One of the most common questions I receive from men and women who’ve been in a relationship for a while and are considering marriage is: Should we live together before we get married?

The idea of living together before getting married seems to be growing more and more in popularity. Proponents of the idea list the numerous benefits to cohabitating – most of the time revolving around the theory that by living together before you get married, you get the opportunity to get a 360 degree view of your mate, thereby giving you the means to make an accurate assessment of whether or not this is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Read the full story

Now that we’ve gotten to know each other a little better, let’s continue our discussion on fidelity. Imagine this scenario: You’ve been dating a guy for 3 or 4 months and the two of you are just starting to contemplate making the step toward commitment. In the course of dating, you have what seem like fun, harmless conversations like the one we’re having now, and at some point, you express to him nonchalantly, your belief that all men cheat. Three months later you guys decide you’re going to be in a serious, monogamous, relationship. He’s probably not thinking about cheating, at first, but as the relationship progresses, the newness wears off and temptation starts rearing it’s ugly head (as it always does) - the fact that he knows - somewhere in the back of his mind - that you expect him to cheat, is not going to be a helpful deterrent - on the contrary. Read the full story

Jane is in her mid to late twenties, educated, career oriented, driven in both personal and professional endeavors, independent and humble. She’s a good friend to those she cares about, values family and believes in making a difference in her community. She’s attractive - keeping herself personally fashionable without being necessarily ‘high maintenance’. In relationships she can be simultaneously firm and tender, demanding and forgiving, faithful and spontaneous. By most accounts, she’s a catch - despite this, she’s single, both by choice and by circumstance. Frustrated by an inability to reconcile how wonderful she knows she is against the fact that she’s single and unwilling to endure the self-depreciating cycle of settling, in our most recent conversation she renounced relationships in full saying simply - “I’m done”, while wondering aloud “who is Mr. Right - does he really exist - and what do I need to do to find him”?
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I know that for many people, the mere image of Flavor Flav at the top of this post caused noses to be turned up, eyes to roll, and mouths to snicker at what will go down in history as, quite possibly, the single greatest example of American absurdity in television history. Particularly, for so called progressive people of color, Flavor of Love has inspired a most venomous sort of hate - the kind that, in the past, was reserved for your Clarence Thomas’, and your Marion Barrys. But in hating the man, and his show, are we overlooking some really hard-to-deal-with truths about the state of our race? Read the full story

Recently, a good friend of mine asked me following: 
How do you know when it’s time to let go of a long-term relationship? 
She’s been with her guy on and off for a number of years. They’ve been through a lot; vast physical separation, infidelity, in between loves, times of extreme joy and times of equally extreme pain. Through it all they’ve managed to spend the last two years in relative peace. No states or countries separating them, no other men or women distracting them and, having both moved to a city far from their hometown, no family or friends to fall back on–for the first time in their relationship, it’s just them, and they have all the time in the world to just be. But in what should be the most wonderful time in their entire relationship, she cannot reconcile their seemingly miraculous survival of past tumultuousness against this unshakeable sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction she now feels. And that is where her question was born. Read the full story

On three separate occasions over the past 3 weeks, I’ve found myself engaged in conversation, with women, surrounding the myth of male fidelity.  Two of the times it was with co-workers –who know me fairly well, and the other time was with people who’ve known me for a while and whom I’d consider friends. Read the full story