There's a disconnect. Clearly. Between young men and women in 2016. I'm sure there has always been but now I'm in the middle of it. Traditionally speaking people, and society's outside forces, raise their sons and daughters with different levels of emotional awareness. Girls are generally taught to be affectionate and look for love, while boys are taught to be tough and emotionally disengaged and to look for success first, then love later in life. Society's most prevalent double standard has been what's acceptable behavior sexually for men and women. We all know all these things. I say all that to reiterate why the disconnect should come as no surprise. We teach the two genders to look for opposite things then somehow get on the same accord magically overnight. Shockingly and almost beautifully, it does eventually happen for some. Percentage wise it's pretty rare in my community, however. Black women are statistically the least likely to be married. A statistic that has been the baseline sadness to most of my blog posts. I've discussed the insecurities, for both black male and female, this is about helping both see some light at the end of the tunnel. I'm speaking mostly from first hand experience but also from extended observation. Women, how do you know if your man is ready to be a husband?
This is a question that I don't want to be confused with when do you know your man is ready to marry you specifically, this is more for women who want to know if a man is really ready to find forever, or if he's just trying to be in the present. To put it simply, it won't be until he's truly proud of himself. Let's dissect that.
Let's go back to my earlier comments, women are taught to look for love. That inherently leads to a lot of the worth society puts on a woman is when she finds a man, how long can she keep that man, can she keep him monogamous, and if he deems her worthy enough to "give up his hoes"? The sad reality is this is a very true depiction of how women are judged. This is the pressure and paranoia they struggle with almost the minute they graduate high school. I've gone on record to say that women go into complete panic mode if they reach 28 and aren't married. It normally kicks in around 25 but they fight it thru denial as much as they can until around 28 and the pressure starts to really get to them. Between 18-22 college or just being young makes for a pretty good excuse as to why they aren't married. 22-25 is when they are in the gray area. It's the time period where they can be career minded first or use the valid excuse that men their age aren't emotionally mature and still want to "play games". While that's a 50/50 thing it's still a valid excuse. 25-27 is when women have started to slow down from their free flowing life style. Real life responsibilities typically have kicked in more, partying a little less, and the growing desire to "have something real" is become greater by the day. By 28, society and family members are basically saying "Girl what's wrong with you?". You aren't married, may or may not have kids but if you do have them, why you have kids and no husband. What are you doing wrong? IN MY OPINON, that's a two part answer, most of the time it's a combination of young women being attracted to the wrong things in men, therefore they aren't engaging with the type of man that wants to get married anytime soon. The second part is, in this generation a lot of women have become very looks concentrated vs being homemakers and having substance. But that's another blog. So for the women who have what it takes to be great wives, and the first part of the answer is more your problem, what should you look for in a man if you're looking for a husband?
A man that's truly proud of himself is no longer chasing respect as a man. He's simply building more bricks on top of his foundation. Well what does that mean? I said earlier that men are taught to look for success then love later, but does that mean you have to find a rich man to find a good husband? No. Success is very relative, but it's necessary. I'm big on quotes, one of my other quotes is, "If a man is still chasing his dreams (initial dreams), he's probably still chasing women". What all of this culminates to is wherever that man has decided he wants to be in life, he has to achieve that relatively before he ever sees splitting his time and energy to really building a REALationship that ends in marriage. There's exceptions to every rule, of course, but generally speaking that's what it takes. I can use myself for example, when my son was born I was a 21 year old kid, no career direction. My dream of playing basketball professionally had all but faded on a college redshirt opportunity that went left, and I was kind of just going thru the motions. My son was born and I couldn't afford his diapers, let alone afford to take care of my family. I didn't feel like a man. I felt like a child, with a child. I also felt like, I had to get my life on track. Despite other problems between his mother and I, no matter how good things were going at that point, there was no way I would marry her. I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE A MAN. I wasn't proud enough of me. So that was my supreme focus. Everything else was just a distraction. Entertaining other girls were a distraction. But it required little time and energy. The young dating scene doesn't require much responsibility but it's the most instant gratification. Meeting a girl, a stranger, and being intriguing enough to go from a stranger to someone she felt she "needed" to please, needed to communicate with, needed to have in her life, sadly, was the only time I felt like a man. It was the easiest way to feel special. Because in the real world, I was nothing. In my mind. I was raised by the old guard that men provide and as much as the lines have been blurred modern day, the underlying sentiment is a man is only a man when he can provide stability. When he can provide financially for his woman and kids. That's where our worth is put. ESPECIALLY as black men. So in most cases, until a man has crossed that bridge, he can only give you a piece of him. His focus is bettering himself, not compromising for love. So fast forward a couple years, I've made something of myself. I had a career, not a job, I had a career. I was making good money, I was living in a big city, I could buy within reason everything I wanted materialistically. Shoes, a nice apartment, could pay bills for the place my son and his mom lived in. I was proud of me. About 6 months into that, things changed. After I received the superficial attention that came with that, that's definitely a prominent stage also, I started to realize none of it was making me as happy as I thought. We see it all the time with rich people and celebrities, but we never think about it on more of a common level. But that's when I started to realize that love and companionship had actual value. More value than the money and materialistic acclaim I had been chasing. It took me getting that success and realizing that it only meant so much to me. The crazy part is, if I was still that 21 year old Travis who couldn't buy diapers or pay my bills, I would still be the one saying "I'm not getting married. I just want to get this money". My perspective would have never changed. I would have never stop using women to stroke my ego. Don't get me wrong, there's MUCH more money I want to make, there's a lot more new career aspirations that have developed for me that I really want to accomplish, but I accomplished enough of my first tier goals to be able to sleep peacefully. So if your man wants to be a rapper, and that's all he's putting his energy into, and he hasn't had any substantial wins in that arena yet then he's probably not ready to be married. That doesn't mean he won't be good to you. That just means marriage probably going to happen further down the line. If his dreams don't include a lavish lifestyle and he wants to a doctor or an engineer, or a head high school coach or a professor, no matter how big or small in status his dream is, he's not really going to start thinking about real partnership until he checks that off of the goal list. Women normally are fine with "growing with you" but fundamentally that's just not how men work. As much as we want a "ride or die", because we do, marriage normally isn't come until we reach the destination. Success has to come for us first, more time than not. Relative to whatever we deem is success. Then that success also has to marinate for a time period. Love will always come first with women. Fundamentally society teaches us to be functionally dysfunctional.
Me, being the biggest rap, and Jay Z fan, in the world I always use the correlation with Jay Z songs. Because what Jay Z does better than anyone is show where he currently is in his life. When he was on the come up he was making songs like "Big Pimpin'". Around 2001-2002 his sound changed. He had reached undisputed elite status at the top of the game that's when songs like "Song Cry" where he looks back on the good woman he did wrong because his ambition took precedent, "Bonnie & Clyde 03", and "Excuse me miss" happened. He was in that transitional stage. That's reportedly when he started dating Beyonce. Taking nothing from Beyonce, she's an amazing talent and appears to be an even more amazing woman but timing played a big part in their relationship in my opinion. He was ready to find something more fulfilling after getting the success and ready to put work in for it. It was all in his music. And now we get songs like "Best Thing", "Suit and Tie", and "Drunk In Love". What stage is your man, or the one you have your eye on, in?
