Rethinking all the dating advice

I’m no dating expert. I have very little experience at it and I only enjoy it about half the time. However since dating is apparently a prerequisite to not becoming a cat lady (which would be really unfortunate since I don’t like cats) I occasionally partake in the ritual. But I, like so many of my black female counterparts, don’t go on enough dates to constitute an active dating life so I’m not really writing this post from personal experience. Despite the lack of an experiential foundation, perhaps something in this post can serve as a public service to my fellow date-starved females. 

 

They love to tease us with covers like this even though they know good and well that the statistical probability of 3 or more eligible attractive black men being in the same space is less than 0.069

Essence magazine, Soledad O’Brien and I have noticed that black women marry at an abysmally low rate. I can’t help but think that other than the fact that marriage worthy black men are as rare as unicorns and Chevettes that still run,  this low marriage rate could be due in part to bad dating advice that black women are perpetually given by well intentioned friends, family members, magazines, and televangelists. So I’m suggesting that black women take a moment to collectively rethink all of the dating advice we’ve been given. Perhaps it will give us a shot at not ending up in the 60% of black women who will never marry statistic, or at the very least it might help us to not end up on the couch watching the Sex in the City box set alone on a Saturday night (not that that doesn’t sound like a pretty awesome evening to me).

So here we go…….. dating advice we might want to rethink:

You can’t meet Mr. Right in the club

Maybe you can’t maybe  you can. Who am I to say…who is anybody to say….Just because you’re in the club doesn’t mean you’re a strumpet and just because that cute guy in the wire framed specs is in a club it doesn’t mean he’s a giggalo. Perfectly nice people go to the club. And if a nice girl, like I’m sure you are, is in a club, who’s to say that your Mr. Right isn’t right there with you geeked because the DJ just put on ”Brass Monkey” just like you are. Now I’m not advising women to go to the club with the intention of finding Mr. Right. But if you like going to the club, go to the club and don’t be afraid to do the Pee Wee Herman in the middle of the dance floor.  And if a nice guy happens to come over and tell your your Humpty Dance is like none he’s ever seen don’t just dismiss him because of where you met him. Lord knows black women can’t afford to just be dismissing people on random criteria like that.

 Online dating is just for losers and psychopaths

I have no experience with this, but I strongly believe that in about 5-10 years, once the stigma has finally worn off, online dating will be the primary mechanism for people to meet each other. Peoples lives are busy, and not everybody likes clubs, or has a lot of friends to set them up on blind dates or sees cute guys squeezing produce in the grocery store 1.  I think online dating has already caught on pretty well in the white community, but as soon as you mention online dating to most black women you get an immediate “Oh h*ll no!” Most of the reasons for their immediate dismissal make very little sense to me. For example I’ve been told “you don’t know what you’re getting when you meet someone online.” Hello, like you know what you’re getting when a guy introduces himself to you at the gas pump or even when a friend sets you up with someone. Okay so maybe a friend might be able to give an endorsement but, people can lie about their identity regardless of the medium they meet you in. Now I can’t promise you that the current crop of men on dating sites are not serial killers, husbands looking for someone to cheat with, or just super lame. For one thing hot eligible black men are in so much demand that most don’t really have to turn to dating sites unless they live in East Bucktussle or they have no game. But as the Internet continues to take over our lives and people start to spend a higher percentage of their life online it’s only natural that our dating habits will gradually shift to match our lifestyle. So go ahead and give online dating a shot. Once you sign up that’s one more non-lame person on the site.

Don’t go looking for a man…you need to wait on Mr. Right to find you

This isn’t entirely bad advice. But a lot of women have taken this advice to mean that they don’t have to get out there to meet people. Mr. Right is not going to just show up at  your door unless you’re looking to date the pizza guy. Get out of the house! Go to concerts and parties. Get a hobby like stripping. Even if the hobby is female centered you might make new friends which could result in invitations to go to parties and events in a different circle, which could mean NEW men to meet. And while you’re going to these events it wouldn’t hurt anybody if you flashed some cleavage turned up the sex appeal a notch, in an ultra classy way of course. Men are visual creatures. So keep the hair tight and carry some lip gloss. (I’m not one to advocate going overboard to meet guys…and I’m guilty of  letting the tresses go astray from time to time…but I’m also single so consider the source)

Don’t give it up on the first date

I’m just playing. It’s still probably not a good idea to give it up too soon. I’ll leave giving arbitrary guidelines on what point between initial eye contact and the honeymoon is the dividing line between Jezebel and wifey to Steve Harvey.

These are just some of the tips I’ve heard recently but I’m sure there’s much more bad dating advice swarming around in the cosmos keeping black women single all over America. And I’m sure I’ve been a victim of some of it myself. But you don’t have to take my advice either. If I had a clue about dating I’d probably be out somewhere now instead of in here typing a blog. But it definitely can’t hurt to adjust your approach if the way you’ve been doing things isn’t working. A wise 2 person once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. So let’s stop the insanity ladies!

1 seriously do black guys grocery shop???? I NEVER see cute black guys in the grocery store. This could be due in part to the demographics of my neighborhood. But even when I shop in other areas I rarely see a cute guy grocery shopping.

2  Since I have no idea who said that I have no idea whether this person was actually wise but for the sake of this post let’s assume the person who originated that quote isn’t an idiot

The dating minefield part I…Who should pay

I have been tragically remiss at updating my blog lately and to all who have been waiting with baited breath for my next entry I say breathe please! I really meant to post something but every time I sit down at the computer to type I wind up playing word games on the net. And to be perfectly honest it actually happened this time too. But I managed to type something between rounds.

At any rate today I want to touch on one of the many minefields in today’s world of dating.* In  a world where in a rapidly increasing number of cases women make more than the man they are dating who should pay for dates?

The old school had a simple solution to this conundrum**. The guy pays duh! But today it may not be so simple. It seems a little unfair for the guy to always bear the burden of financing activities when both people make money and both people have bills, especially in these tough economic times. But some guys still take pride in being able to treat their woman on an outing. But what happens when there’s a big financial imbalance leaning in the females direction. Should all dates be things the guy can afford? Is it emasculating for the woman to have to pay for the guy to do things that are outside of the guys budget? Do guys get offended when the girl offers to pay on dates? Should everything just be split fifty fifty? Should girls just avoid all of this and date up? (This of course is unrealistic for a lot of black women who want to date black men since we’d all be fighting for the same 11 available successful guys…but that’s another post entirely)

I suppose the answers to these questions vary from person to person. But it seems like it would be easier if there was some standard etiquette that everyone could follow just to make the whole process simpler. 

 I personally don’t think that getting to know someone should have to be a bank breaking process for either party. So I’m all for splitting the costs, either by going dutch or taking turns treating each other.  But a lot of guys don’t like to let the girl pay, at least not at first. Which I think is fine of course since letting the guy pay gives me an early gauge of  some of their personality traits. Are they generous, a cheapskate, the type that tries to impress you with their spending, financially responsible etc. Of course early dates aren’t necessarily always good gauges of future behavior since we all know we meet the representative.***

I’d love to get some feedback on this since I am one of the most clueless people around when it comes to dating and relationships.****

If only they were this easy to spot

 In the event that I don’t get any feedback I will make up my own list of rules. Maybe I’ll share them with the world in a future post.

 

 

 

 

*I think I might do a series on the dating minefield…but I might not…but in case I do this will be called part I

** Incidentally, somewhat against my will, I’m reading Steve Harvey’s book “Act Like a Lady Think Like a Man.” I wanted to find out what the fuss was about. I’m only on chapter 2 and in this chapter is the following sentence:

Know this: It is your right to expect that a man will pay for your dinner, your movie ticket, your club entry fee, or whatever else he has to pay for in exchange for your time.

Is the old school on to something here??? Perhaps my liberal approach to dating does more harm than good in that it doesn’t allow the man to fulfil his primal need to be the provider. Feedback on this would be helpful.  

***This is all pretty irrelevant for me at the moment since it’s rare that things get much further than the text messaging stage with the guys I meet these days.  But I figure I’ll get back into the swing of dating eventually and I need to know the rules of engagement when I do.

****This of course doesn’t always stop me from giving my opinions. (I do have a policy against giving actual advice though to avoid bearing the burden of guilt when things go wrong. Giving opinions is a much less guilt ridden alternative when you want to impose your will into the affairs of other peoples lives)

 

Trust in a Relationship

 

CAUTION: Can cause irreparable relationship damage if broken

Trust is the foundation upon which every healthy relationship is (or should be) built. Therefore, if you are a person who is unable to trust other people  that would make you fundamentally flawed in your ability to engage in a healthy relationship.* I could write a disertation on how the trust issue effects every single aspect of a relationship but this is a blog so I’ll try to narrow it down. I’ll just talk about how one shows their mate that they trust them.

I think that peoples attitudes about showing trust in a relationship can be broken down into two basic camps. One camp is the people who feel like if you’re in a relationship you should have nothing to hide so everything in your life should be an open book. The other camp is the people who feel like if you have real trust you shouldn’t have to give out all of your passwords or keep an eye on your mates every move.

There are pros and cons to being in either of these two camps. On the one hand I see the point of the people who feel like if you have nothing to hide then why hide anything. Except their logic has a fatal flaw. This philosophy requires that you have a mate who is secure enough not to feel the need to analyze every detail of your personal life to get reassurance that you’re being faithful. This doesn’t work when you allow an insecure person unlimited access. Because inevitably they will they see things that they don’t understand, and they’ll start making unfounded accusations, then all heck breaks loose. This is because all of your actions are colored by their own insecurities and or their own lack of trustworthiness.

Then there are the people who feel like if you’re secure in your relationship you shouldn’t have to have access to your mates email, myspace, and facebook password to know that they aren’t being unfaithful. The fatal flaw with this of course would be the case where you are with an unfaithful mate. It’s much harder for you to find this out because your mate would have free reign in a realm that is inaccessible to you to potentially engage in all kinds of secret activities.

So basically it boils down to the fact that if one of more members of the relationship either has issues trusting other people or can’t be trusted it doesn’t matter which camp of thought you subscribe to. You’ve got problems. And they WILL show up eventually.

I personally subscribe to the second camp by the way. I don’t need to know all of my mates** passwords and I don’t think I should have to give out all of mine. I think people need some boundaries in relationships and respecting my privacy is one of my boundaries. Would I have anything to hide? No. Should I have to constantly prove this to my mate? No.

 I think it’s much easier to trust other people when you are a person who can be trusted. At the same time being trusting opens you up as prey to the untrustable. So, as with most things in life, a balance is necessary.

Now view the video below. I see a myriad of trust issues brewing in the relationship depicted. (This is a video of Joe Budden and his girlfriend in which he is going through her Myspace messages) I will try to reserve overall judgement, but based on my commentary above you can probably guess how I feel about his actions in the video.

 

* I might talk about this topic in a future post

** I’m currently single so when I speak of “my mate” it’s strictly hypothetical.