Study Black Women who Love Black Men Well
Found this on a blog… thought I would share it...
I remember, during the time that I was most fearful about love, it was the process of asking and answering questions which helped me to break through my emotional paralysis. At this point, the Universe had invited numerous kind souls into my life - I discovered that I was suddenly surrounded by great people, male and female, but I became especially curious to know how the women in my life- friends, aunties, cousins, associates of mine came to love their men as deeply and respectfully as they seemed to. It really amazed me how these strong, self-sufficient, powerful sistas spoke about their husbands and partners. They would say things like, 'girl, we've been together 8 years and I still tingle when he touches me' or *swoon* 'my man is my best friend. He knows me inside and out'. I'd be listening intently with my chin nestled in my palm, elbow rested on my desk, and I'd be thinking, 'dang, this woman is strong, intelligent, powerful, independent...and yet she loves her man so passionately that not only is she not afraid of her vulnerability, but she glows and gushes when she speaks about how deep the love runs'. That seemed odd and contradictory to me because I had always had the erroneous belief that women who surrender to their men in that way are weak, passive, dependent, stupid.
But in talking to black women who love black men well, I saw how it was loving as deeply and purposefully as they did, that made them strong! They were beautiful not because of how they looked, but because of their capacity to love without playing mind games, to love without being needy, to love and still retain a sense of autonomy, dignity and regal that made them seem like they were above anything petty. Interestingly too, I noticed that these women not only had a strong sense of individual purpose as black women, but that their beliefs about womanhood and femininity did not seem to come from the ideologies put out in the mass media- they had their own self-concepts and carried themselves with a quiet righteousness that said, 'I know how to love without feeling depleted...I love without barriers and I expect and deserve to be respected because I respect myself'- These women had fulfilling relationships and didn't give up their identities, minimize their career goals or stop doing the things they loved to do just because they had a man. That was a revelation to me because my main fear about giving up my singleness, and by extension, I thought, my freedom, was that I'd be compromising who I am and would have to put someone else’s needs way ahead of my own. These women countered my false belief by saying, 'my relationship is very important to me but my relationship is not my life'.
While these realizations were taking place, I was also enjoying honest, open friendships with the men in my life. I observed that these brothas were respectful of themselves and of black women. They weren't colour-struck, and had different concepts of beauty than 'yeah, she got to be light-skin. They were intelligent and ambitious, loving and creative, polite, interesting and wanted much more than no-strings relationships, white girls, and naïve black women who could be dominated. These men seemed to have a higher purpose and were not living up (or down) to the bullshit perception of them informed by the world around us. So more and more, I started to see that I had been wrong about men, women and love.
Observing men and women who loved well, enabled me to carve out my own love ethic. Of course it woulda been easier to believe 'young black men and women dont really get married anymore', 'black men are either gay, incarcerated or fucking white women', 'black women are just after financial security and don’t think brothas are good enough' etc etc, but through looking for proof that I had been wrong about what love/relationships/black men/black women were about, I saw what I believed love could make possible- equality, commitment, friendship, intimacy. And when eventually I was ready to consider an end to my singledom (even though I really enjoyed the single life), I decided to just work on being loveable. Instead of running off a list of the qualities I wanted to find in a mate, I worked on establishing them within myself (still working). When I entered a relationship, I began thinking about the kind of lover I wanted to be- I imagined a relationship with no clearly prescribed gender roles, I imagined being able to be myself and feel accepted and I imagined giving abundantly. I considered what I had learned from the men and women I’ve known, who loved well...and not just the ones I knew personally, but also the artists, actors, writers, activists and fictional characters who I respected because of the way they loved- people like Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Chicken George and Matilda, Common and Erykah...and also snapshots from films I'd seen where the pictures of loves possibility moved me- like the opening scene in Jungle Fever when Flipper and Drew are making love in the brownstones... with the morning sunlight shinning in- turning everything sepia, like Skool Daze when Rachel forgives Dap and dries him off with a towel and he chuckles cos it tickles, or like Disappearing Acts when Franklin and Zora are laying up on the sofa in the dark, laughing at something on TV.
All those things make my heart swell. And I guess this blog is a note to myself about how to actually do the work of love- an exploration of a few things that could be learned and imagined from those I've admired in this area.
Ruby Dee
"it is the little things that help you stay in love through the years - like "stopping to touch each other on the shoulder"
Recently I was in conversation with a sista about the need amongst us to feel safe enough to open ourselves to love. In this climate of misogyny and assault against women, its especially important for us to experience tenderness. Not even love, but actually being treated sensitively...or maybe even, delicately (which doesn't suggest women are weak/inferior, I'm talking about the delicateness of our hearts...the core of our vulnerability). Things that can be as simple as his innocent touch on a thigh while watching a movie or him reaching out to hold your hand as you cross the street...and also the more intimate and adult modes of physical tenderness...'holistic lovemaking' and the like - all those things form a major part of what is missed in singledom. Little consistencies mean a lot. I'm sure Ruby Dee is absolutely right about these things helping folks to stay in love. I'd love to have sat with elders like Ossie (rip) and Ruby and learned the secrets of their 56 year marriage, but as I can't, I will trust them when they say that physical intimacy, just because, is what sustains the 'staying'.
Actually, I'm a sucker for great love songs, but I've always been attracted to anything that involves the word, 'STAY'. It's the 'I want you...need you...please don’t go', that most people are too petrified to say but really do feel at some level...'the please don’t hurt me' that underlies all the real decisions we make regarding entering and being in love relationships that I find kind of...sexy, I guess. But at the same time, I'm aware that that feeling of desperation (which is not always bad/unhealthy) stems from the ego. While I try my very best to conduct myself from the consciousness of love, my humanness sometimes takes over and I find myself slipping into the habits of my ego- usually irritability, impatience, intolerance. And in those moments, *I know* that I am behaving in a very unloving way, and realizing that helps me to address it and move through it. I believe its in these situations that trust and communication are most important. I'm trying to learn to practice non-judgment; during those times when I'm in ego-mode, and in times when I have internalized my negative feelings instead of sharing them, I realize that its actually normal to default to that and that its okay to experience the full range of my emotions- loving and not so loving. The key thing is not to live there. In sharing these things and confessing ones awareness of how counterproductive they are, mutual understanding can be reached. According to Ruby and Ossie, 'a trustworthy marriage has weathered temptation and anger and jealousy, resentment, self-righteousness and a little bit of selfishness. When you get over and get through that, then maybe you can see the light to love'. There is a lot I could learn from that.
Ossie Davis
"One of the things I appreciate more was how important struggle was as the instrument that helped to keep us knit together."
Being in black love has emphasized to me the importance of friendship in struggle. In various debates about racism, (neo/post)colonialism and the problems faced within our communities, I always say, I believe the solving of our problems basically comes back to the paradigm of the black family...that is, we can address many of our problems by starting with ourselves and how we treat each other, how we love, how we build tribes. Some of the most inspiring black man/woman partnerships I've seen, including people like Queen Afua and Sen/ur Semahj, Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, damnit, Will 'n' Jada, have been so interesting to me because of their teamwork ethnic. Through my own experiences, I'm coming to understand how important it is to have a sense of united purpose, which transcends the present moment. When two people are in tune, looking in the same direction, its like a WWF tag team in which both parties are armed with love and support each other through their special inner understanding of what each party goes through being a black man and a black woman in the struggle. Not only that, but in establishing a union, higher thoughts emerge, about how to conduct relationships that empower each other and cultivate a space for deep love- the absence of fear/doubt. In this sense, doing love with each other is creating/shaping a better world, not just for us, but for our children.
Marianne Williamson
"Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace"
For a long time, without really being conscious of it, I denied myself the pleasure of putting my emotional needs first. My mother always joked about me 'trying to save the world' because I was such a Pollyanna in my teens. In pursuit of some way to understand and fight against what I saw as the injustices done to our people globally, I became kind of militant in my quest for peace. The struggle became so important to me that as I was (happily) single, it conveniently became a distraction from having to think about what I really wanted and needed- companionship, intimacy, understanding, love. Deciding that I was ready to embark on a relationship meant acknowledging that I actually did need these things but what I didn’t know, is that my joys and passions...having my needs met, actually gives me more to contribute to the world! It seems so obvious now but I didn't realize that the things that please me...that my satisfaction, is important because it elevates me to a place where I am in a state of love and therefore have more in my heart to contribute to people around me. Tenderness, intimacy is therefore beneficial to everyone.
How bout you?
What have you learned about doing love?
Who have been your mentors in this area?
What are the virtues/values/truths you believe are most important in relationships between black men and women?
What kind love are you experiencing? More importantly what do you want to experience?
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