So I was over at this great blog today. I’ve been following this girl because of her endless funny quips on Twitter, come to find out she has a blog where I can indulge in her mental chocolate cake constantly.
Today she wrote a blog post called
Men Who Think Their Shit Doesn’t Stink
that I encourage you to read if for no other reason than the comedic way in which she breaks it down. Here was my response:
How have I not ever been to your blog before? Do I just not get up early in the morning.
Let me be the first to say BRAVO. Then I’m gonna say something controversial, prefacing it with the fact that I am in full….
FULLL FUCKING AGREEMENT
with all that you have said, right down to the word SOME not all in reference to the black man.
Here’s my controversial piece. I know after some hard self reflection that it’s true of me, that I struggled with it, and that once I came to embrace it as truth, I started getting treated much better by men.
–> We women at some point, accept much worse than we deserve and THAT is how we get caught in these bad relationships. For some of us it takes one bad experience to ex-communicate the one type of man, for some it takes dozens.
It boils down to us being encouraged to believe in scarcity (no good black men, no black men period, take what you can get, we’re getting to old to be picky in finding a lifemate, you can’t get a good lover so if you find a man that’s good at sex, hold on to him at all costs, that sort of garbage), and men being raised to believe in abundance (you have plenty of time, *some* women are a dime a dozen, date a lot just to find out what you like and don’t like, you have a biological need to spread your seed, it’s natural, you can get an orgasm anytime, alone or not)
I just want to expand on that a little from my own experience.
As long as I can remember, two major themes have emerged in my quest for love.
The first theme was that someone who could truly love the way that I do, unafraid to give their whole selves over to the experience, giving actions and true bliss of love was rare, and I was going to have to take what I could get. Life taught me that lesson over and over again until I disagreed with that idea.
The second theme was that being a black woman (really, any type of woman, but this is especially pronounced in the black community) that my choices for a mate in a black man were small. And that if I was realistic, I had to choose from one of the following subsets:
- A Good but Boring Man who’d be a good husband but a bad lover, would not have an equal share in providing financially for the household, and not a friend at all,
- A Dog who I’d have an exciting time with sexually who was really good looking and exciting but would ultimately treat me horribly and break my heart,
- A hybrid of these two – someone serially polygamous, that is, while he was interested in me things would be great, but there was no way he could control his dick long enough for more than a few years or so,
- The One Night Stand – possible Baby Daddy material, but not good for much else, or,
- The Unavailable Man – great when he was around, but absent/unreachable/not affectionate most of the time
Being a quality girl, and a fiercely independent person, if there was a conscious choice to be made among the subset of men I could choose, it would be the Unavailable Man. Either he wasn’t physically around but was emotionally giving, was physically around but emotionally unreachable and/or unreadable, he was in some way technically still attached to his former lover, or some weird combination of these.
Until, once again, one day I said No.
My point is that I believe our limitations in love have to do with what we will accept. I think it boils down to self esteem (I’m not good enough or can’t compete for what I really want), belief (what you want doesn’t even exist in another human, despite mathematical probabilities and the fact that YOU were born), and as I alluded to before, the stories we form to shape our experiences as we grow up.
The thing is, we don’t get those pictures in our head alone. I believed in those 5 types of men, and that they were all that were available because I was fed that belief in my environment. Not only that, but as a woman, I was steered away from the notion of NO.
Don’t say no to sex or you won’t get it when you want it.
Don’t say no to this relationship because what if it’s the right, perfect one.
Don’t say no to being with this mediocre person because he may be as close as you can get.
Don’t say no to settling for less – just call it being realistic.
Screw that. I’ve waited this long to be happily married. If it means it takes me another three years to meet, have a relationship with and marry the person I want to be with, then I’ll wait those three years. If it never happens, then I’ll be happily single for life. I tried the route of settling to get married with my last serious relationship and guess what – I’m still single. And it’s not killing me.
I hope that the guy I’m seeing now will eventually be the One. I’m not hell bent on it, but I think we’d make a good match.
I haven’t emotionally or mentally decided that about him yet, I don’t feel like I know version 2.0 of him well enough to say. His big bonus point is the same as what could potentially be a flaw in our relationship, is the problem. The amount he has to be on the move or travel for work and other concerns meshes perfectly with my need for space, freedom and the need to lock myself and work intensely a few times a year.
But part of me, of course worries that I’ve chosen the unavailable man again. What’s different this time though, is that when he’s not physically here he makes himself available to me in other ways. And really, he could use the excuse of unavailability not to see me constantly, but he finds ways to overcome our conflict in schedules and we still see each other plenty for me.
At this point, I don’t care where it’s going with him or how long it lasts because he’s been instrumental in making me really look at and appreciate myself for who I am. If it’s not him, it’s certainly gonna be the next guy. And for the first time, I’m 100% okay with the fact that the guy I want, and have right now, may not be the one I have forever.
Because I’ve said no to the idea that he’s the only one like him out there…