My birthdays were never special growing up—My sixteenth birthday was forgotten about—So in my relationships, via conditioning, I chose partners who undervalued my presence, who didn't celebrate me the way I wanted to be celebrated because that was normal to me.

It wasn't just on birthdays, it was all year round, like my conditioning, but the importance of birthday is that it isn't just another day, for the most part, it was treated like one.

There's a difference between people like me and people who were made to feel like their presence was worthy and appreciated, those people actually have birthdays.

Trying to step out of, "My birthday is just another day," mindset because that's a terrible mentality.

So in many of my different relationships, I've gone out of my way doing things that people wouldn't and didn't do for me. I had to pull my energy back and learn how to start making myself feel special since I couldn't count on people to do that.

I'm laughing, that's so fucking sad. But I'm keeping it a buck, so...

People held expectations of me to jump to fulfill them, but didn't do anything at all for me.

And that's awful because that's entitlement.

I had to be honest with myself and admit that making other people happy didn't make me happy, that it was unfair to me, and I've been enabling this behavior, and it will continue to show up in all of my relationships unless I dead that shit.

So when the TL is arguing over relationship dynamics and PS5s, please consider the following:

Some women may be giving gifts to people that don't show up and don't show out for them in return.

Some women may have never been shown appreciation, never been celebrated, never honestly cared for and never dated properly. It's not entitlement.

A lot of this is traditional.

Some other women may be fine with Netflix and chill, that's okay, please mind your own business—

But for the women who do deserve more? Let them have nice things.

They may not even know what it's like to have anyone spend bread on them, so they can be happy.

Those women deserve to be taken care of.