The Brokest Thing I Have Ever Done Is Care About a Man

The brokest thing I ever did wasn’t maxing a card — it was overextending my heart. Every Wednesday night. Every “I’ll be patient.” Every moment I could’ve been building.

I am re-listening to Rachel Rodger’s We Should All Be Millionaires on Spotify and it hit me like a ton of bricks that the brokest thing I ever did was care for a man longer than I was supposed to. I know that sounds like a funny thing to say at girls night but, girl! I did the math.

Every Wednesday night, for two years straight, I arrived at my ex’s house around 7:30 p.m. for our weekly date night and didn’t leave until noon the next day. That’s about 16 and a half hours of my life, 104 times. If I billed those hours at my consulting rate of $250 per hour, that’s $429,000.

Yep, you read that correctly. 

Four hundred. Twenty-nine. Thousand. Dollars. To spend time with a man who would later tell me that he didn’t want a future with me.

Baby!!!! It was a costly lesson.

And I’m not even talking about emotional exhaustion, spiritual depletion, or what it does to a woman’s sense of self when she keeps showing up for a man who meets her consistency with confusion. I’m simply talking money. Real, tangible, lost revenue.

See, people think “broke” means not having money. But for me, being broke was also about where my energy and attention were invested. I wasn’t broke because I didn’t have the clients I wanted. I was broke because I kept treating care like charity. I mistook “connection” for collaboration, when what I really had was a liability and it cost me big time.

Don’t get me started on the long-term cost, the kind you can’t write off. Like the grit it takes to rebuild, or the hours of networking to make new connections and rebuild client rosters. And I probably would have passed on writing this but I have observed a pattern which means I can’t be the only solo-entrepreneur wading through the mess of her love life realizing how much money it’s cost/costing her. 

When my daughter was born, I stayed with her father three years too long. It’s not like I didn’t know better, or want better. Like many women I thought maybe love could be the bridge between who he was and who I needed him to be. I lived with him, built around him, believed in him — and in doing so, I delayed myself.

By the time my son came along, I should’ve known better. But I stayed three more years after his birth, too. Same pattern, different man. And while I did better financially that time — found ways to work, create, and earn — I was still living in survival mode, trading my time and clarity for the illusion of stability.

If you calculate those six years — at even half-capacity — the opportunity cost is staggering. Hundreds of consulting hours lost. Thousands in revenue unclaimed. Whole seasons of creativity paused in the name of “family.”

Let’s be clear: I don’t regret my children. I regret confusing proximity and co-dependency for partnership. I regret thinking that being the peace in someone else’s chaos was ever part of my calling.

If I’m telling the truth? I ugly cried when it hit me that I was the asset the whole time. And that I had been letting my value depreciate in relationships that never had the range to invest back. So now, I move differently. I am learning to love differently. And you better believe I’m invoicing differently. The brokest thing I ever did was care about a man longer than I was supposed to but the richest thing I ever did was identify the pattern and begin to corse correct.

My love is luxury.

My time is billable.

And baby, I don’t do pro bono anymore.