So I always had dreams as a little girl of a prince, taking me away and fully loving me. I thought that I understood Unboxing men.

Real life shattered all of that. I always wanted a Dad like Cliff Huxtable, I guess 25 years later real life shattered that too. Not even Cliff Huxtable was Cliff Huxtable. After having a horrible (present/unpresent) father and unmentionable experiences with men at a very young age (coupled with a father who never fully protected/defended me) the thing that I most desired always escaped me.

I have always missed a decent understanding of men as people.

I am pretty and I never saw that men actually wanted more from me than to have a part of it. I never felt that they ever wanted more than to enjoy the spoils of me or to look at me. It is painful to even write that. I’m not one of those “low self-esteem girls”…but maybe I am.

With the exception of my Pastor, my Best Friends Father (James Shields), Mr. Harper and my Grandfather (all in doses so small that it just wasn’t enough)…no male has ever loved me purely. Just let that sink in. No male has ever made me feel like the true, authentic, goofy or silly me was enough.

As I became an older girl I understood that “this thing” that I had was the only thing that men desired of me. But I always wanted to be loved-fully. Since I was not fully loved…I started to hold back on the beautiful side of myself even more with men…and I began to compartmentalize them, box them up like one dimensional monkeys and I would just Kanye shrug when one moved on….or easily discard a gent without so much as a phone call or text if I met a new one who might be more attractive, more powerful or just more exciting than the last.

As I watched Scandal this evening and I saw and felt Olivia Pope yo-yo back and forth between the men in her life and her father….It made me look inward.

Even today, I never feel like I can find the total package in a man…so I have sabotaged good, potential partners. After all…they probably just want another painful gray area relationship or worse basic sex which led me to become celibate a few years ago.

I know that I put men in a box. However, it was never so apparent as when I watched Olivia Pope tell a good man that she wanted another man. Much of it because of what her father never showed her. Total and complete love.

When you know what love is, there is no yo-yo.

I am promising myself that as I begin to shut it down this year and begin to think about next year that I will be more myself. I will be true to myself no matter what. I will let the sexy go, because it has only betrayed my desire for honest male companionship. I will forgive my father and every other man who has not treated me the way that I deserve to be treated. I will give myself the opportunity to get to know a nice man…and I will not judge him based on the bad choices and bad men in my past.

I will unBOX MEN.