Those Three Little Words

Imagine a married couple. Not a happily married couple, although they’re trying to work things out. It was a marriage that was troubled from the beginning. It was not a marriage that resulted from mutual love, nor even a marriage arranged by the families of the two. No, this marriage was one where the husband kidnapped the woman, put her in chains, and brought her back to live with him. Not an ideal beginning, but after so many years together and what with the children involved, they’re trying to make the best of it.

As you can imagine, in the beginning, it was not a good scene. The husband beat his wife, subjected her to every sort of cruelty. He treated her like a possession. He truly believed he owned her, that he was superior to her and that her personal needs—beyond being fed and housed—mattered not a bit. Besides giving to her the bare necessities of life, he gave her nothing and yet demanded all.

It sounds horrible, I know. Especially since so many on the outside, so many even in his own family, only seemed to see the goodness of the husband. Such was the man’s reputation that they built many impressive statues in his honor. To be fair, the husband did have many fine qualities about him, but no amount of virtues could ever defend the way he treated his spouse: there are some sins so grievous they cannot be pardoned.

The husband himself was aware that this was no way to treat another human being, though he had been raised to think it acceptable. Eventually the time came where his behavior became so obviously morally wrong that he knew he had to change things.

It wasn’t easy. His switch to a more equitable relationship came at a great cost to himself, nearly tearing him in two. He was forced to part with the illusions he had about his ancestors, who treated their wives in the same way, was forced to look at the cultural attitudes of the society he lived in that tolerated such behavior. And so he freed his wife from the chains he used to keep her in and promised that they would henceforth live as equals.

They weren’t of course, since he still owned the farm, the animals, the house. Perhaps she was now free to leave, but she was by then far from the land of her birth and had nowhere else to go. Besides, she had unfortunately become accustomed to the life she had been living however cruel and unjust it was. That is human nature, after all, to become used to the most unhealthy of environments when there is no better choice. Her only realistic option was to stick with her husband and hope that he would keep the promises he made, that all that struggle to become a better person would eventually lead to a better tomorrow.

Besides, she really did see something of value in the man who had forcibly took her from her home. There was a degree of humanity in him. He was still very much a work of progress, but there was potential. If she tried really hard she truly believed she could eventually learn to forget about all those years of violence and domination. From all of the pain and cruelty she could yet envision a brighter future, one where peace and equality would be a reality and not a hollow promise in one hand while the other hand held a whip.

It was a rocky road they walked, the wife always a few steps behind. The transformation of the husband, for all his hard work and sacrifice, was merely the beginning. For every few steps forward he took, it seemed he would invariably slip backwards a couple. Sometimes sheer cluelessness and self-centeredness aggravated the situation, leaving the spouse to ponder if he would ever be able to see her as an equal.

Undoubtedly, the relationship had come a long way. Sure, there were the micro-aggressions, the unwillingness to have necessary conversations about the past, the occasional black eye. But it couldn’t be denied he was trying to be a better man. If only…

If only he could say those three little words. But he couldn’t. And that was the sticking point. That was what made it seem that all the other changes that had been made were little more than cosmetic ones to disguise an ugliness in his heart. If he could not speak those words out loud, then how could she ever know for certain that at his core there didn’t still exist a fundamental lack of concern, a feeling of superiority, a lack of commitment to a healthy relationship? She needed to know she mattered, and yet he would not speak those three little words. She knew a healthy relationship could never truly exist until that day he could speak them freely and without reserve. Black Lives Matter.