Recently in a meeting, someone said that married couples who meet at work are the least likely to divorce. Citing factors such as similar educational and professional backgrounds, work conditions, and like temperament, these couples are reportedly less likely to divorce than other couples. While there probably is some truth to this theory, I think shared experiences that are often dramatic, exciting, tragic, or exhilarating in nature also play a role in longer lasting marriages.

I’m not talking about the Jazmine Sullivan “bust your windows out your car” or an Angela Bassett garage sell/torch celebration, but real life experiences that require couples to lean on each other. Whether it’s taking care of one’s spouse during a serious injury or illness, comforting your mate during a parent’s death or supporting your wife as she relocates for her job – these are the type of experiences that make a marriage and contribute to marital bliss and longevity.

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Married four blissful years, Today’s Wife, Michelle Banks, kissed a few frogs before finding her prince charming. In this lively blog, she’ll expound on the joys and challenges of marriage, exploring relationships in transition, and managing successful relationships from both the BM (before-marriage) & AM (after-marriage) perspective.

Have you spent hours trying on different outfits preparing to meet her? Have you listened intently, feverishly trying to project your sincere interest and appreciation for her unsolicited advice; as you think to yourself, “this is my wedding and I’m planning it how I want to?” When the phone rings and you see her name come up on the caller ID, do you cringe hoping your husband will pick up the phone? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then you have encountered The Other Woman. The Other Woman is your husband’s mother.

In Jane Green’s book The Other Woman, the main character Ellie meets a man with whom she seemingly has a lot in common. They’re both career-minded, independent, and have their own homes. While her family is small, his is a bit larger and tightly knit. As their relationship progresses, he takes Ellie to meet his family. In an instant, Ellie finds Linda, (her boyfriend’s mother) to be confident, self-assured, and loving. She later learns that this is a front and Linda is an insecure, overbearing control freak. What’s worse is she sees her independent, big and strong boyfriend for the mama’s boy that he really is.

Whether you have encountered a mother-in-law who acted one way and then changed it up, or if she was and will always be one of your biggest haters, don’t fret. There is an art to dealing with The Other Woman. First, you should consider a few factors:

• How close do you and your husband live to his mother?
• How often do you visit her and vice versa?
• Is she married or seeing someone?
• Are there grandchildren to consider?
• Finally, what does your husband think? Is he a stand-up, think for himself type of guy or does he require his mother’s constant approval?

Whatever his approach, you must learn and master the skill of MLM, (Mother-in-Law Management). Kill her with kindness, indulge her with mindless attention because your primary goal is to maintain a happy husband. You want to emanate harmony and sweetness. Any conflict should not arise from you. That said, don’t be a doormat. Remain tactful, but firm and you will win.

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GUEST BLOGGER BIO
Married four blissful years, Today’s Wife Michelle Banks kissed a few frogs before finding her prince charming. In this lively blog, she’ll expound on the joys and challenges of marriage, exploring relationships in transition, and managing successful relationships from both the BM (before-marriage) & AM (after-marriage) perspective.

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.

While I agree that you do know a person better after you’ve lived with them, I don’t particularly agree with the notion that your new found knowledge of that person is going to be helpful in making a decision on whether or not to marry that person. I know that sounds illogical, but stay with me.

Living with someone gives you a full 360 degree picture of who they are as a person. You see them when they go to sleep and when they wake up. Having that sort of access is bound to give you more insight into the idiosyncrasies of their character that you might not otherwise know. Maybe the person presents their self as neat, orderly and organized, but once you’re there 24/7, you realize that the only time they probably ever cleaned their house was when you were coming over. Maybe the person likes to talk about all the different books they’ve read – but when you actually spend a couple months living with them, you realize they spend way more time playing video games than reading. Maybe the person snores, maybe they clip their nails on the bed, maybe they leave their shoes all over the house, and maybe they never, ever, clean their bathroom. All this stuff you’re able to find out when you live together. So you and your other decide to move in together and after a little while – you realize that they fit the description above. What’s your recourse – break up and thank God you didn’t choose to spend the rest of your life with this person right? Wrong.

I know, it seems like, with all of the above potentially hidden from your view, living together before getting married would be an obvious choice for a couple looking to go all the way. I happen to disagree. The thing about living together before you get married is, when you’re living together and you’re not married, the stakes don’t seem as high. Relative to if you were a married couple, you have way less to lose if the relationship fails. Because of this, these minor individual traits become huge issues. They cause little fights and disagreements – those disagreements grow into arguments. In those arguments, the fact that you guys haven’t yet made the decision to be committed to one another for the rest of your lives will make both of you less likely budge and compromise. You’re like… “No, there’s nothing wrong with leaving a huge wad of hair in the corner of the bath tub”, and he’s like “No, there’s nothing wrong with leaving the dishes till tomorrow morning”. Simple disagreements like this cause huge blow-ups because no one feels the need to back down or change – especially not for someone who they might spend forever with. Chances are, you’ll both think the other is crazy and unreasonable and you’ll part ways before you ever make it down the isle – and you’ll be relieved about it.

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.

The interesting thing about male infidelity is that it doesn’t usually come via a random, unexpected encounter; I mean, seriously, how many of us have women showing up at our doors in trench coats. It’s usually someone we’ve known for a while or someone who, at the very least, has been on the periphery of your lives for an extended period of time. Maybe it’s an old girlfriend turned friend, maybe she’s one of your friends or acquaintances, maybe it’s a co-worker we’re spending long hours with - the point is, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be with someone we’ve been around long enough to allow the idea to fester and nestle itself into a comfortable space in our minds. Once it’s in there, outside of cutting of contact completely, it’s almost impossible to remove. From there, depending on how often we see the person, and the context of those encounters, the temptation grows and grows till we hit the breaking point: the rationalization.

I call the rationalization “the breaking point” because it’s the point where we stop thinking about why we shouldn’t step outside of our relationship, and start thinking about why we should. Our mind will first point to what we feel are deficiencies in the relationship: lack of passion or sexual chemistry, boredom, etc, etc, etc. The last step of this rationalizing is us convincing ourselves that fidelity is impossible. We look around at all of our other guy friends who seem to be doing it, we look on television and it’s common place there, we see Will Smith admitting he and Jada have an open relationship - acknowledging the natural desire for outside companionship and eventually, we’ll tell ourselves, like you and the rest of society told us already, that all men cheat. In convincing ourselves of that, it no longer seems like we’re doing anything wrong. Rationalization Complete - game over, meet me at the motel.

So what does this mean - I still don’t feel like I’ve done an adequate job answering the question for you.

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”?

How many of you out there feel like Jane? How many of you feel like you have so much to offer someone in a relationship but have yet to find one deserving of your love? How many of you have thought you’d found someone only to realize that they were only a projection - hopelessly void of anything deeper than the image of what you desired. This weeks post will hopefully spark a discussion on the internal work and steps you can take to put yourself in the best place possible to create a great relationship.

My advice - before you even think about starting a relationship, work on yourself. So let’s start with a couple of things you can work on that will pay dividends down the line.
1. Be Happy - I touched on this before in “Letting Go”. The first step toward having a great relationship is finding happiness - alone. Being happy isn’t just about the feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and see that it’s sunny outside, happiness is being truly content with your life and the direction it’s going. It’s important to find this happiness before entering a relationship because, often times, if you’re not happy before the relationship, you’ll look to the relationship as a cure for that unhappiness. That’s too much pressure on the other person and on the relationship.

2. Let go of the long time flings, friends with benefits, lovers, or whatever else you want to call them. Those semi-relationships are repellants to new love and to happiness. They keep you stuck in the same circumstance, discourage new thoughts and ideas, and most of all, they keep you blinded from the potential beauty of everything else around you. Should you carry these past loves into your new relationship, the mish-moshing of feelings will reek havoc on you and your new partner’s situation. Do yourself a favor, lose that number, forget that email address and de-friend them on Myspace and The Facebook.

3. Find something to do with your free time - One of the worst things you can do, as a single person, is be idle. It’s during this idle time that you find yourself texting someone you shouldn’t be texting, emailing someone you shouldn’t be emailing or calling someone whose number you should have deleted. It’s also during idle time that one tends to desire companionship the most - you begin to feel like you’re idle because you don’t have someone - when really, you’re idle because you’re not doing anything. Remember that hobby you always said you were going to take up - sewing, or maybe it was photography, maybe a blog (ahem), spinning, Yoga, Tae-Bo, spelunking - whatever it is - now’s the time to dive into it. Not only will you find yourself thinking less and less about being alone, but you’ll also become a more well-rounded person.

4. Make time to serve someone else - You’d be amazed at how quickly you forget about whatever’s going on (or not going on in your life) when you take the time to care about someone else’s needs. So whether you decided to join Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or whether you volunteer with your church or at a women’s shelter - whatever it is, it’ll go a long way in reminding you of how blessed and fortunate you are as there’s always someone who has it a little worse.

Those 4 things will get you started. It’s important to make those things indelible characteristics of your everyday life. They may seem unrelated to finding “Mr. Right”, but from what I’ve experienced, it’s not so much about finding “Mr. Right” as much as it’s about putting yourself in a place - personally - to create the right relationship.

Once you’ve incorporated these sorts of principles into your everyday life, it’s time to sit down and think about what you want in a relationship. This is one of the most common steps we miss in our quests for love. We forget to think about what having a great relationship means to us. We think in abstract and emotional terms without ever really sitting down and writing out what those emotions look like in action. Take some time and do this, write down whatever comes to mind whenever you think about a great relationship. Once you know what you want, it will be much easier to recognize it when you find it; likewise, knowing it will also make it much easier for you to recognize what you don’t want when it comes around.

Here’ s where it gets a little tough. You’ve worked on yourself for a while - you’re feeling pretty happy about your life having let go of that old baggage, picked up a couple hobbies, fed the homeless for a while and taken the time to figure out what kind of relationship you’re looking for. Now you have to find that relationship… where to begin? My advice, just do what you’ve been doing. Go to work Monday through Friday - if you feel like going out with the girls on Friday night… do it, if you don’t, stay home and enjoy the time you have with your favorite person in the world (yourself). Don’t stay in on a Friday night to avoid “looking for love”, but, by the same token, to go out every Friday looking like the girl who’s looking for love. Just enjoy yourself.

When you meet someone, follow your gut instincts. If there’s something there, explore it, but do so cautiously, and 100% aware, at all times, of what you decided you’re looking for. If it’s clear that you two are looking for different things - move on. Don’t stick around waiting to see if they’ll have a change of heart - remember how wonderful you are and how content you are with your life and realize that you can’t expect different results doing the same thing over and over. Take your time this time. You’ll spend some nights ‘jonesing’, and some nights lonely, some nights you’ll be sad and some nights you’ll be really sad. But in the end, with the proper preparation, and the proper patience, you’ll find yourself smack in the middle of the best relationship you’ve ever experienced.  It is at that point that you’ll realize - finding “Mr. Right” isn’t about seeing dozens and dozens of people searching for the right one, it’s about creating a situation in your life, where the right one, is the only one you see.

What do you guys think? How many of you have experienced or are experiencing something similar to what Jane experienced? How are you handling it? And what about causes? Why does there seem to be such a disparity between what men want and what women want?

Lastly, if you enjoy the blog, please subscribe and please leave comments or feedback - or, if you feel so inclined, send me a question or topic to write about - you can email me at jermaine@thatblackgirlsite.com

- later!

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?

What are the things we despise most about The Flavor of Love?

1. The Man-Sharing - dozens of women (counting each of the seasons) competing for the affections of one, by most accounts, unimpressive individual.

2. The Misogyny - he names the girls - do I need to say more? Flavor Flav gives you a name and that’s your name - not just for the show… but like… forever. Hoopz is still Hoopz, Deelisheess is still Deelisheess.

3. Besides the above, Flavor Flav and his show are hated for committing one of the worst crimes you can commit against progressive black people: Conduct Detrimental to the Race (CDR for short). This broad term is for the select individuals who’s sins are bad enough to prevent the entire race from moving forward at it’s proper pace. Others on this list (depending on who you ask) include: R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, the aforementioned Clarence Thomas and Marion Barry, Ray Caruth, and The Old Dirty Bastard (may he rest in peace).

So - what is man-sharing? One example of man-sharing is when a women knowingly enters into, or continues to participate in a relationship with a man whom she knows is sleeping with other women (or men - yikes!). Another example of man-sharing is when a woman has a ‘more than platonic’ relationship with a man whom she knows is married. How often do these things go on in our culture? How many of us have knowingly been in a relationship that was monogamous on only one side? How many of us have friends who’ve slept with married men, or men in serious long-term relationships? All of this is man-sharing, like it or not. I don’t, necessarily think it’s anyone’s fault… it’s more a condition of our culture, a product of high incarceration rates and low life expectancies among black males. It happens, and we have to be honest with ourselves about it.

Misogyny, like Baseball and Racism, is an American Institution. It is ingrained in the social-fabric of our country and that fact reflects itself in our culture. We see it in some really obvious ways - our music and music videos, the disproportionate salaries among women of color, and in the characterization and portrayal of our women in mainstream media. Misogyny also rears it’s ugly head in ways that women may not even be aware. Black men -when in the private company of other trusted black men - will still resort to words other than “women” as general terms for the opposite sex. Sometimes it’s bitch or bitches, sometimes it’s chick or chicks, shorty, ole’ girl, mama - the list goes on and on and on - rarely, does a woman get called by her name when being discussed by a group of black men. And this isn’t just in the ‘under-educated’ communities within our community. Many of my college friends - whether they’ve gone on to be Doctors, Lawyers, Bankers or Brokers - still call black women “bitches”. The fact that they mean it with no disrespect is indicative of how ingrained misogyny is in our society and culture.

How did we feel, as a race, when the extent of R. Kelly’s pedophilia was finally revealed, or when Marion Barry’s “crack tape” came out or when they found Ray Caruth hiding in the trunk of his rental car after murdering his pregnant girlfriend, or when ODB had his infamous “Wu-Tang is for the Kids” episode at the Grammys. We felt embarrassed and they were subsequently convicted of CDR - and banished from blackness. But how many of us have known or know an R. Kelly. How many of us have a Marion Barry in our family - we all do. We respond with such disdain for these individuals, not just because they’ve committed some really heinous crimes or had some truly embarrassing moments, and not just because their conduct is detrimental to the race; our disdain is also born out of the fact that these men are our friends, our neighbors, and in some cases, our family.

We look at them with the same eyes we look at our crack addicted neighbor, or our perpetually incarcerated cousin. That is the unintended genius of “Flavor of Love”, that it has, in its own way, provided a sort of surreal microcosm of some of the most important issues in Black America: family values, how we’re treating our women, and social responsibility. So the next time the show comes on - be it in re-runs, or a new season - and Flavor Flav in his crown of horns begins laying his women with clocks, signifying their ‘chosen’ status, think not of Flav’s responsibility to his people to “do better” but think of that person in your family who’s just like Flav and your responsibility to them. In doing so, in bettering the lives of those people who these characters remind us of, we’ll bring ourselves closer to that day when a show like Flavor of Love has absolutely no foundation in our reality - then we can appreciate it for what it really is, a really, really, funny show.

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.

So again, how do you know when it’s time to let go? 
I think there are a few questions we all should ask ourselves when we find ourselves at a crossroads in our relationship:

1. Am I Happy? — One should never enter a relationship out of loneliness or unhappiness, so assuming the best case scenario that you were relatively happy and content with your life before the relationship, how you answer the question “Am I happy”, is usually a good indicator of the effect the relationship is having on your life. Those who know you the best, whose opinions you trust, constantly telling you things like “you don’t seem like yourself”, or always asking you “is everything alright” are tell-tale signs of person negatively changed by a relationship.

2. In what ways have I grown since we’ve been together?  — The best relationships are those that challenge you to be better then you already are. This doesn’t mean you got cheated on multiple times and are now able to stand infidelity with ease. It’s more like… do you feel like your knowledge base has grown, have you acquired new tastes, are you able to trust the opposite sex more or less now, have they pushed you to excel in your career, do you feel spiritually challenged? All those are examples of ways in which a person grows when they’re in a healthy and productive relationship. Likewise, ask yourself; in what ways has your partner grown since you’ve been together? It goes both ways. It may not be that one of you isn’t putting their all into the relationship; the relationship may have just hit a dead end.

3. Are we intimate with one another? — Intimacy is an extremely important part of any relationship as the intimacy goes so goes the relationship. There are different types of intimacy:  There’s the physical- love making, and then there’s the emotional. The physical is too confusing to use as an indicator - especially in long-term relationships. Two people who’ve been together for while can have the greatest sex without ever making love to one another - without ever being truly intimate - physically. Gauging your emotional intimacy, however, can be very telling of what remains of your connection with your partner. Think about that thing, that idea that keeps you up at night, the thing that has always sat straddling your dreams and your reality. Maybe you work a corporate job but have always dreamed of opening your own business. Or maybe you secretly want to skip the annual Caribbean vacation and drive across country. Whatever it is, do you share that with your partner? Do you feel comfortable letting them into the deepest corners of your being? And likewise, do they share those things with you? Does there seem to be a vast expanse separating those things you each individually contemplate or desire and those things you actually discuss? All these are indicative of your level of emotional intimacy.

4. Have I let go of my anger over past wrongdoings? –This one is simple. Have you forgiven? If you’ve been seriously wronged, but decided to stick it out, have to let go of that anger. Does it still way heavily on your trust, your decision making (as it relates to the relationship) - if it does, then it will be nearly impossible for your relationship to progress.  

5. Do I see this person standing next to me in my most ideal future? –This is a tough one. When thinking about your life 10, 15 years from now, do you want it to be that person that’s there standing next to you. In unlocking the answer to that question, you are able to unlock your most sincere feelings about the relationship. If the answer is a resounding “yes… yes… yes!” then you know you have something worth fighting for. If the answer is no, then you have a tough decision in front of you.  Every minute you spend with someone who isn’t the person of your dreams is a moment you’re not spending with the person who is. The moments add to hours, those hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years.  And while those years may be filled with some really fun times, if you know that ultimately, this isn’t the life partner, then you’re just wasting time.

The above are just a few of the many questions one should consider when reaching a crossroad similar to the one my friend reached. When you’re at that point, honest reflection on your desires and where you are in the relationship is imperative. You may realize that you still love and care for the person, but that love just isn’t enough anymore. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s only wrong when you do nothing about it.  It’s easy to paint the picture of our relationships with broad strokes -– characterizing them with clichés like “we’ve made it through the storm”, but what about what’s left on the other side of that storm.  What do you do if after making it through the storm you find not the brightly burning sun of spring, but a perpetually dull and lukewarm gray of an endless winter’s end?  If I had to sum up, in one sentence, my answer to my friends question it would be this: You know it’s time to let go when the memories of what you once had seem brighter and more wonderful than your present and future will ever be.

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.

The conversations started out centering on the normal Mars/Venus type debates.  Unfailingly, at some point, one of the ladies would find a reason to assert the ideology that “All men cheat”.
Before we continue, I want you guys to stop reading for a second, and answer the question for yourself:  Do all men cheat? 
 
Back to the conversation.  For some reason – possibly a sort of male solidarity – that assumption, that all men cheat, didn’t sit right with me.  My first response was to attack what I saw as an extreme generalization.  Usually, when a large generalization of that sort is made, the person who made the statement will back a way a little when prodded.  Not on the issue of male fidelity – when I said – “you can’t mean all men!?”, the response was “yes, all men cheat”.  My next response was to try to frame the question.  I figured that it was easy to make a general statement like that, when you aren’t attaching a face to the cheater…

“So that means, you think that I’m going to cheat”. The response, in all three conversations – with my co-workers, and with my friends- was the same…”Yes, you’re going to eventually cheat”.  This was news to me.  I agreed, that it was in a man’s nature to, at some point, desire companionship outside of their relationship.  I always thought that desire could be quelled through discipline and hard work.   I found myself humorously wondering - what was I waiting for – if I’m going to cheat anyway, I might as well stop wasting time and get started now, while I’m still in my prime…lol.

Seriously though, here I am speaking with young, successful, career oriented women of color, who have everything to offer, and not a single reason to desire anything but the best, but have essentially accepted infidelity as a natural component of romantic relationships.  And therein lays the rub: the acceptance.   When you answer the question “do all men cheat” with a “yes”, and then enter into a relationship with man, that “yes” still intact, you are – in some ways telling him that it’s ok to cheat. 

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.

Send some feedback, and we’ll continue this discussion with part 2 in the coming days…