In my journey in life, I have been opportune to meet people, most of whom I totally regret meeting or working with. And it is fascinating how the same people who cause you so much pain and regret in life are the same people who think they are good and perfect. To them, you are just the one who misunderstands them. You are the villain in the story, not them. It is almost as though they can hurt you, destroy your peace, make you question yourself, and still go to bed believing they did nothing wrong.
One of the most fascinating things about human beings is our ability to do wrong and still find a way to convince ourselves that we are good people. We condemn in others what we excuse in ourselves, judge people by their actions while demanding that our own intentions be considered, and insist on accountability until we are the ones who must account for our behaviour. Somehow, we always seem to have a reasonable explanation for our shortcomings. We are rarely the villains in the stories we tell about ourselves. In fact, some of the people who have caused the most damage in other people’s lives are the very ones who believe they have the purest hearts.
Human beings have an interesting relationship with the truth, particularly when that truth threatens the image we have carefully constructed of ourselves. Nobody wants to believe they are selfish, wicked, envious, manipulative or dishonest. We would rather find a more flattering description for our behaviour than confront the possibility that we are capable of the very things we condemn in others. This is where the psychology of self-deception becomes fascinating. Sometimes, the person we deceive most successfully is not our friend, spouse, colleague or neighbour. It is ourselves. And the most dangerous lie is the one we have told ourselves so many times that we no longer recognise it as a lie.
But why do most humans find it so hard to accept accountability? Why do they try so hard to look good when everybody keeps seeing the evil in them? The saddest part is when people have programmed their minds to believe they are good, meanwhile, it doesn’t take a week for someone to see the evil in them. Why do humans keep deceiving themselves? How can you change when you don’t admit your wrongs? How can you correct a problem you have convinced yourself does not exist? You cannot heal a wound you refuse to acknowledge, and you cannot become a better person when you believe you have nothing to change.
We remember the times we helped, the sacrifices we made, the people we supported and the good intentions behind our decisions. We use our good deeds as evidence against our wrongdoing, as though being kind on Monday automatically absolves us of being cruel on Tuesday. We forget that character is not established by the good things we occasionally do, but also by the patterns of behaviour we are willing to confront, correct and abandon. Helping ten people does not give you the right to destroy the eleventh person and demand that they remain grateful because of your previous kindness.
I know someone who hides under his good deeds. He will constantly tell people how he has been so nice and good to them. He makes you feel indebted to him, and when he calls in a favour and you don’t oblige, he will use the good deeds he has done for you to gaslight you. His help is not out of love; it is a way to keep you forever indebted to him, so he can use you and constantly call in favours. His help is a trap.
I tell people this: do not believe every story people tell about their exes. The tongue that is so quick to judge, condemn and castigate an ex-lover, saying all manner of vile things about them, might be the true villain in the story. Sometimes, it is just a way to make themselves feel good, successfully play the pity card, and gain love and attention. So, when they eventually have you and show you who they truly are, they can justify their actions by blaming their past traumatic relationship.
Suddenly, every bad thing they do becomes understandable because somebody hurt them before you came along. They use their past as an excuse for their present behaviour, gaining pity all over again. Before you know it, you are apologising to someone for the wounds they inflicted on you because they have convinced you that their past gives them the right to hurt you. Someone’s painful past may explain their behaviour, but it does not give them a licence to destroy other people.
In my journey in life, I have come to learn something: because God sends someone to you as a helper does not mean that the same person cannot destroy you. Even God can send a villain your way to help you; it is your responsibility to be wise as a serpent when working with them. Even some villains are loved by God. We must understand that someone can be a blessing to your career and a nightmare to your peace of mind. Someone can open doors for you and still be the reason you cry behind closed doors. Never confuse what a person has to offer you with who that person truly is.
I had the opportunity to meet a man whom God sent my way to build me and help me develop the career I am pursuing right now. He was good to me, and I learnt so much from him. Slowly, I began to see him as a father figure. But as we worked together, I saw a whole lot. I saw a personality that was strangely different from the way he presented himself to be.
He was a man who always painted other people as villains in his own stories, and I believed him. Just because God connected us, I felt God would only connect me to someone close to perfection in character. Little did I know that God connects you to people who have something great to offer you, but surviving the relationship with them is your responsibility, with the wisdom He has given you. I learnt the hard way. Sometimes, we become so grateful for what someone has done for us that we stop paying attention to who they are. We become blinded by the benefits of the relationship and ignore the character of the person providing them.
When I came to realise that the stories he used to tell me about other people being the villains were not what he had made them out to be, and that he was, in fact, the villain in many of those stories, I became weak to my bones. I saw the way he treated people who had nothing to offer him. I saw the way he treated people who had no support or backing, as though they were trash. I saw things I never liked in a human being, and he was displaying all of them. What shocked me the most was how he always saw himself as someone with a very pure heart, a giver, a good man.
I was always shocked. Was he delusional, or was it a lie he told himself so he would not have to live with guilt? How could someone display such behaviour and still see himself as the good person in every story?
When I was preparing to stop working with him, I told myself that my name would be painted as the true villain in the story, while he would continue to represent the saint. And behold, I stopped working with him for reasons he caused, reasons that went against work ethics, and I later heard stories from former colleagues and friends about the vile things he said about me, painting me as the villain while he remained the saint in the story. Exactly what I had expected happened. The person who had spent years telling me stories about other people’s wickedness was now telling his own version of my wickedness. I had become the villain in a story I knew too well because I had watched him cast other people in the same role. This is a personality he has built over the years, one he may not be able to abandon any time soon.
I am one person who can be the opposite of what I say. I can tell you I don’t take rubbish, that I am a hard lady, that I am this and that, just to scare you from getting too close to me or crossing your boundaries. But when you get close to me, you will find that I am completely different from that impression. My actions will make you stay. I believe we humans should treat people the way we want to be treated. I apologise when I am wrong, and I question myself about why I did what I did. I do not believe that admitting I am wrong makes me weak or less of a person. If anything, it gives me the opportunity to become better. I may not get everything right, but I owe myself the honesty to acknowledge when I get things wrong.
I tell people this: I prefer walking with people who know they are villains because, at least, they are authentic. You know what you are dealing with, and you understand that you must use wisdom when working with them. They are predictable, and you can anticipate their next moves. I would rather deal with someone whose flaws are obvious than someone who is a villain but believes they are nice and good.
The latter keeps you in a constant state of confusion, making you question whether you are getting them wrong or whether you are the problem. They manipulate situations, turn things around and leave you doubting your own judgement. Some people display manipulative and narcissistic traits while maintaining an image of innocence and goodness.There is nothing more exhausting than dealing with someone who hurts you and then makes you feel guilty for being hurt.
A lot of couples are in relationships and marriages with people who behave like villains but believe they are not villains, insisting that they are simply misunderstood by their partners. How can you correct someone who believes they are always right? How do you convince someone that they are hurting you when they have already decided that you are the problem? How do you build a healthy relationship with someone who sees every complaint as an attack and every attempt to correct them as disrespect? Love cannot thrive where accountability is treated as an enemy.
I remember a man who constantly told his wife that she was so lucky to have him as a husband, that he was too good to her, and that she should go outside and hear other women’s stories about how horrible their husbands were. It got me thinking: is this man aware that when people talk about good husbands, he does not match up to even 4 per cent of what a good husband should be?
Is he aware that a lot of women would rather remain single for life than marry him? Yet, he tells his wife that she is lucky to have him for a husband. The confidence with which some people praise themselves is astonishing, especially when their actions tell a completely different story. It is one thing to be a good partner; it is another thing to be so convinced of your goodness that you no longer care to find out whether the person living with you agrees.
This is the psychology behind such behaviour. They look at men who beat up their wives and tell themselves that they are saints. They look at men who openly cheat on their wives and praise themselves for being respectful cheats. They compare themselves with people who are worse and use that comparison to convince themselves that they are doing well. They forget that the absence of physical violence does not automatically make someone a good partner. Emotional abuse can be just as damaging, and a person does not have to raise a hand to make their partner miserable.
Refusing to provide for your family when you have the means, withholding affection and intimacy to punish or control your partner, being absent when your wife is sick, pregnant or emotionally down, and consistently refusing to show care are serious failures in a relationship. These behaviours should not be dismissed simply because there is no physical beating or because the person involved is not openly cheating. A marriage is not a competition to see who can be less terrible. Being better than an abusive man does not automatically make you a good husband. Sometimes, the standard people use to judge themselves is so low that they mistake basic decency for excellence.
We all want to believe we are good people. A lot of people don’t want to admit the evil in them. So, when we do something terrible, we find a way to explain it. We betray someone and call it survival. We hurt people and say they are too sensitive. We destroy someone’s happiness and convince ourselves they deserved it. We disrespect people and call it being outspoken. We mistreat people and call it setting boundaries. We refuse to apologise and call it protecting our peace. Somehow, no matter what we do, we always find a way to sleep at night believing we are the good ones. We have become so skilled at defending ourselves that we sometimes forget to examine ourselves.
It is time we learn to see ourselves for who we truly are. Take off the makeup, take off the fake smile, take it all off and stand before the mirror. Look inward and see if you can catch a glimpse of the monster standing before you, the monster you refuse to admit you are. And when you see that monster, do not argue, do not make excuses, and do not fall into denial. Accept what you see. Accept that you, too, are capable of hurting people, being selfish, being manipulative and becoming the very thing you condemn in others. That does not mean you are beyond redemption; it means you finally have something real to work on. The truth is, you cannot change what you refuse to acknowledge.
Nobody is the villain in their own story. But that does not mean nobody is the villain. Sometimes, the villain is the person looking back at you in the mirror. And until you have the courage to face that person, every story you tell about yourself will remain a beautiful lie.
