THERE’S a Jamaican saying, ‘Stop make johncrow feel like hummingbird’ or ‘dish towel feel like face rag’, which means, in essence, that you shouldn’t elevate or give undue importance to someone who doesn’t deserve it. It’s a call to recognise the true nature or value of people and to not mistakenly elevate those who are unworthy.

Many of us are guilty of this kind of elevation, especially in love situations when we ditch common sense and put on rose-coloured glasses. Some people eventually get a whiff of good sense and put a pause on the foolery; for others, it takes much longer.

We asked women: When was a time when you are embarrassed to say you made a johncrow feel like a hummingbird?

Chandice, 25:

I met my ex at work. He told me he had one daughter. It was when I got a promotion and moved to the HR department, that I found out that he had four children on his health insurance, and his daughter’s mother as trustee on his life insurance. Instead of ending it at that time, after that lie, when nobody at work knew, I continued with him for two years, got pregnant, had his baby, and when I was signing our child up on my insurance, they saw the father’s name, and that’s when I was discretely told that he was a married man.

Abigay, 30:

I just had our baby, and I don’t know how one, his wife found out, or two, how she found out where I lived, but she showed up at the house and cursed me off dog rotten over her husband, while he stayed in the room watching TV. He then came out and consoled her, left with her, and came back a couple days later, and I cooked him the food he asked for and served him. He stayed a few days at my house, and even after just having a C-section, I treated him like a king and waited on him hand and foot. And then he left again. A few months after he told me his wife was pregnant and he was going back home full-time. I’m embarrassed to say I cried and begged him to stay, but he laughed and said his family came first.

Kerry, 43:

I have two degrees, I am very accomplished, and involved in a lot of charity work. I married a man who dropped out of school in grade eight, and who I had to teach to fill out a form. I married for love, and didn’t judge him. I helped him get his visa, driver’s licence, travel for the first time, and bought a house and another investment property together. We were happy, until he started his own business, did a certificate course, and suddenly he was disrespecting me with other women, coming home late, and starting arguments about how “manipulative” I was. I went into a dark place emotionally, and even when he told me he had gotten someone else pregnant, I didn’t have the will to leave. It’s like I was tied down. Luckily I have good friends and family, and it was one particular friend who reminded me of my worth and how much I had contributed to the world that made me able to crawl from that dark place and divorce him.

Sabrina, 31:

I met him when he was working, pumping gas at the station. I made this man, a bleacher who didn’t have two good boxers to his name, move into my house, stop working, diss me with other women, gaslight me into thinking that because I was older than him he was doing me a favour being with me, and he refused to leave and laughed at me when I asked, after he brought other women there. I only managed to get him out of my house when my brothers came and forced him out.