“. I actually find this comical for even the most amazing men you know will still take up for a man before calling him out. 😆 I get it tho. This is decades upon decades and centuries upon centuries of this going on in patriarchy so it will be a challenge to break collectively anytime soon. Course I truly believe that it has to start with you and me.

Because I watched my Mom teach me how to be extremely loyal for almost 23 years with a man who “beat and cheat” on her. So I figured “I’d never have a marriage like that, if I simply “choose better”. After doing this, I just knew I’d be in the clear in this department. Therefore, after so many years in my marriage of what seemed to be peaceful overall because of how well I was treated (albeit overlooking the financial mistreatment), I really believed I had found the solution to avoiding the ‘cheaters and beaters’…choose a mate wisely and build a nation. And that’s what I did…or so I thought. But my extreme loyalty would come into play. My loyalty had pretty much always been on point…but unfortunately so had my extreme loyalty. Let’s go back.

I’ve share my “me too” stories of the past, especially of the brutal rape I endured in high school. And maybe I’ll reshare on that one day but what you may not know is while a freshman in college, anytime I would visit home, I kept talking to my rapist and would still go out with him. I didn’t understand this as even during that time, I would go into deep trances wondering why I would still see him after all he did. (It wasn’t only rape…there was sexual assault amongst other things as well, but that’s another story for another day). So once I snapped out of those trances, I would go back to college and do almost anything to get over the destitute feeling I had when it came to him. In my mind, I loved him, he was my first and I’ll never let him go as he was abused in his home too like I had been so, I had to be there for him like I thought he had been there for me. Because some of the beatings he got at home was because of me (my thinking at the time) in that he would get me things I needed by selling drugs. So the trauma bonding (extreme loyalty) kept me bound to him and I didn’t understand why (stick a 📍 here).

I have seen so many people criticize abused women wondering why they just don’t leave. Even I did this with my own mother and eventually brought it up to her after I had finished college. 

Me: “Why did you stay so long? Knowing he was not only beating on you and cussing you out but he was doing the same to me too. Why didn’t you jus leave?”

Mom: “In the beginning I did leave, but he would always find y’all when I was at work so then I would have to come back. I wasn’t gon’ leave my children. So I gave up leaving and just stayed. I know I should have left but I was about family…keeping the family together and having him in y’all life.”

Sound familiar? 

Soul Food the movie…keeping the family together by any means necessary. Doing it at all costs to keep the family together (covering the sins of the family) is what has been detrimental to so many women for decades. Regardless of the movie, please don’t miss the point…this is about the conditioning and brainwashing of us as women to bear the burden of keeping the family together at all costs. Men can go out to get milk after the birth of their child and never return. Men can divorce you for infidelity and it makes sense and they’ll have the entire family and church behind that marital demise, but women cannot after often being taught to stay and give him another chance because he’s just ‘being a man’. Oh so the disrespect is only if a woman does it to the man? Got it.

Even if/when sexual faithfulness in monogamous marriages is taught to both, it’s often only enforced to women. Extreme loyalty at its finest.

And that’s been me. Even now I can struggle to decipher if I’m being caring and compassionate, extremely loyal or keeping to my boundaries and being a lil selfish. The conditioning is real. Recently I initially struggled internally on something I did for my children’s father.

When I saw that after a meal we had such an abundance of leftovers, I told my children that if they wanted to, they could contact their Dad and see if he wanted a plate and that if he did, they could meet him right across the way to get it to him. Mind you 3 weeks before, he said he was bringing groceries over on an upcoming Tuesday and never showed nor did he reach out to let me know he wasn’t showing either. 🤔 👀 But I thought of him anyway.

I was always taught as a believer that anything done in love is good, and biblically, you can’t lose by doing so. But I recently realized that this belief often comes from women who, like me, were conditioned to extreme loyalty. It hit me when I remembered how, right after my mother finally left my dad, she still had me bring him food because he was struggling. Many of us women will always find a way to make things work, so when we stop offering submission and support, the ones who didn’t 'find a way' in the relationship often suffer. Then we wrestle with the guilt of leaving, especially if the person we left is the father of our children. (Whew Chile…these LOEV Letters are not always the easiest to write…not only because it’s exposing my marriage but it’s also exposing me).

And then recently, a childhood memory came to me in a dream of how my Grandmother (my Mom’s Mom) fed her son’s father till he died even tho they were no longer together. Sound familiar? Remember in the movie Soul Food after all that Miles put Terri through in cheating on her with her own flesh and blood, he was still invited to Sunday Dinner? 😭 Damn. We that loyal even in movies. 

Even in the movie based upon Tina Turner’s life entitled “What’s Love Got to Do with It”, Angel Basset as Tina shares that she’s been wanting to leave Ike but that she knows what it’s like to have her own family walk out on her that she can’t leave him. Conditioning. Even if they leave, you stay. If you leave, you go back. Even when it’s all over, be cordial and work together even if it’s still like as if y’all were together. The mirror is in my face. It’s hard letting go of this pattern, conditioning and generational voodoo, but it can be done. I have not only 5 children watching me in this very moment but 3 of them are Daughters watching how their Mother deal with men… especially their father. What have I been teaching them on loyalty? Am I passing on extreme loyalty or am I teaching them boundaries? And this is why I cannot do this alone and have recently added new support on this (stick a 📍 here).

What I’ve discovered is that most of us who truly grow in self improvement, spend more time unlearning than learning and that’s actually a good thing. Because once you unlearn the things that no longer benefit nor serve you, you can then begin to learn what does. That’s the stage I’m in right now.

So when my estranged husband said I was disloyal, I initially got angry because you can call me many things but disloyal isn’t one of them. But once I began to breathe and calm down, I realized it was the first time he’s ever said that …which means…I’m growing boo. I really shouldn’t have gotten upset by being called this because it not only means I’m growing and getting away from extreme loyalty but it also means it’s being noticed. That means the pattern of extreme loyalty is FINALLY being broken. And tho I really didn’t mind giving the father of my children the extra food we had, it will not be a regular thing. I was just being me. But I’m also being me when there is abundance and I don’t share with him because I remember that he's a capable man who can feed himself.

In other words, I have the power to share or not to share. To include or not to include. To give or not to give. Nothing is forced or coerced. I no longer feel obligated or burdened to “keep the family together” or “keep a father in the home”. Because if he didn’t feel obligated or burdened to remain employed and financially provide adequately for his family, what the fuck am I to remain loyal to? Call me DISLOYAL please and put that shit in all caps and bold it. I am not called to keep the family together. I am not called to make sure I cover for a man especially when he’s not covering financially for his family. I am not called to be loyal just because we’re married and have children together. But what I am called to is PEACE (1 Cor 7:15c). And there’s nothing in this world that I will allow to take it from me ever again. I have boundaries. I can love you from a distance or up close and personal but no matter what, I will still love you but from a safe space and from a place of freedom and peace. Together or not. In the same home or not. Married or not. I will still love you but I will do it in peace, in power and in prosperity; not conditioning, coercion or constraints. And I am at peace with that.

I know my LOEV Letters are supposed to be about Love, Leisure and Pleasure and trust…we are getting to more leisure and pleasure. I just needed to bring you along for the ride to get us there. So it’s coming boo, I assure you.

If you’ve haven’t gotten my book 9 Things Women Should Ask a Man Before Giving Him Sex, you really should get it now and start reading or listening to it right away. I have an entire section on boundaries that are not only important for you to read but important for you to implement where you need to in your own relationships so that extreme loyalty can be eradicated in your life. Even tho I wasn’t separated when I wrote the book, I had already begun setting boundaries, which is why I didn’t try to save our home earlier this year when I had the chance. I had finally gotten to a point where I just couldn’t keep up with the extreme loyalty conditioning. I was starting to wake up even tho it took the blow up of my life in order for me to fully wake up and leave, which is what I’ve been sharing candidly with you from a now happily separated state.

Thank you again for taking this ride with me. And don’t worry about those who got off at previous stops. It was simply their destination. But you and I still got some riding to do and I’m loving this journey of freedom we’re on.

Always much Love

~ OEV 💋 

PS: Reply to me your thoughts on today’s letter to you and then join me live on this Letter tonight around 8:30p CST. Gonna try something different by using my Instagram this time. Any issues arise, we’ll just jump right back to my facebook. See you then.