Posted on by roniscales · 4 Comments

First Comes Suffering, Then Comes…Marriage?

I just feel like…I shouldn’t have to look like a damn fool just to get a ring.

“I want black women to experience love that doesn’t involve suffering first and being glorified later.” – @PreMEd_BlackMed Twitter.

So I was perusing the Twitter streets (yes I still use Twitter, its the most hilarious social media platform ever, don’t debate me), and I came across this tweet. After the initial head nods and “yaaaaasssss” reactions, the “oh wow” and “damn” reactions set in (insert Wee Bey gif here).

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way, shape, or form, speaking for every single relationship, or person on this earth. I am in no way speaking about any of my own personal relationships specifically, past or present. So those feelings creeping up, yeah those…stay out of them. Thanks, management.

Now where were we? Oh yes, women getting dragged through the mud just to get a ring, women putting up with a lot to get married, gotcha.

In recent pop culture developments, a few celebrities who shall not be named have FINALLY popped the question after literally up to and over a decade of dating, not even exaggerating. They are proposing with diamonds the size of private islands and these grand gestures are usually accompanied by a speech professing their undying, unconditional love for their future wives. These speeches, however, usually all have one major component in common. They tend to go on and on about how they chose this woman because she’s been down with them forever and how they put her through hell and she somehow mustered up the courage to stick around and hold them down. This makes them “the strongest women” these men know. These engagements are normally followed by everyone (even me, sorry I’m not perfect) having an opinion, and typically not a positive one.

My question is, why must these women go through hell to be hailed as an angel and/or get a little piece of heaven? Why are the women always responsible for staying down to come up? I could be misinformed, but I rarely hear women ranting and raving about cheating on a man, having babies outside of their relationship, and basically treating him like shit overall while he just plays his position and waits for them to get their lives together. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, I’m saying I don’t usually hear about it. I mean honestly, could you imagine women repeatedly having babies by men other than the one they’re in a relationship with and their “main boyfriend” patiently waiting his turn? HA! I laughed while typing that sentence because that’s how outrageous it sounds.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of true unconditional love. I also understand that if you are building a life with someone, naturally issues will arise and hopefully you two can navigate how to get through and past those issues together. The idea is to come out on the other side of those issues stronger than you were before. But I do believe there’s a difference between issues that arise, and self-inflicted bullshit/purposely putting your partner through emotional abuse because you “know she ain’t goin nowhere”. There’s a difference between battling these issues together, and you battling deceit and public humiliation from your partner time and time again.

I’m not blaming these women. They’re only doing what society has conditioned women to do since the beginning of time, to “let a man be a man.” I mean grandfathers used to have entire families outside of their marriage and everyone is always screaming about how their grandparents are relationship goals right? It’s just unfortunate that as a society we believe that a man being a man consists of him constantly disregarding women. I just really believe and have witnessed/am currently witnessing that there are men who don’t feel the need to “test” whether you’re worthy enough to be his wife by damn near making you have a mental breakdown processing all of his shenanigans. It’s possible sis. Nobody is perfect, people mess up, but when someone repeatedly does the same thing then maybe it’s time to consider that it’s not a mistake anymore? Men are really out here acting like the game is to see who can stick around through the most bullshit and win them…yuck. LOL.

I’m not here to judge ANYBODY. I can’t even begin to imagine the motivation behind “waiting” for a man who doesn’t treat you like you deserve to be treated, so clearly I can’t judge the behavior. But I cannot imagine that the prize of spending the rest of your life with someone who didn’t truly value you during the dating process is a worthy consolation.

 

 

Posted on by roniscales · 3 Comments

What’s The Rush?

I just feel like…people are out here rushing love for no reason.

“Mama said you can’t hurry love, no, you’ll just have to wait, she said love don’t come easy, but it’s a game of give and take…”

It’s clear to me that a lot of y’all are opting to ignore what Mama said. And to that I ask, “MY GOOD SIS WHAT ARE YOU RUSHING FOR?!”

I’m a late-twenty something woman, headfirst into my career, living on my own, able to pay my own bills, and even travel on my own dime, and I know many other women in my same position. Not an unordinary situation. What does ring unordinary to me however, is when I see women in my same position try to rush and/or force love into their lives. I, too, have even been guilty of it in the past. The reason this is so puzzling to me is because I see so many beautiful women who, in my opinion, have their lives together, yet are trying to fit one last piece of the puzzle by any means necessary. That piece is a significant other.

Whether it be pressure from society, our married friends, our parents, or even just pressure from ourselves, some of us are straight up pressed for a bae. So much so, that the first guy who looks halfway decent, says everything we think we want to hear, and even mentions the “M” word, we lose our minds and immediately start imagining what style of wedding dress would look best on our body type. You never know girl, that could be your husband. Right? I mean, God may have sent him to you. Right? Everything happens for a reason, and you meeting this person wasn’t by chance.

Well I personally believe everything does happen for a reason, but sometimes the reason isn’t marriage. And that’s that on that. Do you find yourself imagining or thinking you’re going to marry EVERY guy you date? If this is the case, you may want to pump your brakes. As I mentioned before, I’m in my late twenties, closer to 30. But oddly enough, as I get older I haven’t really felt pressure due to my age to be someone’s wife. Even looking at my married friends doesn’t light a fire up under me. Not that I don’t think what they have is beautiful, because I absolutely do. And I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about what my own wedding would be like after experiencing theirs, but even then, it still did not encourage me to hurry up and get there. My friends are on their own journeys and I’m happy for them. True happiness for someone isn’t questioning where your own blessing is when you see someone else receiving theirs.

As far as my parents go, I’m thankful to not have any pressure from them either. I come from a large blended family. Both of my parents have had more than 1 marriage and I have a host of half siblings. I’m sure they don’t regret any part of their journey because it led them to their happiness today. But they do always encourage me to take my time and never rush, ESPECIALLY when it comes to dating and relationships. Like most people who have experienced life before us, they encourage me to learn from their mistakes and if at all possible, to do things better. Having a blended family isn’t a bad thing, but it can get tricky, so I understand that they just want me to have the best family life possible, preferably the first time around (LOL). While I understand that divorce is a part of life, I just don’t want it to be a part of MY life.  A part that can possibly be avoided altogether if I actually know my husband prior to getting married.

Pressures from society is where it gets a little cloudy for me. Let’s be clear, I don’t feel pressure from society to get married right now. Society isn’t really the best template to take tips from for life at the moment anyways, am I right? LOL But I have been in dating situations, where the person I was dating felt that pressure from society, which really ruined the relationship in my opinion. Sounds extreme right? Let me explain. Imagine trying to date someone, get to know them, their likes/dislikes, what makes them tick, their favorite meal, their fears, etc. Ok now imagine trying to do all of that with added pressure to get married damn near right away.

*SCENE*

Me: So what do you like to do for fun? I love going to the movies whenever I get free time. 

Him: Yeah the movies are cool, I’ve always imagined having a movie room in my house, maybe we can get one of those in our house so us and the kids ca-…

*END SCENE*

SKRRT SKRRT. Let me stop you right there playa. How did we get here? And where is the U-turn so we can go back to the exit right before this one. I don’t even know what you’re like when you’re angry, please, pray tell, why are you already discussing marriage, a house, a movie room, and kids with me? Does this sound familiar? Or worse, does this sound like you?

To be clear, this is not to be confused with dating with intention. I am a firm believer in dating with intention, and if your intention is to be married, by all means, date to be married. I, myself, date for marriage. But what I’m not finna do is, not going to do, is surpass all the steps before marriage and just place a man in the position of my husband without truly knowing him first. Besides, dating just to have someone there is trash, garbage, basura, poubelle, you get my point. I had a girl once tell me “Girl I’ve never been this single, I don’t even have text buddies.” My response was like…ok? I don’t even have time to text people I don’t really care about like that. LOL I barely have time to text family, friends, and a bae that I actually do care about. Small talk is annoying.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s ok to be excited about something new, hell, it’s ok to still be excited about something old. I think that’s one of the best feelings in the world honestly, when you first start dating a man, and he’s all you can think about, the scent of his cologne is damn near hypnotizing because he smells that good. You go back and forth with your girlfriends about how you should handle it because it’s new and you don’t want to blow it. HAHA. Good times. Great times actually.

But it’s important to not rush the LOVE and more importantly, marriage. New bae is great, keep that same energy for the duration of the relationship. But as I discussed in my last blog post, whirlwind romances have the potential to crash just as swiftly as they started, so proceed with caution. Date, have fun, experience new things with this person, but take it easy. Please, for the love of everything Beyoncé, stop posting every guy you date on social media. Relax sis. Any time I would run to my Grammy, (may she rest in peace) with news about a new crush and how he was so perfect, she would say to me “Roni please, you haven’t even seen him through all of the seasons.” And baby when I tell you, I didn’t understand then, but as I got older that word PREACHED! When she referred to the seasons, she was referring to a full year, winter, spring, summer, and autumn. But my Grammy was like Jay-Z in the sense that there were always 2, and even 3 different meanings to almost every word she’d spit. I hadn’t seen these men in different seasons of life. I didn’t see them in the struggling season, in the financially insufficient season (and I’m praying to God I won’t ever have to see my husband in this particular season, amen thank ya Jesus LOL). I never saw these men in the jealous season, I didn’t see them in the insecure season, I didn’t see them in the angry season. I only saw the happy season, the trying to impress me season, maybe even the trickin season? LOL ok let me get serious (joking, kinda, maybe not, man idk).

While we are so busy trying to find the missing component we believe is missing from our almost perfect lives, love, it’s easy to miss the fact that we actually already have it. We have it in our families, however dysfunctional that love may be, it’s there girl. LOL We have love from our friends, the best kind. But ya’ll already know how I feel about that friendship love. And even if you feel that you don’t have love from either of these other outlets, you SHOULD have love inside of yourself. You should love yourself enough to not make decisions based on loneliness because girl, if you TRULY love yourself you may be alone but you shouldn’t be lonely. Don’t give in to desperation. What’s yours is always yours, and you won’t have to rush it.