Single Sista’s Guide to Dating

Ruby Dee and Ozzie Davis
Ossie and Ruby met while performing in the Broadway drama “Jeb” at the Amsterdam Theater in new york City in December, 1946.  They were married on December 9, 1948. Brilliant actors, leaders in the Civil Rights Movement and a shining example of Black Love. The Davis’ have three children and seven grandchildren. Ozzie passed away in 2005.

Martin Luther & Coretta Scott King
Married in 1953, they are the mother and father of the Civil Rights Movement. Their union was tested — bombed homes, great separations of time and distance, Cointelpro, and four children to feed. They would arise from the challenges strong and were only separated by King’s death.

Grant Hill & Tamia
The vow through sickness and in health must have taken on new meaning when beautiful Canadian songstress Tamia was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2005. This is the real test of a marriage, and she and Grant Hill have made it clear that they are fighting together. The attractive couple, who were reportedly introduced by Anita Baker, have been married for almost nine years. Last August, Tamia  gave birth to her second baby girl, Lael Rose.

Barack & Michelle Obama
Stand by your man, or behind him in this case. Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama gets real love from his equally accomplished wife Michelle before the New Hampshire presidential primary on Jan. 8, 2008.The couple met at a law firm (she was his boss) and have been married since 1992. They have two daughters, Malia and Natasha.

Will & Jada Pinkett Smith
”When we met, I never thought in a million years that Will Smith and I would be together,” Jada Pinkett Smith said to Ebony magazine. And isn’t that the way it goes? The American icon wed his petite wife on December31,1997 in Baltimore. He was 29 years old and Jada was 26. The two talents genuinely seem to be friends and their three beautiful children seem very well adjusted.

Source: Black Voices

I’m reading this article in the Voice Online (sorry…I love publications from the UK…they have great coverage of US news.) titled “Good black men only exist abroad“.  Come on!  They have been bamboozled.  Black women in the US are ready to go abroad for love…in droves.  Canada, Jamaica, and the UK…sound like good places to look to me.  It seems that UK brothers and sisters are having a hard time too.  I would just chalk it up to ratios of Afro Europeans to White Europeans, but I know it’s more than that.

“I have /male/female friends beating down my door (albeit via email) here in New York asking me to find them a good American black man/female.

 

According to them, UK black male and females no longer possess the standards it takes to nurture a long lasting relationship.

 

I have had family and friends who have taken flight (yes, took a plane) to meet men they knew for mere weeks on international dating sites, desperate in the hope that this person would be ‘the one’.

 

I have a few friends who are so frustrated at not meeting Mr Right that they are strategically planning a 2 year plan for their departure to foreign lands (Canada, Florida) to find him before their time runs out to have more children.”

Sorry ladies, we don’t need more competition during this drought.  LOL  Go home.  You guys are bringing those sexy accents with you…oh no!   The men can stay…Ladies, go home.

By Rashida McKenzie
rashida@insightnews.com
Is a good man that hard to find, or is it sometimes where we are looking? In our brothas’ defense, there are plenty of good, strong, loving and hard-working Black men out there. You know, the ones who proudly take care of their families, ones who go to work every day so they can provide and even ones who may be struggling to find a job, but aren’t allowing a lack thereof to take anything away from their responsibilities.

The truth is, sistas, that sometimes we want a man to come with our list of criteria already filled; but if he were to hold you to those same standards would you even pass your own test? By making a list of what you want you may be really passing up what you need.

What’s the difference? A want list has criteria that look similar to these: someone who makes (fill in the sum you desire); 6′2″; 180 pounds; brown-skinned; light eyes; goes to church every Sunday; and comes with no baggage.

All of those things are conditional, superficial and variables – meaning they are likely to change at any time. Just because someone is making a certain amount of money now doesn’t mean they will be later. This economy is unstable and it’s getting worse. While you’re looking for a man in a 6′2″ package, 180 pounds, wrapped in brown skin and topped off with light eyes, you may miss the special delivery you were about to get in a 5′8″ package, 280 pounds, with dark-skin and dark eyes. Just ’cause a brotha goes to church every Sunday doesn’t mean they have a relationship with God, and we all have baggage, some of us more than others. So if you don’t want to deal with his, don’t expect anyone else to want to deal with yours.

A “need” list looks a little different and list things such as: love, patience, understanding, honesty, companionship, a relationship with God and willingness to accept you as you are. Those things are unconditional and won’t change if either one of you gains a little bit of weight or is laid off from work, or if you perhaps have crazy relatives he’ll have to deal with.

We do have choice in the matter, and for most of us our bad experiences with men come from the choices that we made, but not always. What’s important is that you don’t hold a good man accountable for a bad man’s mistakes. That will always prevent you from finding true love.

Let me let you in on a little secret, for those who are really looking for a good Black man. True love ultimately has to be found within yourself before you can love someone else.

Practice the latest phenomenon, the law of attraction. That means that what you see for yourself and what you put out there is what you will get back. If you don’t value yourself, then don’t expect him to; and if you don’t love yourself, then how can he?

He needs to come to the states…uh…well, maybe he shouldn’t. LOL

39-year-old highly educated chemical engineer from Milton Keynes told The Voice that he is being constantly thwarted in his quest to find romance with successful Black women. He is nice looking, describes himself as having a great personality and a good sense of humour, has three degrees, including a PhD in chemical engineering, earns a good living, is ambitious and is about to move into his own house. He is also looking for a Black woman - at a time when successful Black men come in for harsh criticism for often dating and marrying white women. But still, Phinn said, it is difficult to find the like minded Black woman he wants.

“I am not shy in chatting up women. In fact, I think I am good at it but I never seem to meet the right ones,” Masango said.

“I know these professional women are out there but I never seem to meet them. It’s either that they are very young or not as educated or as confident as I expect so that comes its own problems. I don’t want to chat up a 22-year-old just out of college. I am looking for a woman as mature as I am,” he said.

Phinn is looking for a confident Black woman, who is over age 26, makes her own money, has a degree or diploma, is open minded, a good conversationalist and is willing to be a partner in a relationship and not a burden.

“I’m wondering where they are and what they are doing on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I would love to have a drink,” he said.

Phinn told The Voice that too many black women are still stuck on stereotypes of what the Black man ought to be and what men ought to do.

“I think that while we are different emotionally and physically, we form a union where one is a complement to the other. I think that idea tends to get lost because we end up emphasizing the wrong things. Often people get caught in stereotypes of what men are expected to do but no one thinks about how a lady is supposed to treat a gentleman.”

Black women across America - including the Rev. Shelia M. Wilson, who lives near Baltimore, Makebra Anderson of Buffalo, N.Y., Nanette Washington of Capitol Heights, Md.; and Eboni Funderburg of Nashville - tell stories of how they won their soul mates when they least expected it.

“I was frustrated, not happy, perturbed and upset,” recalls the Rev. Wilson, a chaplain in the U.S. Airforce. “There would be many nights that I would say, ‘Jesus, if you don’t put me to sleep, I’m going to embarrass you, me, and a whole lot of folks.’ Oftentimes I’d be able to come home and fall asleep and sleep for 12 hours. Other times I’d be up half the night, crying and hurting and walking the floor and praying and seeming to have no relief.”
At age 55, Wilson had never been married and had been praying for a husband for decades. She was like many single Black women — independent, professional, smart, and upward bound in their careers, businesses, and ministries.

She knew she would need what seemed almost impossible - not only a Christian man, but a man who was at peace with himself and who would not be intimidated by his wife’s leadership role in society. She prayed and believed: “The Bible says cast your bread upon the water. Honey, I wasn’t just casting bread, I was casting whole loaves. I’m just being honest about that.”  But she also took action.

In a unique - some would say ‘unorthodox’ - way, Rev. Wilson ultimately met the man who became her husband in less than two months. She had posted her photograph and biographical information on several dating Web sites when she heard about Faithmate.com, a Web site owned by internationally acclaimed Los Angeles pastor Bishop Noel Jones.

Women need to better position themselves as available for marriage, says Jones.
”Look at how Naomi strategically positioned Ruth,” he says of the Bible story of Ruth and her beloved Boaz. ”Faithmate is just one big Naomi,” he says.

Within three weeks, Tony W. Carter - a divorced retired Army serviceman and now a Navy administrator - had responded to Rev. Wilson’s posting.  Exactly nine days after their first date, while riding on a merry-go-round at the Maryland State Fair, he proposed. “He was on one horse, and I’m on the other. He said, ‘Miss Wilson’… I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Carter?’… He said, ‘Will you marry me?’ I said, ‘Is this what our life is going to be like - going around in circles and up and down all the time?’” she chuckles. “Then, I said, ‘Yes.’”  They married on Oct. 27, 2007.

He knew she was the one when they had a big spat one day and she threatened to walk out of his life. “I felt very strongly [that] ‘I don’t want her to leave … I need to do something to make this right,’” he recalls. “By the grace of God, here we are.” Continue Reading »

Why someone chose to run this piece on Valentine’s day is beyond me.
“Single Women: Freeze Eggs or Settle for Mr. Good Enough?” by Sara Schaefer Munoz for the Wall Street Journal.

What to do if you want a child but haven’t found the perfect mate or have been too busy with your career to focus on courtship?

Some women are deciding to freeze their eggs to have a child later on — even though the procedure is risky and often doesn’t lead to a child, reports Sue Shellenbarger in today’s Work & Family column.

The column looks at Lucia Vasquez, 33, who froze her eggs because of a “busy career and no plans for marriage soon,” and Megan Griswold, who froze her eggs at 36, because she lacks the right partner and sees egg freezing as maximizing her opportunities for motherhood. (In the video below, a 38-year-old woman explains why she’s chosen to freeze her eggs.)

Yet a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly offers an alternative to such extreme measures: Settle for Mr. Not-Quite-Right. Author Lori Gottlieb, herself a single mother of a child conceived with donated sperm, says most 40-year-old single women want a husband, and by extension, a child. Her advice? “Settle. That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection . . . Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.”

She ominously warns that as a woman’s chances of conceiving decrease, so does the pool of marriageable men. Even if some men are ready to have a family, they’ll likely decide to marry someone younger, “which is all the more reason to settle before settling is no longer an option,” she writes. (Ms. Gottlieb writes that generally “men seem less bothered by the idea of settling.”)

Of course, marrying the wrong guy can backfire, for obvious reasons. I’m curious what readers think based on their experiences. If you really want children, is it prudent or risky to settle for your less-than-ideal partner? Is holding out for a great father for your children worth the risk of betting on technology to conceive?

What do you sistas think?

Psychologist and Life Coach Dr. Pamela Thompson will host a workshop for African American women entitled “Transformation from the Inside Out: Loving the Life You Have” on February 16th at Redemption Community Church, 965 Winburn Dr., East Point, GA 30344.The workshop is designed to impact participants with the reality of certain limitations and challenges faced by African American women in their romantic lives while also providing strategies to overcome the harshness of sobering statistics and circumstances. Workshop facilitators will serve as catalysts for more intentional self-care-in health, appearance, environment, and overall decision-making.

The transforming message of the workshop is one of renewed hope, camaraderie, and perseverance in life and love with a greater sense of purpose, self-awareness, and self-respect.

“Transformation from the Inside Out” will begin with a showing of the award-winning documentary “SOULMATE.” A film that addresses the subject of epidemic singleness and relationship challenges among African American women, particularly those with a Christian worldview. “Women who are unsatisfied with their love lives feel alone and isolated in their struggles and often need a ‘pick-me-up’ in the company of others sharing those struggles,” said Dr. Thompson. “This is definitely the kind of event you want to share with girlfriends, older teens or younger women being mentored, co-workers, church members or family. It promises to jumpstart a journey to the next level of thinking, being, and behaving,” added Dr. Thompson.

Participants can expect to experience a thought-provoking gathering designed to nourish the mind, body, and soul in small groups after the film. These groups will offer life-changing instruction by clinically trained psychologists-turned-professional life coaches, and other experts to address issues that threaten overall quality of life, which may also magnify loneliness and confusion in relationship choices.

Topics include: Abstinence Training for Single Moms and Their Children, Defeating Passive Decision-Making, Alternative Healthcare and Nutrition, Fashion Dos and Don’ts for All Body Types, and Creating Order at Home and Work. Food, fun, and fellowship are all part of the package.

For more information or to register, contact Pamela Thompson at (404) 644-0710 or Drthompson@novemgroup.com. Seating is limited. Registration must be completed by February 14, 2008. Cost is $45 per person.

SOURCE Dr. Pamela Thompson

How many of you can identify with these women???

“We are the most un-partnered people in the United States.” Dayum…that is a powerful statement. Andrea Wiley is talking about it in her documentary “SoulMate“. It was featured in the 5 part series that NBC did on Black Women in America. From the website…

For those still waiting to exhale, Soulmate is a gripping cinematic journey into the realities facing today’s successful, saved, and single African American women. This deeply personal portrait reveals the trials, and triumphs of unforgettable women while offering hope and practical advice on such issues as loneliness, the desire for sexual intimacy, men on the “down low”, the ticking biological clock and the uncertainty of the future. This film offers uplifting revelations about the quest for your true… “Soulmate.”

Grandma knows. Your momma knows. Girls, you can find a man if you can’t cook, but it’s easier if you can make some slamming mac and cheese. Here are some books I recommend you take a look at if you are one of those modern black women who can’t really cook. Get your biscuit game up, player!

Cooking for Your Man

COOK’N TO KEEP HIM: Make Your Relationship Sweeter, Passionate and More Delicious

Sylvia’s Family Soul Food Cookbook

The Black Family Reunion Cookbook

You can also visit the following sites for great recipes:

www.foodnetwork.com

www.soulfoodcookbook.com

allrecipes.com

copykat.com

cooks.com

PR-Inside.com is reporting…Supermodel NAOMI CAMPBELL is rumored to be dating Venezuelan President HUGO CHAVEZ, according to odd newspaper reports in the South American country.  The British stunner recently travelled to Caracas to interview Chavez for British magazine GQ - and reporters there claim the pair are smitten with each other and have been courting for two months.

Respected El Universal journalist Nelson Bocaranda claims 53-year-old Chavez fell “head-over-heels” in love with Campbell after their interview, in which he flirted and invited the 37-year-old to “touch my muscles”.