Black love: fact or fiction?

There is this glorious construct of Black love – a Black man finding a Black woman and pair bond and raise a family. It was always something that I saw growing up around my family and the foundation of my childhood. 

A theme in my book, Can I Borrow Your Skin, was that as an industrious woman focused on career was does the idea of Black love fade for an older, driven woman? 

Transcript

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Hi, welcome back to the Can I Brow Your Skin podcast? I am your host, Angie Clemens. We are here week three in May. We are discussing a lot of topics around sex. And today is about sex, but not directly about sex. Because today, as a black woman, I am going to talk about the pressures of the construct of black love. Now, I want to say that growing up, the idea of black love was so romanticized to me. You know, both my parents were black, all my grandparents were black. You know, I have um 16, 17 aunts and uncles, most of whom married um black women or men. Uh but for me, the idea of black love was so romanticized. It was the idea black man and a black woman are gonna get together, they're gonna raise this black family, and the villagers are going to dance, everything was gonna be great. And this was my foundation of what love looked like. And as I got older, you know, going throughout high school, honestly, I was not that interested in dating in high school. I dated, but it wasn't like something that was as important to me. Like my sister had a boyfriend, pretty much the same boyfriend throughout high school. She went to college with the same boyfriend. She married the man, they raised a family together. My younger sister, um, her and her husband met when fairly young, got married, they have uh kids, just like this whole they were the epitome of black love, the two of them. And then you get me. I dated in high school, but I didn't find that mate. Then I went to PWIs, um predominantly white institutions for all of my education. And so there really wasn't a great pool of people to pick through. And to be that let me rephrase that there were a lot of great people there, a lot of amazing men and women, but I did not find one for me, not for lack of trying. Um, so as I gotten older, and once you start looking at the fact that, you know, at this point, we're talking early 2000s, and this whole idea of you know, trophy wife started to come up, and it became more and more popular. And, you know, among my my peers, and we're talking about successful black professionals, um, people who their priorities in life became the idea that you're gonna be a power couple or you're going to be a home uh what do you call it, homemaker? And then you had the the idea, especially I was living on the East Coast at the time. It was the whole idea that it was shifting um from you know the black man, black woman, black love concept. And uh, I think it was Kanye West in his song that said, when he gets on, he's gonna leave you for a white girl. And there was that fear amongst black women that they would help a guy come up and then he's gonna leave them. And for me, I just I just wasn't interested in any of those discussions. And so I found in my life at that time, in my uh mid-20s through mid-30s, my priorities were school, then work. Um, after I got out of school, I was traveling. You know, I just my life was mostly work before family. I just I really wasn't that interested um in this whole idea of being this core family woman. You know, I was more interested in working, building my own life for myself, um, fucking when I wanted to fuck. And when I got to the point where I wanted a long-term relationship, my definition of what a long-term relationship was not what most black men were looking for. Because if I'm one of those people where I have such a strong personality and sense of self in and of myself, and a lot of the you know idea of what black love looked like was, you know, the man leads, the woman follows. And I'm fine with that as a concept, but my idea of following is in lockstep. And so I I I really found myself being um cast into, you know, one of two groups of people. I was either too focused in on my career and I was belittling the man, um, or I was competing. So I was seen as competition or belittling. And for me, that did not work because I was going to be all that I could be um without being in the army. Like I had high goals and high hopes, and I was gonna make those goals and those hopes come true, come hell or high water. And I didn't need someone who's supposed to be a partner that didn't understand that me being high achieving was a benefit to the both of us. I know that probably one of the last um relationships I had before I started dating the man I married, um we would have conversations at least once a week where it was, well, I did this this week, what'd you do? And it became so competitive that I just I stopped uh sharing the things that I did. And it didn't help when some of the things I did became published work. It was like, you didn't tell me about this. I was like, I can't tell you shit. You want to argue about it, and it just got so frustrating for me, and so then it made me ask. And I, you know, I have a group of high-achieving black female friends, a lot of whom are married to wonderful, high-achieving black men, and their love is absolutely glorious. And then you have some of them who are married to high achieving white men, um, Latino men, then you have some that are married to high achieving black women or Latino women, um, white women, and you know, then you have some who are married and they don't have to be high achieving. Like the the measuring someone by their accomplishments to me has always been an interesting way of doing things. I think that if your household is functioning, it shouldn't matter who's bringing in the money. If you're happy, they're happy, your family is able to do what your family is able to do. I didn't understand the competitiveness from what I saw when I was out there trying to get this glorious relationship of black love. And so it made me wonder and question. And I've had these discussions with some of my friends like, was this a fairy tale that was so to us? And yes, I do see it in my life. I uh, you know, my sisters have amazing relationships, and you know, and but for me being out there myself looking for it, and I know what I was looking for was not the norm. Um, what I have now is not the norm. Um, but it works for us, and so I guess maybe what I was looking for wasn't something that was available at the time. And now that I have what I want, um it makes me wonder was I just looking in the wrong place, looking for something that didn't exist? Like I found my unicorn, so I'm happy. But the idea that this thing was out there and available to others, but not to me, and not to some of my friends. And you know, we sit down and we discuss like, well, not everyone's looking for the same thing, and I get that, but was I looking for the wrong thing at the wrong time, the right thing at the wrong time, the wrong thing at the wrong time? It's like the right thing at the like it just it makes me look back. They say hindsight is always 2020, but you look back and I wonder what did I do incorrectly to not find this glorious idea of black love. And and it's interesting because you know, there there's always this discussion that goes on in the black community about how marriage isn't what it was when our grandparents were together. And I absolutely abhor that comment because our grandparents didn't necessarily stay together because they wanted to, some of them stayed together because they had to. And when you start looking at the fact that women couldn't have credit into 1984, and even when women could get credit, black women couldn't, and some of the requirements on you know, women to get divorces having to prove that they could raise all of their children on their own. And when you have a large family, that's not always the case that you could do that on your own. And you know, you have you know, support and the idea that there was, you know, not as many resources today as there was back then. But you know, grandma and grandpa didn't always stay together because they wanted to. Yes, some of them did stay together because they wanted to, but the I and then the trad wife thing. Um, I laugh because there are definitely some people who want to be homemakers, and then there's people that definitely do not want to be homemakers, and then there's those beautiful blended families where they both do their part and it works for them. And so I think one of the things that is interesting to me, and I think we fail as a community with not just minority communities or the black community, but as a whole of people, we fail with that communication of what does love look like for you? What does home look like for you? And can I do what you want in this idea of home, this idea of love? And I think that, and that was probably where I failed when I go back and I talk to my friends, and I'm honest with myself. I wasn't honest with me about what my idea of home and love looked like because I wanted I wanted X. And X was just this idea of this kind of love. But within this kind of love, I wanted some very specific things that I didn't communicate well enough for someone to be like, oh yeah, yeah, that's not what I want. And so I would be dating people and I'd be like, what the fuck planet are you from? This is not what love is, but it was their version of love, it wasn't mine. And so I think that that is something that we need to start communicating more effectively. I know that there is this idea now that there is a male loneliness epidemic, and women in the male loneliness epidemic, they they're blaming it on women, but it's a man's fault that they're lonely because women are able to support other women in a healthy, sustainable way, and they don't need men for anything but dick. So, and then they can just go get the dick and then come home and be quite content. And so, whereas men, on the other hand, they put so much of their social well-being into their partner, and I don't believe that this is just a heterosexual male problem. Let me be very clear about that. I think that men as a whole don't rely upon their friends for enough of their grounding and their social life the way women do. Like women, we can go have girls' days, go to brunch, have ourselves the best time, go home refilled and veg out all day. Where men can go to brunch, they can go to the bar, they can do sports nights, but they don't actually depend on their guy friends for so much social release, you know, and physical contact. Like the idea that women can give each other hugs and lay out on the couch together and have the best time, you know, two it's very rare that two only friends, males, will just cuddle up on a couch and watch a movie the way two uh platonic females will. So I think that's that's where I'm gonna leave this because I'm gonna ramble into so many other things. But I think that with just like with black love, with all love, we need to learn how to define things when we go into it so that we get what we need and want out of it. So we're gonna keep pugging around and bae on topics of sex. Hopefully, you're enjoying this. Like, subscribe, comment, download, and bye.