I created this blog for smart women like you and me to live life, manage our finances, and love with intentionality.
And one of the things you should be intentional about is what you let a man do for you.
As a smart lady, never let a man do these five things for you:
5 Things You Should Never Let a Man Do for You
1. Never Let Him Control Your Money
My husband is, well, used to be, more financially savvy than I, and when I told him of my struggles with saving, he encouraged me to save.
And at a point, I was always eager to tell him how much I’d saved so he could see my growth.
He didn’t collect my money from me or demand to manage it.
He just encouraged me and held me accountable when I asked him to.
That’s support, not control.
Control is when a man insists on managing all your money for your own good.
If he takes your ATM card, monitors every purchase, questions every expense, and makes you ask permission to spend your own money, you are in soup.
He has positioned himself as the financial authority in your life and treats you like a child who can’t be trusted with money.
That’s dangerous because a man who controls your money controls your freedom.
I don’t care how bad you are with money or if you’ve made terrible financial decisions in the past. You don’t fix that by handing complete control to a man.
You fix it by learning financial literacy, getting an accountability partner (not a controller), setting up systems that work for you, not by giving someone else total access and authority over your finances.
A good man will guide you and encourage you to be better with money. He won’t make you feel like you’re incapable of managing your own finances because he understands that financial independence is part of your dignity and safety.
A controlling man will convince you that you need him to manage your money because you’re not good with it.
2. Never Let Him Manage Your Career Decisions
Okay, a man can help you discover your potential, give you advice, especially if he’s smarter than you in certain areas or knows the industry better, but at the end of the day, your career is your career.
Your decisions about what job to take and what opportunity to pursue are yours to make, not his.
I’ve seen women turn down dream jobs because their boyfriends or husbands didn’t want them to take them.
Oh well, they always regret it.
I know sometimes relationships, especially marriage, require compromise and sacrifice.
I believe you care enough about your family, especially when there are innocent kids in the mix.
But no matter what, “We discussed it and decided this isn’t the right time,” is different from “He said no, so I didn’t take it.”
A supportive man will sit down with you and talk through the pros and cons. Together, you’ll consider how this affects the family and also how it affects your dreams and happiness.
He’ll ask, “What do you want to do? How can we make this work?”
But a controlling man will just decide for you.
3. Never Let Him Rescue You From Your Financial Problems
Honestly, having a rich partner who also behaves like someone who has sense is a flex.
Love is sweet, but sweeter when there is money. Hahaha.
Just like Davido said in his song, ”Assurance”, love is sweet oh, when money enter love is sweeter.”
Money is good, I won’t lie, but while it might be a prayer answered for you to have a man who helps you financially, he shouldn’t become your financial savior.
So if you hear, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. You don’t need to work anymore.”
Oh oh. Careful, sis.
A man who saves you financially owns you, whether you agree or not, because what’s there to argue about when everything you have comes from him, and he knows it.
That’s why some men specifically look for women in financial distress, to control them, not to help them.
They use money as leverage, a constant reminder that you need them.
Lots of women are stuck in terrible relationships because the man is their ATM.
Let a man help you if he wants to and can afford to, but keep building your financial independence because the moment you’re completely dependent on a man financially, you’ve given him power over your entire life.
And that’s too much power for any one person to have over you.
4. Never Let Him Define Your Worth
Whenever people try to downplay emotional or verbal abuse, I get mad.
Do you know what being in a toxic relationship does to your self-worth?
Okay, let’s pause on the negative for now.
Having a good man can do wonders for your self-esteem, but even at that, you should never let him be the one who defines your worth, because what happens when he’s having a bad day and says something hurtful?
What happens when you disagree and he withdraws his affection, or he leaves?
If your entire sense of worth is tied to what a man thinks of you, you’ll be destroyed.
A man’s opinion of you, good or bad, should not be the foundation of how you see yourself.
Yes, it’s beautiful when your man thinks you’re amazing, but that should be the icing, not the cake.
Your worth should come from knowing who you are, regardless of who’s in your life or what they think of you.
5. Never Let Him Isolate You From Your Support System
This one.
A lot of smart women would say, “It can never happen to me,” until it happens.
Isolation is so subtle that you don’t realize you’re being cut off from everyone until you’re completely alone with him, especially when you are helplessly in love.
That’s when you’ll realise the woman it happened to didn’t have two heads. They were smart women like you
Never let a man isolate you from your support system. I don’t care how much he loves you.
Because that’s how abusers operate. They isolate you, so you have nowhere to run when things get bad.
A good man encourages you to maintain your relationships because he understands that you need your community, just as he needs his.
A man who wants you to be completely dependent on him does not have good intentions towards you, and isolation is how he achieves that.
I know some of you are reading this and thinking, “But my man does some of these things, and he loves me.”
Maybe he does, and his intentions are pure, but intention doesn’t cancel out impact.
Please, know what you are doing before you become a love casualty!