Are Black Women Too Lazy to Find True Love?

By today's Urban Chameleon contributor Sibil

The question could be asked of women from all races but I’ve chosen to specifically focus on a group that continues to be questioned about their potential to find true love: Black women.

The other day I caught the CNN interview with Helene Andrews, the author of Bitch is the New Black, discussing being young, Black, successful and single. I thought to myself: Oh lawd, they done brought our issues into the lime light. But then again I always complain about major media not covering the spectrum of our issues so I checked myself for complaining out of habit and tuned into the program.

Although it was an obvious plug for us to purchase Helene’s book (and why shouldn’t we) I was intrigued by this 29yr old author’s rant about life and love and what made the interview even more interesting was her mother, who was also on the show, talked about being a lesbian. Talk about some topics of discussion you don’t hear about every day through a major news source. I started thinking more about why there continues to be so much focus on Black women’s capability to find love.

At the Harvard Black Alumni BBQ in prospect park a couple of weeks ago, I got into a discussion with a group of Black women about not being able to find “a good Black man.” One woman noticed the ring on my finger and asked if I was married to which I replied, “Yes for 5 years but we’ve know each other for 11years, we met in college.”

Everyone’s interest was peaked and wanted to know how I had “locked him down.” I told them that it was actually his idea. We had gone away on a trip one New Years and when talking about our resolutions for the up coming year he said that he wanted to get married. I was cool either way, I had grown up with two parents who never traditionally tied the knot so I naturally inherited the philosophy that if he liked it, he didn’t necessarily need to put a ring on it. But later that year he sho ‘nough proposed.

The women all ooh’d and ahh’d and then one asked if he had a clone or at least a brother she could be introduced to. Another one stated that they just don’t make men like that any more, as if I had taken the last prize out of the cereal box. Hold up I had to tell them, this 11yr relationship hasn’t just been a walk in the park ladies. This is not Morris Chestnut rolling up in a chariot with a bouquet of red roses. This 11yr relationship consisted of 5 break ups in our first year, moving across the country to be together, several door slams, silent treatments, girlfriend therapy, two reads of the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus sent by my mother for relationship counseling, and to this day STILL having to work on communication. Not to mention when I first met my husband he thought fine dining met going to Red Lobster or as he calls it Red Lizzy’s. Now, I have to manage how many times my husband tries to order Osso Buco per month to keep from putting us into debt.

My husband once said to me that women have to change men. Look at what Victoria Beckham did for David. That man is now an international sex symbol as a result of his wife’s make over. I can’t even front I’ve been guilty of dissin’ a guy for wearing Karl Kani or something not from this time period. Maybe Mr. right is dressed all wrong, but so many women would never know. One of the women said she felt me but what if after putting in all that work the man still doesn’t commit. Then some other woman gets to enjoy the fruits of her labor? Now in all fairness I met my husband before things like marriage and biological clocks ticking was ever a thought. After mulling that question over, I answered: Yeah, but what if another woman put in that same work for you?

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Best Friend’s Past Could Be Your Future

by Aireka Muse

Your girlfriends ex boyfriend, is he fair game?

Regardless of the horrible statistics about black women and dating, when it comes to finding a partner, there are just not enough of us educated, professional black people to go around. As a black female, I try not to focus on the numbers and stay positive and open. As we saw with Helena Andrews, being black, bitchy, and bitter, gets you nowhere. With all the hype about online dating, I still believe in finding love the old traditional way, meeting someone randomly, and feeling that spark. Therefore, I was more than pleased to hear that recent study found there is a 70% chance of finding your life partner through social circles.

As James Fowler, PhD states in his book; Connected, The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, if you have 20 friends and they each have 20 friends, one of those people are likely to be your future spouse. The obvious logical reasoning behind this is that we tend to hang around like-minded people. College educated folks, hang with college educated folks. Artists tend to have artist friends. In each little female clique, most friends talk the same, often dress the same, and carry the same morals. Similar people coming in different packages. If this is the case, then I am led to a more controversial question, if we are more likely to find our potential life partners within our social circles, are we limiting our dating potential by calling ex lover’s off limits?

Now hear me out first before you get upset. I am not at all suggesting that your best friend’s boyfriend that she dated for 10 years or your boy’s girl that left him at the alter is fair game. I am suggesting, maybe that guy that you went out with a couple times, but just didn’t have that connection with, could possibly be a better match for your best friend. Or your girl’s two-year relationship that “just didn’t work out” could possibly be a perfect match for you.

Regardless of the “black female dilemma” I’ve heard black men suggest finding Mrs. Right can be hard too. The Champ at www.verysmartbrothas.com mentions “the process of finding an available, attractive, and compatible mate can be just as baffling, confusing, frustrating, disheartening, and even occasionally depressing”. Finding compatibility is different from a numbers game. Numbers give you more chances but it also gives you more opportunities to get it wrong. Why not search where you know you are most likely going to find what you are looking for? If you are a size 20, you by pass Forever 21 and go straight to Lane Bryant. If you love sneakers, the last place you need to shop is Charles David.

I’ve played the same “what if” scenario with my girlfriends and I always get the same response. What if you were happily married, and one of your friends became acquainted with an ex. Would you give your blessing? “Hell no”, “No way”, “ Seriously?” are the various replies that I always get. We see our past loves as possessions, something sacred to us and only us, even if we have successfully moved on. But I have always had a different perspective on this. If I tried, and it didn’t work out, more power to you girlfriend! Who am I to stop possible love? Especially when I have been there and done that and know that is definitely not for me.

Recently, I went out on a date. The guy was nice, educated but just not for me. He felt the exact same way. When I came home, I called my good friend that I thought he would be perfect for and asked if I could hook her up. She was appalled and declined because I already went out with him. One hour at a café was all that I spent with this man. Could we possibly be holding up dating rules and regulations that could be blocking us from finding the perfect mate?

I bet if we all just took a second and thumbed through our mental rolodex we probably could find a past hook up or love that could be a really good match for a friend. Can we be mature enough to put our ego aside and hook up a friend? Think about it, it could most likely be a better situation then imagined. Have you ever been in an argument with a lover or wondered what he or she was thinking? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to turn to someone for advice who actually knew exactly with what you were dealing with?

As the old saying goes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. It’s worked for eBay and Craig’s list, maybe it will work for our dating life. For the majority of us, love is literally just around the corner, we just have to be willing to receive it. Let’s not miss out.

To read more from Aireka Muse visit www.untiligettoyou.blogspot.com

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Successful, black and lonely: Bitch is the New Black

Urban Chameleon news

from the Washington Post
D.C. author's tale of young black women's loneliness catches Hollywood's ear
By DeNeen L. Brown Washington Post Staff Writer


Helena Andrews is 29, single, living in D.C., and might be the star of a black "Sex and the City" -- stylish, beautiful and a writer desperately in search of love in the city. Andrews's life appears charmed: The film rights for her memoir, "Bitch Is the New Black," a satirical look at successful young black women living in Washington, were purchased before the book was finished. Shonda Rhimes, the executive producer of "Grey's Anatomy," is set to produce the film and Andrews will write the screenplay. When Andrews pitched the book, she described it as part "Bridget Jones's Diary," part "Sex and the City." The book is to be published in June by Harper Collins. "What I am trying to say about single black women in any urban environment is, you don't know them as well as you think you do. They may not know themselves as well as they think they do," Andrews says, seated at a table with a white tablecloth in a restaurant on U Street. Her appearance is flawless: She is wearing an ivory blazer and skinny jeans, her movie-star eyes glisten with shadow and her hair is cut in a fresh bob. Perfect. Image is everything. And it means nothing. "The book was a time for me to step back and reflect," to capture the internal dialogue and the dialogue with girlfriends who are "caught in a quarter-life crisis." She is not talking about all young black women, but some. Revealing a story not oft told. A lot of black women put up an exterior that says: "Everything is together. 'I'm fine. Perfect. Don't worry about me. Keep it moving.' That is the trend," Andrews says. "Put on new stilettos. Put on a mask of bitchiness." But that image -- prevalent in both the media and the workplace, Andrews believes -- is one-dimensional. "When people think about black women, they have only one adjective for us, which is 'strong,' " Andrews says. "The girl you see walking down the street looks like she has it all together," but she may not. A journalist who has written for Politico and The Root, Andrews says her book attempts to reveal what's behind the veneer. In a series of essays, Andrews documents the lives of so many young black women who appear to have everything: looks, charm, Ivy League degrees, great jobs. Closets packed full of fabulous clothes; fabulous condos in fabulous gentrified neighborhoods; fabulous vacations, fabulous friends. And yet they are lonely: Their lives are repetitive, desperate and empty. They are post-racial feminists who have come of age reaping the benefits of both the civil rights movement and the women's movement, then asking quietly: What next? "Gone are the [college] days when friends are an elevator ride away, dinner plans are made on the way to somebody's hall, and Thursday is Friday or Friday is Thursday (who cares, you'll figure it out in Philosophy C203)," Andrews writes. "Soon enough, the little old lady living in a shoe is you -- and the rent is effin' unbelievable, and nobody comes to visit because you're too far from the Metro. Adulthood comes in little jigsaw pieces. Once the painstaking work of fitting them all together is done, the picture doesn't look nearly as cool as it did on the box." Andrews writes about what it is like for a young, black woman dating in D.C., trying to find a mate who seems ever elusive. The futile rituals are familiar: the dressing up, the eager cab ride over to the party, the hold-your-breath as you walk in, scanning the room quickly for any looks returned. The mantra sounding in the back of your head: "So-and-so found a man last year at a party like this. Maybe tonight is my night." Then one by one, the men prove to be disappointments and disappointing: married, uninteresting or uninterested. The disappointment as you end up at the bar once again, committing straw violence in your drink (stirring the drink frantically and unconsciously). Andrews writes the truth of those nights. The truth is for too many, they never work out. Not for Andrews and not for her friend, Gina, who is a prominent character in her life and in the book. "For a lot of black women, especially young successful black women, we have a lot of boxes on our master plan list checked off," Andrews says. "We think happiness should come immediately after that. But that is not always the case." Love is much too hard to find and when these women do, it may go all wrong because of issues that are too complicated for statistics, Andrews says. She is quick to say, "There are tons of black families who are healthy and good." Even so, black women are more likely than white women to grow up poor or otherwise struggling financially; to be fatherless and to experience a myriad of other societal and/or familial dysfunctions. Ironically, the "issues" can also include being a "strong" woman: the can-do, opinionated type many black women become after growing up in a matriarchal household, the type with whom some men still just can't deal. "I have tons of friends who are extremely successful lawyers and lobbyists, staffers on the Hill. They are great at what they do. They are in their late 20s and early 30s," Andrews says, sipping Ethiopian coffee. Her dog, Miles, is sitting beneath the restaurant table, whining softly. "But there is loneliness at their jobs, because most likely they are the only black person there and people treat them like they are the only black person there. They dress a certain way. They go out on the weekend. . . . And still they end up going home, and it's you and your damned dog."
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