“I have a great idea for your column,” my mother said.
“It’s not my column,” I replied. “It’s supposed to be a vehicle to spark realistic dialogue about the black and single experience. I do most of the writing – but the experiences reflect a broad circle of us in ‘the struggle.’ Wait a minute … Is this an interview?”
Was I being a smart mouth? Absolutely.
Before Black & Single began its run, she couldn’t tell me who or what I wrote about if her life depended on it – so I make her pay by being difficult when she regularly offers her two cents. She has come to expect it.
“Here we go … Okay, just listen. You should do something about women who have settled,” she said. “I know, you’ve written about how women will have to, but what about talking to women who have settled for less than and the stuff that comes out of that.”
“The mother” (how my sisters and I address her, believe it or not) had an excellent point.
She proceeded to tell me for days about her “friend” who is educated with personal and professional credentials. The friend just made up her mind that in order to be with somebody she couldn’t impose the same expectations as she does upon herself.
She thought if she found a man with a good job that seemed to be a good person who cared about her, it would be enough to fill the empty spaces in her heart and everything else would fall into place. So, she did.
Well, it was all good until she learned that he was a repeat drunk-dialer who talked crazy after a few sips and was even more agitated when she didn’t entertain one of his jealous rants.
Is he an alcoholic? No. But every so often, she has to deal with being awakened by midnight rage with accompanying “hot texts” that all but lay the blueprint for an imaginary infidelity she is in the throes of with some other man.
Why does she stay? Because she believes that while the hiccups in their relationship is inconvenient, it trumps being by herself.
Okay, y’all can go ahead and start the “just because a man who falls beneath the (unrealistic) standards you feel like you deserve doesn’t mean that he’s a drunken phone maniac!” choir.
But the fact is, if she could be with someone who didn’t cuss her out and act crazy after he leaves the club – she would.
She doesn’t put up with his behavior because she loves him so much and the positives outweigh the negatives. She tolerates him because she would be alone if she didn’t. She’s dating in wait – still looking for “Mr. right” but tolerating “Mr. he’s cool as long as he ain’t on that brown” in the meantime.
One of my closest friends dated someone who was as sweet as he could be, but extremely lacking in book smarts, street smarts or any type of smarts whatsoever. At the time, he was an ASPIRING semi-professional athlete. She’s a doctor. She made it work by relying on friends and colleagues to chop it up with respect to healthy conversation on current events and the stresses of her job.
She wasn’t head-over-heels in love – even though he was – but he was comfortable and familiar.
It worked for several years. But when he turned 30 and was still actively pursuing his dream of playing in the NFL, the idea of not being able to make this man understand sealed the deal. That and the fact that she held a series of “conversation affairs” with men she actually could talk with and relate to.
However, for nearly a decade she just dealt with him because there wasn’t anyone better beating down her door.
Is this right, or even healthy? Come on, now. But it is the truth of what plenty of us face in our practice squad relationships that sometimes graduate into everyday life reality.
A brilliant man – whom I haven’t received clearance to name-drop – says that this systematic dysfunction will continue until we realize that the need for a shift in the paradigm of marriage and relationship concepts in the (broken) hearts of black women.
Hopefully, I’ll hear back from him so I can break down our discussion and drop some knowledge on y’all.
In the meantime, a “Thanks, Mama,” is in order.