Playing Your Game, Baby

Okay, I have been hearing some rather "out there" comments about men, particularly AFRICAN-AMERICAN men, and their inability to commit and treat the sisters right. I have heard the statistics, the war stories, the rants, the banter, the semantics, the whole deal, and I believe that there is much more to this issue than is being expressed. I believe that there are a FEW layers to the "single and looking" (black) woman that are rarely being mentioned, but they STILL have a very valid bearing on the general outcome. Since I am dealing with both BLACK and MAN in this situation, I will be enlisting the help of both Gender Defender AND Race Defender.

Since I can almost hear the torches lighting up already, let me say this up front: there are quite a few men out there who are imbeciles. The game-players, the dogs, the liars, the “lead-ons”, the cockhounds, the moochers, and the like ALL exist in today’s society. These men have left an uncomfortable feeling in the belly of the American female. These guys use sincerity-layered tactics to accomplish insincere objectives. They not only destroy the woman’s outlook on men in general, but they also make it difficult for a good man to SHOW a woman that he’s good, because he finds himself in a state of always having to prove himself. The fakes who mimic, no MOCK, a good man’s mannerisms to gain himself a ticket make it a struggle for those who want to be loved and those who aspire to love them. For that, I wish to publicly denounce this behavior and censure these men for these “performances”. Take a bow, scumbags.

Also, let me state, on however many records you put in front of me, that there is nothing sexier than the black woman. No offense to women of other races, but for my blood, the African-American woman is the greatest thing walking. I could go on and on about the reasons why, but I will leave that for another blog.

Now that we’ve got that out the way…
*enter Gender Defender and Race Defender*

*Race Defender approaches mic*
There are quite a few situations in which men are unfairly given the short end of the shaft. First off, let’s throw all statistics out the window, because as we know, we can mock up statistics to show whatever we want. The way I see it, the issues that are stopping women from these relationships that they desire are just like the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa:

• Umoja (Unity)
  
• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
  
• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
  
• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
  
• Nia (Purpose)
  
• Kuumba (Creativity)
  
• Imani (Faith)
  

I got to thinking about this at work today, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I know, I know, I gotta explain myself. I’d be happy to…

Umoja (Unity) – Method Man once said “we can all get by if we unify”. It seems, sometimes, as though black men and women just can’t seem to be on one accord when it comes to relationships. The general societal outlook that has been painted about the desire to be in relationships seems to give women the proverbial short end of the stick. The women want a relationship, but the men don’t. The women treat the man right, but the man can’t appreciate it. The woman wants exclusivity, but the man fears commitment. The woman seeks stability, but the man wants freedom. These generalizations can lead to people wanting to step outside their race or just give up on love altogether, forming the framework for the other reasons. Most times, the problem is in two people not being on one accord and being happy.

There is also an impaired sense of unity as it related to African-Americans dealing with relationships. Black women just have this built-in mechanism to write off the black man, thinking that switching over to different races is an immediate cure-all. Being a MAN, first of all, but also being a BLACK man, I can say that’s just not true. Yea, yea, yea, I know. White men “love harder, “are more committed”, blah, blah, blah. Again, dogs exist in all creeds and colors, so stop this twisted logic of thinking that the black man has some sort of relational taint upon him. I’ve seen and heard more people go on black man strike (or go lez) than I care to admit. It’s like they come in, date a few black men, have a few bad experiences, then wanna throw their hands up and give up on the whole thing. There’s PLENTY OF BLAME to go around, if that’s what this is all about, so y’all can hit the kill switch on that.

Let’s take a peek at the flip side of that coin. Let’s say there’s a GOOD black man that says that he can’t find a good black woman. He’s been trying for years, but for one reason or another, they don’t pan out. When he talks to women about his predicament, and they say ‘give it time/there’s a good black woman out there, you just gotta take time to find her/keep being you/don’t change for anybody’. After hanging in there for a bit more, he has a few more bad dating experiences with black women who he believed were ‘good’, but after “losing faith in the black woman”, he goes out and dates a white woman. Now, you’ve got a bunch of black women hatin’ on him for stepping out (think that scene from Save the Last Dance). Just like there are good men who pass on good women, there are good women who pass on good men.

The point of this: IT’S NOT A RACE ISSUE!!! There are GOOD men of all races like there are BAD men of all races. STOP PAINTING THE BLACK MAN OUT TO BE SO BAD IF HE IS ALL YOU KNOW!! Yea, from the outside in, we can embrace all the positives of another group of people without having dated them. This is about MEN and WOMEN! If your goal is to be with a black man, then stick to black men. It makes no sense to entertain a group of people that are not your preference just so you can be in a relationship. Yea, there’s the “well, I can learn to love him”, but what if you can’t? (Black) women seem to be so up on their time and not wanting it wasted, so how do you know that making this “power move” won’t end up being a waste of time?

Sure, I’m nobody to say something will or won’t work (do you, boo boo), but the same rosy outlook you have about making this move is the same rosy outlook you can have about sticking to your guns and making your current situation work! If you go to another race or gender, you’ll STILL have that tainted relational history, so really, what’s changed but the calendar? [facetious]Black women, let’s get together. If you WANT US, act like it and stop running (see how easy it is to point blame?)![/facetious] As with ALL relationships, finding the “right one” (notice, not the PERFECT ONE) for you takes TIME. If you’re not about working for it and putting in time, then you won’t get it. Get your head in the game or get in the bleachers. Let’s get off this “I’m independent” and “I don’t need you/I’ll find something better than you” mindset. It’s very confrontational and will serve to separate more than unify.

Yea, I would love to stop saying the black woman, but since the black woman’s tirade seems to direct itself towards the black man, I will not refrain from addressing the black woman.

*Race Defender sits down, Gender Defender approaches mic*

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) – This reason, I would say is not so much self DETERMINATION as much as it does self HONESTY and self CONTROL. I have been sandblasted by quite a few women over some poems that I’ve written that have posed the female POV as being a bit overbearing and excessive. When presented with these pieces (which I guess I’ll post in another blog) and asked if the woman was wrong, I got my butt chewed. I was told about how out of line I was to ask, how men only see things as black or white/this or that, and how emotions can’t be pinned down like giving instructions on how to put together a coffee table.

While I agree that logic cannot be placed side-by-side with emotion and expect it to make sense. However, anybody who knows me knows that I feel a GREAT deal, and there is passion behind my reasons. The main point I was trying to make in the poems (aside from scrapbooking true events in my life) was that there are times when women need to keep their emotions in check. I believe that if a man should exercise self-control to keep his thing in his pants, a woman should exercise self-control to keep her emotions in check. I once heard a story about a particular woman who caught feelings for a guy after the FIRST PHONE CONVERSATION! She apparently had a blast during this conversation, but when he didn’t call the next day, she freaked out and accused him of playing games with her. This situation, though rather extreme, has NOTHING to do with logic at ALL. This was about a woman (a tender, innocent victimized black woman) who got her feelings involved TOO EARLY and brought hurt upon herself. Why don’t issues like THIS ever leave the lockdown of girlfriends’ conversations? How are situations like this allowed to exist under the radar?

Also, while I’m on this, there seems to be another issue of emotions creating fogs and smoke. By this, I mean that due to the interactions that the two people share, the woman will get with a subpar guy who gets her emotions riled up, and from there, her emotions paint a pretty picture that distracts her from the horrid reality she actually exists in. While yes, the game players that were mentioned earlier should be castrated for such selfish and irresponsible behavior, the woman should exercise emotional control of HERSELF to see things as they are actually happening, instead of focusing on “making something out of nothing” and “seeing potential”. I’ve heard many stories from black women about how they feel they can correct undesirable attributes or “change” a man to “make him see” what could be if he would change. Then, when he decides not to change, the woman feels like her time was wasted, and her emotions would go off into a corner and feel victimized. The world would enable this behavior by coddling her until she’s been able to lick her wounds clean, only to be distracted by another cute song and dance.

Is this to say that all black women are drones that will leap at just any pretty picture? Of course not. What I AM saying, though, is that in the instance that a woman’s emotions are getting the best of her (or she knows that her emotions CAN do that to her) SHE needs to get her thing in order to save HERSELF, instead of beating down on other people to keep themselves away so she can be as emotionally careless as she wants. Then again, men aren’t allowed to be victims, so there may be no win to that.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) – This one is a real chin scratcher, because the issue that is being spoken is the black woman’s responsibility in failed relationships. Whenever a relationship or a relationship item goes right, she is QUICK to make herself a part of it and HAPPY to be in that number. When a BAD aspect is addressed, it seems that black women are QUICK to finger point, making everyone but them a part of not only the problem, but the solution as well. It’s always “he didn’t want this” or “he didn’t do that” or “he did so-and-so to me”. I’ve looked at the black woman’s rampant avoidance of rejection, and part of it seems to me that it comes from them not wanting to be the one at fault or the one denied.

This factor also comes into play when a woman has been in a series of failed relationships. She will deal with multiple men over a period of time (be in months, years, whatever), and because those independent relationships failed, she wants to throw away the WHOLE lot. The fact of the matter is this: if you deal with a series of men who have NOTHING TO DO with each other (the only thing they share are genitals and skin color), then the only common factor is YOU. You can say all the men were alike, but how did YOU treat them? Many times, society looks at things the opposite way (again, men not being allowed to be victims), and wag the finger at the man for what he did to make a woman feel a certain way. What they neglect to look into is how a woman treated a series of men to make them respond. If you see that people seem to treat you a certain way, then you need to look into what it is that you’re doing to create this pattern of behavior.

The reason all this comes under responsibility is because they will insulate themselves while throwing darts at everyone else. Hell, if I believed I was never wrong (which I have felt before), I wouldn’t change anything about me, either. The problem, though, is that if I refuse to change, I can’t whine about running into the same circle of problems. For example, with the problem I stated earlier about people catching feelings for me, I was told that I should look at MY interactions with these women and if the result is not what I want, I need to look inside and see what needs tweaking, instead of always looking for someone ELSE to change and spare me the internal mechanics.

I think this problem has gotten so bad that rarely will a woman “admit” that there is a problem on her end of the pool without sucking men into the boat. For example, if a man were to say black women were too pushy about wanting commitment from a black man, they might counter with “well, we wouldn’t be that way if more black men were willing to commit!” Right there, the woman never really admitted any brand of fault, but rather used herself as a vehicle to blame him. Too often, a black man is shot down after voicing any brand of a dissenting opinion with the infamous “yea, but see, what you don’t understand is…” , or will hear him out due to obligation, waiting for him to finish to continue pushing her agenda. I feel that too often, black men find themselves in defense mode against all the mud CONSTANTLY being slung our way. Not a good luck.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) – This one I will gear towards relationship/relational investments. Too often, I have found that there is not only a skewed proportion in the gender-based investments on some levels, but there is a lack of COMMUNICATION. There will be times when little things will mean so much to a woman that she begins to overinvest in the relationship. If you compound this with the fact that the woman doesn’t TELL him that this is happening, you have a recipe for disaster.

It’s been said that a listening ear is the sexiest thing to a woman. Let’s paint up a scenario. Let’s say you have two friends of opposite genders, and the woman has a problem that she wants to share? The guy will of course listen and console her as needed. As the woman may have other things she chooses to want to talk about, he will of course be there for her as he can, because this is what friends had the capacity to do, as I was told. What happens when the woman sees this man as a gentle ear and a comforting soul, and she begins to RELATIONALLY invest in a future with him without telling him? She calls him, she wants to spend time with him, and just exudes extra amounts of positivity towards him, but she doesn’t come right out and SAY it, on account of fear of rejection. ‘Tis better to assume and float along, eh? Then, when she finally wants to MOVE on all she’s invested, she gets the good ol’ “let’s be friends” deal. She’s broken and retreats.

I notice that for one reason or another, black women seem to invest a LOT very quickly when a good man comes along. I don’t know if it’s a thing of wanting to move on it before others have a chance to or an emotional whirlwind or “him painting a picture” or biological clocks or what, but a lot gets pumped into him in a short amount of time. Yes, it’s true that men don’t like to be rushed, but trying to rush on the slick is even worse. There should be some sort of reciprocation to the investment. It’s kinda like when your parents would give you so much of a food you really liked for dinner, and before you started eating, you would tell them that the portion they gave you is not enough. They would say “finish what you have there, and you’ll get more.” Reciprocation: you are fed as you eat. Don’t just keep dumping food on a plate before someone says they’re making their way to the table! I think this leads me to my next point:

Nia (Purpose) – If there was one thing that bothered me most about black women who want a relationship, it’s this factoid right here. There just seem to be so many women who want the relationship before they want the person. What I’m about to tell you is a REAL story that happened to me:

I meet a young lady online. We exchange online notes and later exchange phone numbers. We have a few phone conversations, which go pretty well and spark our interest in getting to know one another. We had tried to meet up on a couple occasions, but we couldn’t sync up with one another (we lived in different cities at the time, but now live in different states). Some things come up on her end, however, and she doesn’t call anymore. She’ll entertain my phone calls, but for one reason or another, she wouldn’t call me (though she constantly said she wanted to and how she wanted to get to know me). After a while, I stopped calling.

Out of the blue one day, she calls me, apologizes for not calling, and she gives me her reasoning for not calling. I understood and forgave, and I wanted to know what her plans were. She still wanted to get to know me and spend some time. She was still excited about the possibility of meeting me, and we hammered out a date to meet. We continued to talk, but still not feeling totally comfortable that today was “a new day in us”, I asked why she still wanted to “get to know me” (her exact term, not mine) after all this time. She gave me her reason, asked me the same question, and I gave her my reason. Later in the conversation, I hear the words “if I still have a chance…”

Thinking she was talking about a relationship, I questioned her more to give her the opportunity to come out and say that’s what she meant. Instead, I got a song and dance about how I took it the wrong way and that’s not what she meant to say. I came out and told her I am not looking for a committed relationship at the moment (faring honesty over assumption), and the gloves came off.

The same young lady then proceeded to flip the script and talk about how she’s passed her stage of “just being with people” and how she didn’t want to “talk to her girlfriends, not knowing what to call you” or not know who to introduce me as. She said she doesn’t want any “friends” and kept reaffirming her desire to be married and starting a family. I got the offensive “I’m sure there are SOME women who will do that, but that’s not me.” She would go on 20-minute rants from her POV, and then would interrupt me while I was in the middle of sharing mine. She called off the meeting, citing it would be a waste of time for her to come all this way to see someone who wasn’t open to the possibility of a relationship (even though she was coming in town during that time anyway). She cited Soledad O’Brien’s powerful 2-part documentary “Black in America”, which she (the young lady, not Soledad) said black women can’t find a good black man because “the good black men don’t wanna be in a relationship”. Mind you, this is all in the SAME phone conversation. The ranting diatribe continued, but I think you get the picture. We hung the phone up, and I’m sure I’ll never hear from her again, unfortunately.

Why did I tell you all this? Too often, I have encountered women who want relationships or the promise/agreement of one that they will totally factor out anybody who doesn’t want one. This, I believe, leads to black women shunning perfectly good relationship prospects who may not have a PROBLEM with relationships, but don’t want to be forced into thinking about one from the get-go. A relationship shouldn’t make you want a man; a man should make you want a relationship. Your biological clock will not increase your chances of finding a good man. Going into a relationship-only mode will not jump-start your search or landing of a good man. This is how people end up in unfulfilling relationships and marriages. They want the relationships so bad, that they get with people who are no good for them just so that they can jump from one statistic to another. I thought the goal in life was to be happy, not “being in a relationship/married will ensure your happiness”. A black woman on a CNN blog had this to say:

If a man makes one off the mark comment that’s it they don't want anything else to do with him or if he makes a little less than they do once again that’s it, the man doesn’t have a chance. My advice to single sisters is, there is no perfect man, so stop looking for him. No one is asking you to settle but come on ladies get real or get eternally lonely.

-vicki

This leads to another problem I have with people who “only date one person at a time”. First of all, I disagree with their definition of the word “date”, but that isn’t what this is about. It seems to boil down to these people having “friends”, and out of those “friends” they pick one person to “date”. Of course “dating” and going out on “dates” are two different things, but again, that’s not what this is about. This is about those people and the person of their choosing. They go balls-to-the-wall with that person with the expectation of a relationship, and if that doesn’t pan out, they start all over. What makes this different from going on a series of outings with different people, then becoming increasingly selective and extensive as time goes on until the choices are narrowed to one and one-dating isn’t my call, but the purpose is there. It was a rant, I know. I apologize.

Assumptions can be another byproduct of a misguided purpose, because when coupled with a fear of rejection, it’s more comfortable to hope things are going in accordance with your purpose than to put it all out there and get shot down. There was a time that I invited a female join me and mixed company to church and she thought it was a date. When times have gotten bad enough to where you can’t go to church without motives, there is a SERIOUS problem. In the situation I laid out earlier, I could have not said anything, took advantage of the situation, and gotten close to her, only to let her down later. All this would have happened because me not saying anything and just going along with it would have played into her assumed purpose. Things like this are another reason why COMMUNICATION IS KEY!

Good black men are out there, and trying to make him consider being with you before being given the chance to know you is only going to lead to your own unhappiness. I hate to say it and sound so cold, but things that are meant to be will be.

Kuumba (Creativity) – I was told that my problem of people catching feelings for me was predicated upon me doing too much and being available for too many people, and that I should limit certain parts of myself to a select group of people and of course, my most private parts to one person (no pun intended). I believe the same to be true for black women. Hold dear to the parts of you that you feel are delicate and special. Don’t let all your cats out the bag right off. Make people earn it. It is my belief that certain privileges SHOULD be held off for a relationship, and if people want those, then you gotta put in the work it takes to get there. It took a lot of nights of eating cake to teach me that, but I’m glad I learned it.

Those who really want a relationship with you will be inspired to dig deeper and want to connect with you on that level to experience it. Why show a reader the ending of a 400 page book on page 30? Why should they read the book? I say that unless the two people have ESTABLISHED that the story will be spoiled, let them either keep reading or put the book down. At the end of the day, that man should WANT a relationship with you and show you that HE wants it, not to let random actions allow you to perceive that he wants it. Men know how to do special things for people they deem special in their lives, and if he isn’t DOING those things, then what is leading you to give as you are giving? It means next to nothing to SAY someone is special. How are they SHOWING it? This should be the litmus paper for the color of your emotions, because if you aren’t getting based on what you’re giving, you’re giving too much.

I believe that all people who are in a relationship are gaining in some kind of way. Whether it’s love, money, sex, or even just being cheaper to keep her, everyone is getting something. Come to grips with what you’re actually getting out of the deal, and if it’s not enough or not what you want, you gotta switch it up (while being a good communicator). Like my man KRS-One says “don’t make a goal. BE the goal.”

Imani (Faith) – The last (and I feel a bit odd making it last) Nguzo Saba principle and which should be the most important. Any union that God does not co-sign on will not be, and we as believers should seek HIS clarity before anything. I see a lot of women pray that God will send them a good man, but they want to take into account that even God’s blessings take TIME.

The LAST person you wanna rush is God, but when something goes “wrong”, everyone on Earth gets blamed and the hurt gets divided amongst everybody but the only one who can really do anything to change it. Why? It’s more than likely because it’s not that serious. We, as believers, KNOW we are in no position to challenge God’s authority or God’s decisions (if things have changed in that aspect, please let me know). If we are to believe that God is the being that orders our steps for the betterment of our own spirit, then how in the world can we question something that we believe to be of His doing?

Also, what many people fail to realize is that failed relationships happen for a person. I have heard from many married couples that the relationships they had before their spouse helped to shape them into the person that God needed them to be to sync with the spouse that He sent them. There was one guy on CNN who said:

“If it had not been for my previous relationship before meeting my wife, and that woman being just like that woman was, I would not have been able to appreciate my wife. She taught me something. I was smart enough and mature enough, even though I went through HELL with that woman, to take the positive out of that. She taught me what I needed to know about MYSELF and what was necessary to sustain a relationship and to be married, because I KNEW I wanted to be married. I just knew that woman was not for me.”

-Mr. Kevin Reid

This gentleman is eloquence at its finest. All relationships in your life serve a purpose. The quicker you are to write a person or the positive experiences that a person can bring because they don’t work with your agenda. If they come into your life and expose themselves, then fine. However, if you have a relationship, that relationship is there for a reason. Stop grasping and holding on to the negatives and cherish the positives. Times change and PEOPLE change. No matter what it is, for us to grow and to know, we HAVE to change, and it takes FAITH to know that we are changing for the good. Not to say live without learning and remaining doomed to repeat cycles, but to keep living, keep smiling, and keep shining.

*Gender Defender sits down*

This is not a female poopfest, but you gotta take into account the side of this coin that few people want to address. The media seems to love glorifying the “men are selling these women short” aspect of the phenomenon of single black women, but rarely (if ever) address the other side. Yes, there are many areas where the black man can stand to improve, but unless the OTHER side of the coin is addressed just as much, there will be no progress. Deep down inside, we both see that we ALL have work to do.

-B