“Why did you pick the woman you are with, when there are much more eligible women aching for a man like you?”
I took a deep breath when I presented this question to one of the handful of guy friends that will tell me anything I want to know – no holds barred – about their perspective on relationships.
It was a huge risk. Through him, I had become friendly with his girlfriend and he could have easily told her I was all but designating her as a deadbeat.
But I just felt like I needed to know why he passed over his steady rotation of “regulars” and decided to settle down with her.
She was the least attractive physically, had the baggage of two children and was essentially unemployed. Her livelihood was the monthly child support that she collected from her children’s fathers – yes, plural.
But somehow she had nabbed an extremely eligible, educated man with his own everything – and ambition to boot.
“Why her?” I asked.
“Why not her?” he replied.
I listed what I believed worked against his girlfriend, and he looked at me with a blank stare. Then he went in on me like I had seriously insulted his manhood.
“Every chance you get, you ask me why you don’t have a man and why none of your ‘successful’ (yes, he put his fingers in quotations on me) friends do, when right now it is utterly obvious.”
I thought I knew where he was going with his jab. I assumed he was going in the direction of “y’all are so busy chasing Prince Charming that you run past the gatekeeper who may not be as eligible, but is available,” but I was dead wrong.
Instead, he began expressing how our “eligibility scale” is systematically flawed and we deserved to be single simply because of the way we weighed the options of the men that we deem ideal mates.
“When my car broke down, the woman who would become my lady gave me a ride while the other women I was dating talked about what kind of car I should get,” he said.
“She also instantly welcomed my daughter into her family, while the others assumed that there would be some kind of ‘baby mama’ drama and decided to see where this was going before they attempted to get involved.”
As he presented his few and far between bouts with life’s speed bumps, I realized that I would have reacted in the same way as the women he passed over.
“She might not have a job, but she never hesitated to offer up what she had in our purse as OURS and with NO expectation,” he said.
I was wowed, but I had to bring up that he would be even further towards what other people deem the American Dream if she had an ounce of professional ambition.
“With the money you make, she wouldn’t even have to bring home $10,000 anything annually for y’all to be a six-figure power duo,” I said.
“I’m not saying she’s perfect,” he conceded. “She does need to get herself together from a professional standpoint. But it’s a small price to pay. You mentioned all of these reasons why someone else would be better, but she is the most generous and caring of them all.”
I realized that while I brought up who had the most bang in his rotation – from booty to bank account – I had never even factored in the heart of the woman that he should choose.
If I had done so with him, then I’ve most certainly done it in my own life. As a matter of fact, I know I have … and I know I’m not alone.
