With yesterday being Single Awareness Day and with all the people involved in different levels of love, lust and like, I got to thinking about relationships as a whole. Y’know, what they are; what they mean; why everybody seems to be chasing it like it drank the last glass of Kool-Aid and didn’t make any more.
It occurred to me the other day that I, like a lot of people, want a relationship. It also occurred to me that I, also like a lot of people, am not ready for one.
Lately, black women have been all up in arms about these TV news segments that say black women with degrees are least likely to get married than our counterparts. We know this. We live this. Now ABC and ‘nem are interested and they’ve made Steve Harvey their mother-bleepin’ expert.
*sigh* *smh* *watching anyway*
These reporters have assembled these successful black women in these major metros to ask why they are not finding their husbands. (That’s an asshole question if I ever heard one.) They blame it on the number of black men in their age group, 25-40, who are in prisons, already married or gay. These women have in their minds a list of qualities and requirements that the man for them should possess and they don’t want to deviate.
As a black woman in this age group, with a degree, I say to that, I am not ready and neither are a lot of these women. Go on. Let it rip. Tell me how I don’t know you and that we’re two different people and now I don’t KNOW you “like that.”
Yea, this is all very true, but, look deep inside, search within yourself and tell me are you ready? Are you ready to accept the fact that your Mr. Right may not be chocolate dipped? Are you ready to be concerned with someone else other than yourself? Are you ready to do the work of making an adult relationship work? Are you ready to make sacrifices in the name of a mate? Are you ready to start ripping down those emotional walls you spent a lifetime building? Are you ready to expose your vulnerability to the man you’re dating?
If the answer to any of those questions are “no,” then you aren’t ready either. OK, check it, a lot of us have been single for a long time. So long that we don’t even know how to act on a date. (Yea, I said it.) Because you go out with a man a few times or because you have sex, it doesn’t mean you’re in a relationship.
Until you and the man you are seeing sit down to have a serious, adult conversation about where your acquaintance is headed. Until you all decide, “I don’t want to date or sleep with anyone but you.” Until you have the, “this is what I hope to gain from this” conversation, you are not, I repeat NOT in a relationship.
What you have is an arrangement that you “hope” will lead to something more as opposed to doing the real work to move toward a lasting healthy relationship. (Hope in one hand and DO in the other and see which one fills up first.)
This is a very gray area that so many of us get caught up in and we stay there because it’s comfortable. It’s comfortable because you have all the pros (and cons) of being in a relationship with no real commitment. We say we want it, but we’re not ready to deal with the real, everyday, ordinary type shit that relationships are made of.
We want to stay in the honeymoon, dating phase of relationships where we’re talking to each other several times a day about nothing. We want to be going out to restaurants and concerts and movies and shit forever. We want to not have any disagreements because you don’t want to show him just how bitchy you can be.
That, ladies (and gentlemen), is bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bulllllllll-shit! You need me to spell it for you? B-U-L-L. Shit!
You need for your man to know you as well as or better than your girls. To do that, you have to take a sledgehammer to those emotional walls and let him in. You need to show him who you are at your worst. If you sleep in a head rag, let him know that shit up front. If you like to cut your toe nails and eat ‘em, let him know that, too. That way, you give the brother options.
Sidenote: If you like to cut your toe nails and eat them, being ready for love is the least of your problems.
All I’m saying is let’s be honest about the situation. Yes, you are lonely. Yes you want a man of your own. Yes you want him to be the man you marry and probably have his children.
Just ask yourself if you are ready to let him in and introduce the real you, warts and all and possibly fall flat on your ass. It could happen, it could not happen. That’s the risk you take.
Love is not all roses and candy and kisses. There’s some weeds and broccoli and hurt feelings in there too. You’ve got to be ready and willing to take it all.
Am I ready? Hell no, but I already told you that. Pay attention!
