Ride-or-die trope leaves women in the dust; it’s time we let it go

BREYANA STEWART Contributing Writer

“Down to ride to the very end, it’s me and my boyfriend,” Beyoncé belts on Jay-Z’s classic “03 Bonnie and Clyde.”

We’ve all heard — and likely used — the term “ride-or-die” at some point in our lives. It’s been continually depicted on our screens through music, television and film. Some may use it to describe their family, while others may crown their closest friends with the title. However, the expression is widely used when discussing romantic partners, particularly women.

Dictionary.com defines the phrase as “a colloquial expression of extreme loyalty to someone or something.”

A partner that is loyal to you no matter the circumstance or cost is something most people wouldn’t dare pass up. If you would’ve asked me a few years ago, I would’ve jumped at the chance myself. However, as I’ve grown older and wiser, I’ve learned that the idea often leads to more harm than good.

Women who find themselves in a rideor-die type of relationship are often left carrying the load and frequently end up with the short end of the stick. Male part-

Understanding the complexity of love

KOFI MFRAMA

Opinions Editor

I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve never even had so much of someone liking me romantically or reciprocating my affection. As an observer of love, the fanfare surrounding it has always been lost on me. Everyday, I have more and more questions about the concept and with all the conflicting narratives that exist both online and offline, I could surely use some guidance.

Thus, I’ve employed the help of my friends, some who’ve been in relationships spanning three months to three years, to cut through the clamor and noise and get right to the heart of what it means to be in love.

VCU students Quan’Drez Mason and Austin McGhee finally mustered up the courage to talk to each other after being mutuals on Instagram for quite some time, according to McGhee. After a few hangouts, the two decided to make it official in early February and have been in love ever since.

“Learning to love someone is considering everything about them — pros and cons — and accepting them for things that they don’t necessarily like about themselves,” Mason said. “It’s ners who crown their significant other with the title often use it to excuse their perverse behaviors and habits, such as cheating, lying and even physical abuse.

On the other hand, that same grace is usually not extended to their female counterparts. In fact, men have even stated that even if their partner forgives them for cheating, they would not do the same, according to The Good Men Project.

The one-sided trope forces women to settle for less than they deserve. It con- just wanting to be around them and share experiences, like wanting to tell them everything and just experience life together.”

McGhee believes it’s love’s specificity that gives it its gravity.

“It’s more than a bond, it’s more than a partnership,” McGhee said. “When you say you love someone you really really have like a special connection within that you have with no one else.”

It’s this type of connection that’s always been fascinating to me. Love has always been more of a conscious decision to choose your partner over everyone else — a kind of mutual exchange of self.

I also had the chance to talk to my friend Stewart Anderson who is a thirdyear at VCU. He and his girlfriend of three years, McKayla Gantz, met in high school. Stewart admittedly loves a lot of things, but the love he has for Gantz takes precedence over everything.

“I just throw it [the word “love”] around like it’s nothing, but there’s only one person who carries the context of being the person that I want to spend my existence with — and that would be McKayla,” Anderson said.

Their connection got even deeper their senior year as they began planning out their prom outfits together. They officially began dating in March 2020, but COVID-19 would alter their relationship just as quickly as it began.

Unable to meet in person, the two spent most of their early quarantine days on FaceTime with one another.

With the pandemic making us interact more virtually than ever before, I’ve wondered how this has impacted our perceptions of love and relationships. Many of my friends’ relationships be- vinces women that the only way they are deserving of love is if they absolve themselves of their boundaries and allow their partners to mistreat them.

I vividly remember my most toxic relationship and the baggage that came with it. If he lied to me, I forgave him. If he was unfaithful, I blamed myself and forgave him. I did it all under the guise of unconditional love.

I believed that if I continued providing him with that unconditional love, then gan on an app, but what impact does Tinder or Hinge have on how we give and receive love?

“I think online you can sometimes assume a person’s one way and it could be a little bit of a letdown when they’re the complete opposite when you meet them in person,” Mason said.

As someone who spends a lot of time online, I find myself bombarded with all kinds of relationship content. This is no surprise to me because love is everywhere: It’s in every song, in nature, and every time I go outside it seems like everyone is holding hands.

It’s inevitable that people share their experiences with love on social media. However, for every cute couple edit, there’s a video of some more than questionable relationship advice. Specifically, so much of this advice perpetuates a traditional, patriarchal view of relationships that we as a society have worked to dismantle: “The guy should pay for this” or “the girl should behave like that.” eventually he would treat me the way I deserved — but he never did.

As a gay man, I’ve always wondered how I should navigate this rhetoric. Anderson uses differ ent interpretations of what a rela tionship is “supposed” to be to get a deeper understanding of his own.

We are taught that if love is conditional, then it isn’t real. The idea of unconditional love is pushed in order to absolve people of accountability, and it is frequently used to manipulate us into settling for things we often shouldn’t. The truth is that love should be conditional, and it should have boundaries.

Boundaries protect us from emotional trauma, and they teach us to value ourselves and our needs over another person. Relationships are a contract and should be treated as such. If the rules of said contract are broken, then it should be terminated.

Women are conditioned to believe that we must go through hell and back in our relationships in order to prove our loyalty, but that narrative is far from the truth. Women are deserving of healthy love from the start, and we shouldn’t have to prove that to anyone.

Love shouldn’t have to be taught, and we shouldn’t have to “raise” a healthy, suitable partner. It is time to cease the ride-ordie narrative and begin holding our partners accountable for their actions.

“It helps us understand the type of people that we are; it helps us understand boundaries in our relationship,” Anderson said. “I think we’re able to carve out our own definition of what we’re supposed to be.”

Many people online tend to live in absolutes when it comes to dating, ignoring the fact that people are complicated and nuanced thus our relationships will reflect that. Every piece of advice seems to be another mind game to trick someone into liking you — it’s like we’ve lost the art of being genuine.

I’m a little less cynical than I was before, I think I believe in love a tad bit more, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have complete clarity on the subject. Love is so complex and I doubt any of us will truly ever understand it. All I hope is that everyone can experience true love at some point in their life — however it decides to manifest itself.