Uh, Hello, Men Have Issues Too!

Somebody talk to me about men and their daddy issues. Or maybe men and their mommy issues. Because they've got them. And I for one, am tired of pretending like they don't. Ladies are you all tired too? 

Let's just clear the air for a second. Women are not the only sex effected by their childhood experiences with their parents. The man whose father left him when he was a kid is just as marred by that occurrence as a woman is! The difference is just that women are brought up to know that it's okay to be emotional and talk about your emotions while men essentially get taught the complete opposite.

"Be a man!" "Toughen up!" "Men don't cry!" 

Sound familiar? The truth however, is that sure, men may not cry but they sure as hell act out and operate out of fear due to their upbringings.

I've met the men who are afraid their relationships & marriages are destined to end in failure/divorce so they only offer up half-ass tries. Those who don't believe they'll ever have healthy relationships. Who think womanizing is the way to go because that's what their fathers, who probably acted more like boys in adult bodies than beacons of positive leadership, taught them & showed them through their own actions. I've seriously heard some things from men about their pasts that made me cringe. But what I heard also made me have "ah ha" moments about the way they act and treat the women they deal with.

If there's one thing I have learned, it's that experiences from your past are not excuses for your current actions, but they are reasons. We can deny, deny, deny until we die that our pasts heavily influence who we are, but at the end of the day, they do. And in order to harness those experiences, we have to face and deal with them. No more sweeping the past under the rug in hopes that no one will notice that your flaws are showing. 

How do men get to a point where they are able to open up and be real about negative emotional occurrences in their pasts, so that they can properly address them? 

I truly think that's the only way we can start to heal the current state of love. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a chic with a laptop and a head full of thoughts. 

#occupyblacklove

Tell Me About Your Love

Seems like everybody I know has dating & love horror stories.
Men are triflin, women are needy. Nobody knows what they really want and it seems like we'd all have more luck winning the lotto than striking it rich in love.

Even though this is what I hear day after day, from the mouths of strangers and friends, I refuse to believe it. Love lives and I want you to tell me all about it.

If you've got love in your life, I ask that you share that story here. Don't be shy, tell me how it happened. Feel free to post anonymously, we don't have to know who you are to know your story :0)

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Happy Valentine's Day Folks!!!!!!!


I'm single and currently dating God, but dammit I'm not bitter today!! Did I just curse and put God in the same sentence? Yikes. Y'all get what I'm saying though. No?

It's February 14th, a day that for many single folks often brings about a day full of scowls, devoured pints of ice cream, man bashing sessions and feelings of hate towards everything red, floral or heart shaped. But c'mon folks, married/engaged/single or otherwise, today is a day to celebrate love!

I've had a Valentine only once and I still love the day. Yes, it's commercialized. Yes, you should celebrate love everyday. But think of it this way, you're alive everyday and you still want people to make a big deal out of your birthday and pop bottles in celebration right? Exactly!

So what if you're not in a relationship. Celebrate the love that you do have around you. Your family members, your friends... shower them all with love! When's the last time you told yourself, "I Love You"? If you have to think about the answer to that, it's been too long. Don't get depressed because cupid has yet to shoot his arrow your way(corny huh?) and definitely don't turn into The Grinch Who Stole Valentine's Day. With that said, I leave you all with this, a little love below :0)

The Dangers of Blogging

My very first post on this blog, which was back in January 2010, ended by saying:

"*For my friends/associates/ex lovers and the like who may read my memoirs and see yourselves in these stories, don't be mad! It only means you were on my mind"

Even with that warning, I knew there could possibly be people who may still get offended, upset or hurt by things that I write here. However it never fails to catch me off guard when someone tells me they didn't like something that I wrote about them. Why you ask?

1. I rarely get comments on here, so I assume the number of people who actually read this blog is preeeetty small. It isn't until someone quotes something I said or brings up a topic I wrote about that it really does hit me that there are more eyes on this blog than I thought. So making people upset but what I put here, definitely is not something I would intentionally set out to do, but when I'm blogging and purging my thoughts on a certain topic or experience, the last thing I'm honestly thinking about is how the subject of the post might feel if they were to read it. That may sound callous but it's MY blog. 

2. I never, not ever, use people's real names if I'm writing about an intimate experience. By intimate, I'm not referring to sex so don't try and scroll back through the posts to see if you missed something juicy, nasties :-) I don't even use physical descriptions of people!

3. I never thought that the men I know could actually feel some type of way about the things I write here. 

Wow, that sounded a bit insensitive... but it's true. I know men with some pretty big egos. They have confident auras and often seem like nothing ever phases them, so if/when I get called out for something I wrote here, it shocks me; and it's happened more than once. 

Having come to the reality that, look chic, folks read your blog and may actually pick up on context clues and piece puzzles together and find themselves staring back at them on the computer screen, I'm forced to ask myself the question whether some situations are too personal to write about? I completely understand that that's what people want to read, the gritty interesting stuff, and honestly that's what I want to write about, but do I want to make people upset in the process?  Should there be a filter?

I'm no Carrie and this isn't Sex in The City. There are real people in this blog and real emotions behind them. In the midst of purging my soul here and in return getting free therapy, could I potentially be scaring(for a lack of a better word) guys off because they don't want to end up as my next blog topic?

Food for thought.

Girl, Quit Lyin!

In my previous post, I mentioned the latest stat that stopped me in my tracks. Didn't see it? Here it goes:

45% of black women say getting married is very important

Before I could even finish the rest of the article, my response was, we women have GOT to stop lying to ourselves. I find it hard to believe that only 45% of women find marriage to be very important. As I stated before, I'm not saying that we should all be running around like chickens with our heads cut off obsessing over marriage, but only 45%?? That definitely surprised me. And so did some of the quotes from women who arebsuccessful and single that were interviewed as a part of the article.

"Love, the comedian, who also is single, says there is no point focusing on what she doesn’t have. “A lot of people say you’re going to be lonely. No, you will adjust,” Love says, adding that she enjoys her life, which includes partying and going on cruises, without anyone accompanying her."


"Nika Beamon, a television news producer in New York who turned 40 last year, likes to say, “I didn’t work this hard to get married.” She imagined that she would have a husband and children by now but is satisfied with how things have turned out."


"Smith, the 21-year-old University of Maryland senior, says many of her female friends are reluctant to express the truth about their love lives. “You have these driven black women here,” Smith says, “and sometimes . . . you really don’t want to talk about, ‘Oh, I haven’t had a boyfriend since high school.’ It makes you seem weak.”


I'll admit, I side-eye every woman who utters the phrase, "I'm single and even if I never get married, that's okay because I'm fine being alone. I've got a good job, a house, etc etc etc" or any variation of that phrase. And you know why? You don't mean it!


Some of us have gotten so used to being turned down and turned away by men that we've built up a defense mechanism that automatically regurgitates that line every time someone asks us about being single. And I get it, I get tired of being asked about my singletude as well. But you will never catch me saying I'm okay with the idea of winding up alone, because I'm not. And I won't lie to you nor myself about that. 


How many of us have opinions close to the one shared by the 21 year old college student? That we feel weak or less than because you're unattached? And don't lie because it's okay if you do. But the truth is, just as we have power in our professional lives, we have just as much power in our personal lives. No, you can't make a man fall in love & marry you but you can make yourself emotionally available to men and be for real about what you really want in a relationship. Too often we're forgetting how much power we really do have as women. And because we don't recognize that power we end up cowering in a corner with all of our other successful, single-and-don't-really-wanna be girlfriends pretending not to care.


Long story short, being honest about what your really want out of life is the first step to getting what you really want out of it. Think, there for you will be ladies :0)


And quit lying! 

Will We Always Be a Statistic?

Feast your eyes on The Washington Post's latest article on the state on the black woman:

Survey Paints Portrait of Black Women in America

Go ahead... take a look. It's not nearly as daunting as previous articles. The story which basically summarizes the most striking points from an 800 person survey, is the first in a series of articles on the current state of the black woman in America. Apparently, the Post has found out that all black women aren't angry after all nor are we kitchen bound mammies. Well looky there. All hints of cynicism aside, the article presented some interesting findings and brought to the forefront some very pertinent issues.

Nearly 3/4s of black women think now think it is a good time to be black in America
There are more than 900,000 businesses in America that are owned by black women
67% of black women describe themselves as having high self esteem
67% of single black women would be willing to marry outside of the race
63% of women said it was acceptable to have a child without being married
As of 2008, only 9% of black women married outside of the race; compared to nearly 20% of black men
45% of black women say getting married is very important

Screeeeeeeeeech!!!

Wait what? Only 45%? Seeing as this is a relationship centered blog, all of those other stats are great, awesome even, it's about time black women are looked at as being the dynamic beings we are, however that last stat stopped me in my tracks. Marriage is only important to 45% of us? I'm not saying everybody has to want to get married or else you aint sh*t, eh, okay maybe I am. But what I really want to know is am I the only one shocked that less that half of black women out here find marriage to be important? And while marriage is important to only 45% of black women, 63% are a-okay with having children without being married. And the black family continues to be on the decline. Hmmmmm... interesting.

Call Me in 6 Months

A couple weeks ago, I'm out at the bar with a few friends. As the night progresses a man comes over to the bar that they're familiar with and proceeds to chat them up. As a break comes into their conversation one of the guys I know slides his phone over to me with a message about this man's interest in talking to me. My only typed out response is: tell him I'm dating Jesus.

As jokingly as I meant that, I realized I was 100% serious.

If you've read my last couple posts, you already know that I'm on a break from dating. I needed some "me" time as well as time to assess my situation and realize what I want and need out of life. When I started this dating break, there was no concrete end date for it, I just figured I would know when it was time to give dating another try. However, over the holiday I gave my dating sabbatical a deadline. What is it you ask? May 1st, I say. That will mark 6 months of no dating. Six whole months of voluntarily giving up all romantic engagements with men. No dates, no cuddle sessions, no late night chats, no nada.

Why 6 months? For one, I needed to give myself a deadline. I don't normally do well with open ended situations of any kind, so I needed the structure that having a beginning and an end to this provides. Secondly, a great sister-friend, who's on a similar journey, recommended the book Your Knight in Shining Armor: Discovering Your Lifelong Love by P.B. Wilson for me to read. And in this book, the author recommends a 6 month dating sabbatical in order to get to know yourself (according to her, it takes 6 months to really get to know someone; yourself included apparently). Let me just tell you all that this book is amazing. It's faith based, so if you don't have any religion, as the old folks say, trust me, this is not the book for you.

Aside from on Twitter, I hadn't really said too much about this topic, mostly because nobody ever wants to believe me when I tell them what I'm doing; especially guys. Their response is pretty uniform across the board, "uhhh, but why?". And of course I get comments about how the last guy must have really done me wrong for me to want to take this type of break. Truth is, sure, things didn't turn out favorably in previous situations, but I found more fault with the way I responded to being hurt than with the hurt that was actually done.

What's really surprising and both humors & saddens me a bit is the surprised and damn near shocked responses I get from my girl friends. For some reason it boggles people's minds that I could elect to stop dating for half a year and just focus on myself. One of my friends even went so far as to ask me, "Since you aren't dating, what do you do with all that free time?". Huh? Is dating supposed to be that much of a focal point in my life at this age? So much so, that since I'm not dating, I must be sitting around being superhuman and twiddling my thumbs in boredom?

What I gather is that most women's approach to dating is to date, date & date some more until they finally "strike it rich" and come across the man of their dreams. Well, that approach never worked for me and most often it did nothing more than spiral me into a state of vexation; hence why taking this break to regroup makes a lot of sense for me. I'd honestly recommend that more women try this approach. If you're single and don't want to be, maaaaybe it's time to stop trying the same thing time and time again expecting to obtain a different outcome. What's the definition of insanity? Hmmmm...

The most difficult aspect I've pondered on this journey, is what do I do if & when I meet a man who takes interest in me? Do I abandon my goal of abstaining from dating to see if something promising could happen? Absolutely not! That would defeat the purpose. Hopefully guys who approach me won't take it personal when I say, call me after May 1st. But if they do, so what? This time things are about me, not them.