Lola Adesioye

“You don’t have to go looking for love when it is where you come from.” – Werner Erhard

Author Helena Andrews is soon to put out a new book entitled ‘Bitch is the new black’. The book is made up of a collection of essays which take a satirical look at the issues that successful black women face in the dating world. Last week the Washington Post ran an article entitled ‘Single, Black and Lonely‘ which contained an interview with Andrews in which she asked why it is that so many black women with Ivy League degrees and other status symbols are single.

I’ve written about this before and my position is still the same. One of the most fundamental things missing in this discussion is responsibility. Women – we are not victims!! It’s time for us to own that we create our own experience of life. It’s time for us to fully be conscious of, and own, the words that come out of our mouths and the thoughts in our head. It’s time for us to be the master of own ships, by mastering our internal world as well as we have done, and continue to do, our external one. Here is a quote which I love on responsibility:

Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one’s life. Ultimately, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what’s so, and your stand. Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That’s not the truth. It is a place to stand. No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace that you give yourself – an empowering context that leaves you cause in the matter of life. – W Erhard

If there’s a pattern of meeting/dating unsuitable men, there is only one common denominator: you. It’s not about the guys. It’s about what you believe about yourself and about men, and once you own that, see it, shift those beliefs and create new and empowering ones, things will be very different

Life is like a big play. As we go along, we write a script which contains different roles for different characters, including ourselves, and we fit the people who come into our lives into those roles. Unfortunately, most of us seem to forget that we created our own script. Luckily, though, the beauty of life is that your external reality fully mirrors your internal one, so you can tell what script you’ve written by paying attention to the words you say and by looking at what and who shows up in your life. If your conversations go along the lines of “there aren’t any good men out there/men are x, y or z/men are either gay/married/in jail/uneducated” and so on, it should not be a surprise when your experience fits those words.

We also need to shift what we believe relationships to be for and about. It seems that they have taken on a very self-orientated bent and have become about what we can get, what someone has to give and what they can do for us. I often hear women say ‘well I’ve got a job/money/a degree, so what is a man going to give me?’ That completely misses the point of what relationships are for, makes men into utilities rather than human beings with their own needs, feelings, thoughts and emotions and sets us up for disappointment since nobody can give us anything anyway. We assume that a degree is somehow related to our emotional maturity or readiness for a relationship, when the two have nothing to do with each other. Relationship is about sharing and giving, and if it’s not that, our relationship scripts need some re-examination.

And goodness help the man who isn’t exactly what we want them to be! I used to engage in conversations in which I’d complain that someone did x or y – until I realized that it was as ludicrous as getting upset with a cat not being a dog.

Of course, the idea of giving fully and sharing ourselves can be scary…We’re afraid of getting hurt and of being taken advantage of. And that’s understandable. It can also be very limiting. As we carry our memories of our past experiences around like a huge trunk on our backs, in the attempt to avoid such upsets happening again, we bring all that past with us into every new situation. Not much can be created with a new person when the slate marked ‘relationship’ is already full of the past. But if we can be responsible for our experience, we can also be responsible for the meanings we have attached to our past experiences.

This woman-as-victim in dating idea is becoming increasingly common, and it does nothing except leave women feeling powerless. All we need is to take full ownership of our experience, and even if we’re still single, we’ll be happily single, not sad and lonely like the women in Helena Andrews’ book.