Thanks for sending in this video, AN and I will post your note about it in the next post. I know it's been floating around and caused a big brouhaha, and I've seen it before. I will give my views on it in my next essay because I have a lot to say about it.
And since I've presented myself as "mother Evia," some of you want me to comment on some of the issues in popular culture that disturb you. LOL! ?I don't mind doing this sometimes.?
But first, I want to share this excellent ?Yahoo ARTICLE?because as more bw become involved in vetting non-bm, more knowledge is, of course, more helpful.?
There is much common sense in this entire article about what it takes to make a quality choice in relationship partner AND make a relationship work. For upwardly mobile bw, there are many gems contained in the article about what it's going to take to get to the next level and stay there--especially if you want to share your life with a man inside a harmonious, long term relationship.
Much contained in this article is indirectly a key prerequisite for raising emotionally balanced, successful children.
Smarter bw know that it's much easier to raise successful, emotionally healthy children if you have a loving, compatible partner. DUH! ?That's why they're called a partner. I didn't want to get married just to have a man in the house or another income; I wanted a loving and loveable PARTNER, which denotes compatibility.
Smarter people also know that if you have a loving and loveable, compatible partner, it's much more likely that you will be healthier, acquire and keep wealth (for all in the family), etc. For those who want to argue about this, check out the research on these topics and keep in mind that I'm talking about high probability vs low probability here; I'm not talking about absolutes.
EXCERPT:
"For a stable marriage, get a good education first
?A follow-up study conducted by three of my graduate students ? Paul Park, Elizabeth Matt, and Chad Carrick ? found that occupations that had brighter, better-educated employees had lower divorce rates, and that divorce rates were lower for higher-paying jobs than for lower-paying jobs,? continues Dr. Aamodt. ?Thus, it appears that it is not the job itself, but the characteristics of the employees that are related to occupational divorce rates.? It might sound like a no-brainer, but now we have scholarly confirmation: a little extra money in the family coffers does lead to more stable marriages. So if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a bright and educated person your husband or wife."
For upwardly mobile bw, the content of this quote is like "DUH"! LOL!
As I think more about it, I think that some people have common sense but are simply afraid to use it. I say that because as I read the article, I asked myself: What is it about most of this entire article that any sensible adult over 25 doesn't know?
Having said that, I do know that many AA women have been discouraged from even looking at the possibility of choosing higher quality or compatible mates by others around them who often point out to them that if a man is trying hard to do better, then that is good enough. SMH
If you're an AA woman, that's probably a pretty common message around you.?
But that, in itself, is a background issue that is not shared by all AA women. In my background, that may have floated around me, but I NEVER received that message from my mother, grandmother, or my FATHER. The message I got from all of them was just the opposite.
My father? ?Some of you have asked me about him. My father was a hard-working man. He did more than 'try hard;' he delivered. He had very little formal education but he was a good reader and had a memory like a steel trap. LOL! ?Despite Jim Crow, he learned a skill which enabled him to earn very well, and he supported me. He had his issues after he got out of the military (due to injuries), but he still protected and supported me. I can't ever recall him raising his voice to me. He was playful with me, used to bite my ear when I was a small girl, smiled at me a lot, and probably was his most gentle around me. As I got older, he would talk to me a lot about his life when we were together and I knew he was being earnest. I always felt he was proud of me.
I didn't spend as much time with my father because he was always off ?working, but he conveyed his values to me. All three of these people were key shapers of my values.
They conveyed to me that 'trying hard' may be admirable and noble, but that's not good enough. I had to do more than 'try hard.' I had to accomplish or actually reach significant goals, without coming up with excuses. Anything that I've done or not been able to do is my responsibility. I take FULL responsibility because I was raised that way. I was shaped that way.
You will need to sue my mother, father, and grandmother for shaping me to be this way.
I've heard all sorts of excuses from many folks about why they can't do this, that, or the other, but to me those ARE just that: EXCUSES.
This is why I never allowed my sons to say what they can't do. I've made them just admit that they didn't try hard enough or long enough, or in the right way. In other words, they didn't stay on the right path, long enough.
So I've expected a comparable level of accomplishment from my mate. This does NOT mean that I'm compatible with every man or even most men who have a comparable level of accomplishment.
However, levels of accomplishment feeds into compatibility in relationships.
For ex., if a woman who is a rocket scientist who has a cute smile (or whatever other cute physical trait) marries a man who is a well-paid construction worker with big muscles, why would either of them think the relationship will be satisfying or last for long??????? This is the part that mystifies me. I wonder why people choose each other as mates, based on purely or mostly surface traits. Yes, he may have big muscles, have a good income, and she may have a cute smile, but WHY would any sensible person think that muscles and smiles will carry a relationship through all the bumps in the road that a long-term relationship will undergo.
I know a LOT about long-term quality relationships. That's a benefit of my age, my broad-ranged experiences, the type of men I mingled with and chose for husbands, the quality of my marriages, my common sense, or in general, the life I've lived--inside my intercultural ex-marriage and now inside my interracial marriage with Darren.
Also, aside from my life inside my relationships with these wonderful men I've shared my life with, I have girlfriends and gal pals who represent various other ethnic and racial groups. Naturally, I mingled with many African women, white women, worked with women from all kinds of backgrounds for years, but one of my best friends from college is a Hispanic woman and another good friend I met about 18 years ago is an Iranian woman. All of these relationships have given me a chance to mingle inside other diverse cultures and ethnic groups and observe what goes into the much longer marriages they have.
Trust me, NONE of these women (that I know) from other cultures choose men the way too many typical American women do. These women from other groups virtually ALWAYS choose men based on how COMPATIBLE they are with the man--across the board. That compatibility depends almost totally on the commonalities in their backgrounds, their VALUES, their goals, their views about life, etc. A woman who is a rocket scientist and a man who is a construction worker are not going to be compatible 99.999% of the time--EVEN IF--he makes 15 times as much money as she does. DUH!
What are they going to talk about???? Oh, okay, let's see. Maybe they can talk about what was on TV last night or a new movie coming out. Or???????? ?Yeah, he may be able to crack some jokes that will make her laugh, but is that enough to sustain a long relationship? Let's face it--their values and views about life are going to be very different because a large part of who a person is springs from what they do every day and what they've done a lot of for the past several years.
In other words, you ARE what you DO. And in some cases, this can be a problem. This is why I knew I could never be interested in a long term relationship with a cop--though I did date a policeman when I was in my 20s. He was a nice guy, but I felt edgy with him. LOL! He talked about some of his work and YUK! ?I knew that I didn't want a man to come home and look at me through the lens that he'd been viewing life most of his waking hours that day. Police people deal with deviants. Their work involves identifying and controlling deviant people. However, if I had also been a cop, then we would have had a LOT to talk about and much more in common. Maybe.
I say maybe because some people are fortunately more complex than that. ?
Darren and I have similar educational levels, but our educational majors are far apart. Yet, we grew up in a similar manner, with similar VALUES, have various common interests, have personalities that mesh. So we feel free to be who we are with each other and we support each other in being who we naturally are. Darren virtually ALWAYS supports me in doing whatever I'm doing and he encourages me to do it. He always has my back. If it's something that we must do together and have a disagreement, we always talk until we reach a consensus. Neither of us wants to be happy at the other's expense.
I've noticed that many wives and husbands or women and men and women in relationships will take advantage of the other one if it enables them as individuals to get what they want. This creates an ongoing gender war or low-intensity conflict because even IF you can get over on another person, that persons knows that you did that to them. So, they will resent you and it's only a matter of time before they will retaliate. If they can't retaliate, they will simply resent you. Resentment is one of the worst feelings to have in a relationship. It's a relationship-wrecker. For sure!
Anyway, Darren also always tries to get rid of my worries and doubts and even tells jokes to make me feel silly about worrying or doubting. He hates it when I worry unneccessarily. OMG! That's when his temper flares. He'll say things like: "What is that worry based on?" Or: "You just pulled that worry out of thin air!"?
And yeah, I have to usually admit that I did just 'create' something to worry about. LOL!
I've figured out that he gets very upset about this because as a man, he feels that a part of his role is 'problem solver' so when I worry about things, he feels that I've created an imaginary problem. And how can he solve an imaginary problem??? LOL!
So, I've learned to maybe only say a word or two about any of my imaginary problems. LOL! And imaginary problems usually just dissolve into thin air anyway.
But, I'll stop here for now. Please stay tuned for my views on the above video.
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