Saturday, March 27, 2010

Spending Habits And Divorce


A lot has been mentioned of the high divorce rate for black marriages and it has been shown that money is the leading cause of today's divorces. With black men and women typically making less money than their white counterparts, one might deduce that this very factor makes finance influenced divorce more prevalent among blacks. But there is another factor, that being financial habits. A recent study gives a startling revelation about the financial circumstances of single black women:

"Women of all races bring home less income and own fewer assets, on average, than men of the same race, but for single black women the disparities are so overwhelmingly great that even in their prime working years their median wealth amounts to only $5."
"Among the most startling revelations in the wealth data is that while single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5."

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Demanding Love and Commitment


In 1981, Jennifer Holiday demanded that "you're gonna love me" and "I'm not going" in the the Broadway musical, Dreamgirls. Later on, Beyoncé asserted that "if you want it then you should have put a ring on it". Does it not seem that in modern times, a man's love, dedication, commitment, etc. are all things that women demand or are things women challenge men to do? Has the art of winning a man's heart been totally lost?

More commonly today and to an an even more exaggerated extend within the black community, there seems to be great priority in snagging men through pressure. Men are expected to yield to the pressure to marry women they impregnate even if those women have won no more feelings from these men than sexual arousal. Men are supposed to marry women because women "deserve" to be married or because men are obligated to marry them. Men are supposed to marry women even if doing so sacrifices their happiness and emotional well being. Many women feel that they must force men to respect them as opposed to winning men's respect. They feel that they must force men to accept responsibility as opposed to helping create an environment that inspires men to accept responsibility.

Today, men are no longer the kings of their castles. They generally don't even share the rule. Women rule the nest nowadays even when a man is in the house and they don't rule it based on being deserving, but rather by fighting a battle that their men overwhelmingly cannot win. Men hate to argue with their women, especially with the irrational way that women fight and argue. Such arguing and discourse is stressful for men while women seem to strive on it. So men give in and become resentful. Such resentment manifests in the passive aggressive ways so many women complain about and prompts men to keep their eyes open for ways out as soon as something they feel is better comes along.

Back in the day, women were socialized early on to be good wives. When a guy impregnated a woman, he could be reasonably confident she would make a decent wife. Nowadays, a man has no idea what he will get. Pleasing a man is currently low priority for women and often seen as demeaning. Men are viewed by women as unemotional creatures who are available to be verbally and physical beat up at a whim, yet when men allow such abuse, the women lose respect for them. So a man has a choice of being looked down on by his woman or fighting her to a degree that endangers the relationship. It's a lose-lose situation. Men are more and more avoiding such nonsense and women, in common irrational form, can't see this for the world and routinely accuse men of being immature and non-committing.

Black women, specifically, seem to have larger egos than other women; egos that are almost male-like. Such egos make any type of submission to their men or any type of catering to their men's egos out of the question while these same black female egos are satisfied when they demean their men. It is not uncommon for black men to be cursed out by their women even when not deserving of it. If a black man complains, he is asked to "man-up" and take it, yet if he takes in in stride, he is viewed as a punk. Making a suggestion to a black woman is commonly interpreted as telling her what to do and often results in a firm "nigga, shut up". Hell raising is a common response by black women to anything they disagree with. Black men are not supposed to have any feelings, any needs, any desires, opinions, wants, etc. in a relationship unless they are thugs or players. Thugs and players are treated like kings, yet rarely make good husbands and fathers.

Winning a man's heart should be first priority. Not trapping him with pregnancy. Not throwing the coochie at him from the jump. Not starting the relationship by throwing your kids off on him under the guise of a packaged deal. You should inspire him to love you through sweetness and supporting his efforts to be a man. Show him that when he comes home to you, he will come home to comfort. In a world of 5 billion, the only importance a man has is the importance he has within his own home. Support him building his own personal castle and he will love, protect and provide for you till the end. Leave the male-like egos behind. They are quite unappealing.