Thanks, CH for pic of this American serviceman and his girlfriend.
They look so content to be with each other. It’s great to see people looking like this these days. LOL
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Recently received the note below from a reader, who is wrestling with a quite different human experience.
She thinks she has lost at love, but she hasn’t lost anything worth having. It never existed, except in her mind. A delusion. I shudder though at the 5+ years of precious womanly time she invested with this male. Whew! Since I wanted to do a post, I decided to write a response to her note and feature it here as a ‘slice-and-dice,’ of how failure-prone thinking directs lives towards failure, in the hopes that my analysis may be of service to others.
No person deserves to be treated like this. We were born noble, to be treated nobly, with respect, but failure-prone thinking will always invite predatory people and situations into our surroundings and make them comfortable around us.
We should all know that on the securing-a-quality-romantic-relationship front, 5 years of time for a woman is like 15 for a man because the reality is that there’s a shrinking pool of quality men available for women as we age. Blame it on evolutionary wiring and the life cycle, but the fact is that lots of men are surface-oriented, looking for younger women. There are CQLL men for women of all ages, but the reality is that the pool shrinks as we get older. Life is fair to the extent that
the shrinking pool applies to men and women. I’ve found that though women age superficially, they generally improve in important ways (maturity, wisdom, temperament, skills, and sometimes appearance) as they age. I think this is true of some men too. I don’t think that most smarter, older men are looking for a 20-something women for commitment. Women at that age are largely immature in important ways, especially during their early 20s. They are not who they will become. Typical younger males are the same way.
I think this is a good time to mention that on the romantic relationship front, life is not a bowl of cherries for many men over 45 either, but no one ever talks about the details of that. Lol Since this is a PG-13 site, hope I don’t need to spell that out. American society is so youth-oriented until many younger people don’t have a clue about what occurs to any of us during the human life cycle. This is another reason why I stress to women, especially bw–who are fed all kinds of cockamammie notions: Do NOT allow anyone to waste your youth on what THEY think is important for YOU! Wake up. Use the bulk of your time, energy, and other resources to secure what’s important to YOU, and maybe share what you have left over, if anything, with others. I believe in sharing and being of service to others but never at the expense of becoming a self-sacrifice.
I know that some non-blacks read my site and wonder why I continue to TELL bw this, lol, but this is simply a common sense message that most black American women NEVER hear from those around them in their social circle, family, or community. It is not an aspect of black American culture. Black women who do look out for their common, normal interests are often criticized to the max by other black Americans and accused of being selfish, stingy, gold-diggers, cruel, delusional, “not really black,” or the mother of all epithets: “acting white.” Lol
I’ve been called all of these and a lot worse.
Geez, if only the note-writer had ended this charade of a relationship sooner! You can call me whatever you like, but you’ll never be able to call me dumb and make it stick. I didn’t come from the school that taught me to give a man a chance to waste my time (the most important commodity), use me, mess over me, leave me empty-handed and emotionally wrecked. There are simply too many noble, quality men in the world, all over the world, but you’ll never meet them if you’re going to allow any user to keep you in a dead-end relationship for more than a minute. A man who has the right stuff will SHOW you that he’s the one in a relatively short time, depending on the situation. And if he can’t do that, then he’s not ready for a relationship. YOU move on! But as I’ve advised, while he may be trying to move things into place in his mind, heart, and life to do this, a woman should be at least talking and fluttering like a butterfly with other men, so that she won’t fixate on any one of them–until the right time.
The woman below GAVE this male the time to do what he did to her; he didn’t take it.
But my key message to her at this point is: Even when you think you’ve lost, do NOT lose or forget the lesson.
Smart women may lose sometimes, but they NEVER or forget lose the lesson.
Excitement, bewilderment, disappointment are a part of the usual sequence of life as we go through life experiencing people, places and things. The problem is that most people are not prepared for this. Instead, they’ve gotten the erroneous message from their family, social circle, community, society, etc. that life is going to be a happy, dreamy experience. No one tells them that life is primarily a mental experience, full of awesome, moldable opportunities, but at the same time, a large chunk of life follows the rocky sequence of excitement-bewilderment-disappointment–for everyone, at least SOME of the time. No one avoids that. We all experience that sometimes. We all pay for what we get. There are always consequences.
My oldest son said that one of the most important lessons I taught him and his brother early in life was that most of life is boring--that is, IF they chose to look at moments of life that way. I used to tell them that because I saw that so many kids and young folks seemed to think that the world was going to fall apart if they said they were bored. Lol I pointed out to my sons that with all of the unexplored nooks and crannies of life, only people with the smallest minds (the utterly stupid) got bored and that telling people they were bored was the same as admitting that their brains weren’t up to par. LOL That sunk into my sons’ brains and the word “bored” dropped out of their vocabulary. They developed the self-agency to explore and keep themselves engaged.
Anyway, this reader’s note is an example of the many reasons I stress VETTING so much. It prevents many of life’s dips, dives, disappointments, and pain. Numerous disappointments in relationships could be prevented if people got still and vetted ruthlessly because people always give you signs (as the man did with my reader) or even sometimes tell you who they are. However, in her excitement to enter that happy, dreamy state that she’d been programmed to expect, she ignored the signs.
Below, her note is in red italics and my response is in bold black. I know, I know some black American folks will consider my response to be hard-hearted, lacking in compassion, judgmental, and even cruel. LOL I don’t know whether this woman is a black American woman, but this is a typical experience of many black American women. I know of various situations similar to this, offline, right now, and have known of others throughout my life. This is exactly why so many black American women are in the cauldron today. They’ve unfortunately been very effectively programmed to believe they are supposed to be ultra-compassionate, soft-hearted, long-suffering, sympathetic, empathetic, tolerate all kinds of non-reciprocal cr@ppy behavior from men and from the black community and to give-a-man-a-chance to smear doo-doo on them. Most of these women think it’s normal to allow men to do this to them, so they then don’t have a clue as to why they end up empty-handed, used, and abused–time after time!
Some women of all groups allow this, of course, but I’m referring here to the primary mode of thinking and behavior of too many black American or similar black women who have been spoon-fed failure-prone thinking. Just look at the overall picture. This is one of the main reasons.
As a matter of fact, I shared this sad note yesterday with a black American male pal of mine from yesteryear and when I told him my response (below), he smugly told me that I may as well face it that the vast majority of black American women are not ever going to escape the madness. He went on to say I don’t think like them because I’m smart (his word) and not a real black-American woman. SMH! Well–GOOD! I’m a proud ole-school black American woman from a time and place that taught me that it’s got to be “On-Par RECIPROCITY, or NOTHING.” I can’t afford otherwise.
Why is it that this kind of common sense thinking is NOT associated with black American women these days?
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Hi Eve,
I’ve been following your website Black Female Interracial Marriage for quite some time. It seems you are such a big proponent of good loving interracial relationships in which the partners benefit each other.
I met and married an Asian man 8 years younger than myself. He is now 43. I am 51. After five years of marriage I discovered this past March that he had been cheating on me with a 22 year old girl who is also black for almost a year.
This can happen sometimes to any woman.
He claimed he did it because we had got into a terrible fight sometime last year over what he was doing with money. [Manipulation! His “cheating” had nothing to do with you.] See before we met he had got out of prison a year earlier [In prison? Yikes! You should have ended this as soon as you found out he was an ex-con! A man who has spent time in prison can’t offer much of anything worth having to a woman who wants to live a quality life because his prison record is going to follow him, forever.] he was working even got a CDL license so that he could drive trucks but then he moved to be with me [I would never allow an EX-CON to move to be with me, unless I’ve become suicidal.] and for years could not find a job because no one would hire him. [Please tell me this didn’t surprise you.] He started gambling because he felt it was the only way he could make money without going back to doing what he was doing to get him put in prison. [He told you this to manipulate you and win your sympathy. A man doesn’t have to gamble to make money. Nor does he need to commit ANY crimes. So many men commit crimes and then blame it on society when the fact is that these males don’t have the DISCIPLINE and/or INTELLECT to secure or create employment. They have rotten VALUES.]
Nevertheless he put me in a financial hole because I was taking care of everything. [Well, DUH! This is why he moved to be with you. He needed a meal-ticket, a roof over his head, and some “foot-rubbing,” while he gambled.
And If you were mainly with him because you needed to believe in love or needed “foot rubs,” both of which are human needs, I realize,–but you didn’t need to pay for that.]
Anyway, we had a huge fight and I put him out. He said it made him reevaluate our relationship [Manipulation] but instead of changing for the better he started a relationship with this girl he met while driving cabs. Yes. I was upset at the cheating but I was even more upset that he would try to start a relationship with a bipolar hooker… [Hope you’ve gotten yourself tested?!!] Yes. The girl is a prostitute. On top of that, he called himself trying to help the girl find a job and get on her feet. He was even giving her money. [Wow! Became a ‘social worker’ and paid for her “services” with your money! He has NO respect for you to tell you this.]
I put him out again but after a few weeks talked about fixing our marriage and trying to make it work. [This is normal. Many people do this. Research shows that the more time a person invests in a relationship, the longer they tend to stay–in order to get a return on their investment. This is why I believe in vet, vet, vet and get out as soon as possible if I don’t find at least the basics of what I need.] Well…about two months ago, he started spending a lot of time away from home claiming that he got mixed up with some people and he didn’t want to bring any craziness into my life. [Manipulation] But whatever he’s doing he is making money [Scary!] and making efforts to help pay back the money that he feels he owes me. So last month he moved out supposedly because of what he’s involved in. He said to give him 6 months to a year to get himself together. [I would try to disappear if I were you. This is your chance to get away! Use it.]
Today, he tells me that he definitely won’t be moving back because he’s not in love with me anymore (which stemmed from me putting him out after that big fight a year ago) and he’s no longer romantically attracted to me. [You are allowing this EX-CON to smear a pile on you!] I did gain weight but not much. I weighed 147 when he met me. I am currently 164 but I still look great and continue to wear nice clothes. I am also in the process of loosing the weight (I had reached 180 lbs most likely from stress-eating)
[I would NOT be trying to lose weight or ever worry about looks to appeal to a petty EX-CON. It might interest you to know that many men and women in loving relationships take an active role and interest in what the other is consuming/eating because we know that too much of the wrong foods kills people these days. We want to keep each other around for a long time in good health. We also encourage each other to exercise and stick to a fitness regimen or we work it into our lifestyle to work out together. This is one of the ways that a committed relationship/marriage increases longevity and satisfaction in life. We ENCOURAGE each other. I’ve participated in this in both of my marriages.
Both of my husbands have always told me how good I look to them. (I might be very unattractive but the men I’ve mingled with and married have told be quite the opposite.) They’ve also enjoyed having the fitness plank in our relationship and instead of tearing me down when I’ve gained weight, they’ve told me how appealing I am to them or at least never said anything negative about the way I look. Darren’s flattering words frequently let me know he appreciates my appearance and my fitness regimen and likewise, I love it that he, too, is very fitness conscious. A loving man can be a vital part of helping a woman to feel desirable, loved, and appreciated because human beings are social animals whose feedback from others play a part in how one views oneself. This is why YOU should ONLY mingle with others who view YOU as valuable, lovable, desirable, and worthy.]
I had also cut my hair into a tiny afro about two years ago (my hair was always natural but when he met me I was wearing wigs)
[Not exactly sure why you’re mentioning this. Your lesser weight and your previous hairstyle didn’t stop him from cheating on you. Your weight gain apparently didn’t stop him from eating the food you put on the table. It didn’t cause him to move out from under your roof after he moved in with you. So why is your hairstyle of any significance? You’ve fallen for his manipulation. You’re trying to blame yourself for the way he’s treating you. You did allow it but you did not make him what he is. He was shaped to be who he is–long before you met him. Don’t take anything he says or did to you ‘personally’ because he would treat ANY woman who allowed it–the same way. Some men are just like this. No good!]
Anyhow, I feel very upset with myself. During our marriage, I stopped all the things that I used to do because I threw myself into my marriage.
I feel lost and don’t know what to do. I have no close friends in the area who’s shoulder I can go cry on. I feel like I can’t get over him.
[You were simply having a delusion! That’s all he is. He’s not real. You didn’t have an actual relationship.You’ve got to tear yourself out of the delusion.]
No I feel like no matter where I go….No matter what I do I always seem to attract men who always take my kindness for granted.
[No one has cast a spell on you. YOU allowed this. Apparently, you deliberately overlook obvious defects and shortcomings in males. You need to get help or do some in-depth reading (tons of books on Amazon about this) and spend the time to go inside yourself. Do the work and figure out why or you will continue to repeat this pattern. This man was very obvious, based on what you’ve said. He didn’t con or trick you. He did manipulate you, but even a person’s children or parents will sometimes try to manipulate them if they ‘allow’ it.]
What can I do? Where can I go to meet a man who knows how to treat a woman like a queen? Especially when that woman treats him like a king?
[Do the work on yourself, FIRST. You need to drop the ‘queen’ and ‘king’ jargon because that colors your thinking. We are all just regular human beings, with flaws. The trick is to find a compatible, loving man who brings enough to your table to make it worth your while to accept his flaws, as he equally accepts yours. Being an ex-con is way more than a flaw; it’s a dead end. If he were a wealthy, influential ex-con ( and IMO a whole lot depends on why he was in prison in the first place???) or someone who had a viable network, that may have been different. But he didn’t have anything going for himself. I stress CQLL (compatible, quality, loving, lovable). This man was obviously NOT compatible, quality, or loving.
Do the work on yourself FIRST and learn how to VET men and break this failing pattern because we all tend to repeat patterns in our lives. Make sure that your patterns are ones that lead toward UPLIFT or at least, not toward failure. You CAN do this. Don’t lose this critically important lesson, or you will repeat it!]