Since.... forever.
It was recently that I realized it.. and had to change.
I grew up in the hood. Most my friends growing up are in jail. I don't keep in touch with any of them. Most of the girls I dated ended up dating military guys and became housewives. I started hustlin' when I was 13.
I'm pretty much the only one I know who "made it out".
I got a scholarship to a private magnet high school, but I was still hustlin on the side. I ended up going to an Ivy and I make really good money now. Pretty much all aspects of my life is different and I'm in a really good place.
EXCEPT for my relationships.
Since college, I never really dated girls I met in school or at work. They just felt... different. I dated ONE girl from my "new life" and I just felt so.. inadequate. I was invited to her family's house for Thanksgiving where she was from, in a really affluent neighborhood in Massachusetts. She grew up in a 3-story 7-bedroom house to loving parents in a really nice area. I met her friends and family and I just felt... completely out of place.
I never knew life like that. Thanksgiving for me growing up was a good rotisserie chicken on the table and the 4 of us. I shared the same bedroom with my brother. I couldn't IMAGINE life being so fucking easy growing up in a huge house with everything handed to you like that. I just knew girls like that would never understand my life and why I approach things certain ways.
Every other girl I dated came from broken homes like me. In fact, I even dated a girl from my hometown who was an escort. That's how fucked up my dating history is. But it's not like other comments. I'm not trying to "fix" or "save" them. I date them because we just have more in common. Like the escort girl, I just understood why she did it. She's hustlin like I was hustlin. I guess I did try to "save" her too. I kept pushing her to go to college and get out of the life, but nope...
Not only did she not get her shit together, 4-5 years after we broke up, I heard she ODed. Apparently she got in with a pimp and got hooked on heroin.
That wasn't what fucked me up though and made me realize I needed to get my shit together.
It was this last year when I started dating a girl seriously. She was beautiful, smart, but like me, she came from a single parent home, grew up poor, and had a fucked up history. I seriously loved this girl. But I ended up paying for a lot of things because she was making minimum wage working at Starbucks.....
She's fucking 25 years old. She had no plans for the future, not planning on going to college, and was content with no fucking future.
I tried to persuade her to go back to school to get a better job. I even said I'd help her with tuition and get her a job at my company (I work at a huge firm, so we wouldn't be working together).
She refused and said she's gonna figure something out. She said her friends told her they could hook her up to work as a sugar baby. It was fucking disgusting.
It was then I realized I needed to stop dating girls like that. She was probably literally the BEST chance I had with dating a girl from my hood/past. Beautiful and smart and had ambition, but was FUCKING UP her life. (I know Reddit has a hard-on for not going to college, but... no, I'm not gonna get into that argument with you idiots.). I wish she knew that she didn't have to be like the girls we grew up with, she could make something of herself.
Ending that relationship was fucking TOUGH.
So.....
I can't date ratchet ass girls for the aforementioned reasons.
And I also can't date picture-perfect princesses because frankly... we just don't connect on a deeper level.
Maybe I'll meet a girl who grew up like that who'll be empathetic enough to understand what it's like to be poor as fuck? Maybe.
Or maybe I'll meet a ratchet ass girl who "made it out" like me.
I'm pretty much clueless on where to go now.