In case you find yourself reading this post and thinking…I’ve read this before; you have.

I wrote it for my previous blog.

Its just as true now as it was then.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The most unfortunate thing about the war between Black men and Black women is the fact that it rages on whether there are headlines to follow or not. As we speak some blogger somewhere is waxing eloquent as to how it is that the other sex just doesn’t get it, piling on anecdotes and embellishing and embracing stereotypes.  Of course that is how adversity is. Well that is how it is supposed to be anyway. The moment brothers stop trying to rein in the SuperWomen they discover, turning them into Relics from an era gone by, will be the moment Women will stop feeling emasculated. Yes, brothers, if you stumble upon a multi-degreed head of household with her pedicured foot in corporate America’s ass, attempting to turn her into (yeah..i DARE you to find a Black woman who embodied the kind of character Donna Reed or June Cleaver represented on TV) is going to feel a lot like emasculation. and NO ONE, even a WOMAN, wants to be emasculated.

Let us be clear. The second half of the 20th century put the Black woman in an awkward position. It made HER the hunter gatherer, cause nurturing doesn’t put food on the table in enough quantity to keep up with the rapidly rising standard of living. Sacrifices were made, and the overall mindset of the black woman evolved as she started to embrace a role she….(deep breath) was not created to play.

Let me stop here and elaborate.

Men and Women are EQUAL…but they are not the same.

Equal does NOT mean the same.

IF you think it does, try slipping 2 rolls of quarters under a stripper’s G string instead of a 20 and see how far THAT gets you.

(yes i admit i drove this whole post JUST so I could type one of my favorite analogies. now back to my subject)

Women have become more like men than they were ever intended.

While many in my rapidly expanding circle have a tendency to eschew overt Scriptural references…allow me to be QUITE specific:

Ephesians 5: 22-33 Amplified version

22Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord.

23For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the church, Himself the Savior of [His] body.

24As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.

25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

26So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word,

27That He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless].

28Even so husbands should love their wives as [being in a sense] their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.

29For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church,

30Because we are members (parts) of His body.

31For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

32This mystery is very great, but I speak concerning [the relation of] Christ and the church.

33However, let each man of you [without exception] love his wife as [being in a sense] his very own self; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband [^[a]that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates, and esteems him; and ^[b]that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly]. [I Pet. 3:2.]

As you may or may not have read, I got married in May of 1997, at the not all that tender age of 26. The above scripture was not only read, but a sermonette was PREACHED on that passage DURING my wedding. (it should be noted that full fledged church was held on that day, a soul got saved, both the bride and the groom caught some semblence of the Spirit and it ran the wedding a full hour over schedule, which cost the groom a not all that nominal overtime fee for the limo. All that there, didnt sink in, obviously, because my dumbass was up to my elbows in a relative stranger not ONE year later.

You might ask why that was, and why I was able to live to tell the tale, especially considering the fact that my then-wife was 2+ months pregnant with our first child. Youll have to trust me that I had my reasons and that I was spared for good cause. I am only pointing this factoid out to let you know that I am NOT without sin.

That I am MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, better at deciphering YOUR problems and how you should HANDLE YOUR BI than I am at regulating what happens in these here parts.

I KNEW what was expected of me. I DID not know what I was getting myself into.

• I did not know that somehow Married men are more attractive than single men.
• I did not suspect that some people in the world think NOTHING of bedding someone else’s spouse.
• I thought I was bigger than my desire to touch and be touched by a woman.(I may be NOW…i damn sure wasn’t then…and I probably still am not.)
• I underestimated the ability of a woman (one woman in particular) to hold a grudge.
• I completely misunderstood the enduring, never ending damage of infidelity. Infidelity is SOOOO BAD, that women you DIDNT cheat on will look at you askance when you tell them you had a one night stand almost 8 years ago with a woman you no longer converse with while you were married.

I am of the overall opininon that 90% of premarital counseling classes are a joke.

Think about it, You spend your entire relationship trying to avoid the very issues that could probably lead to the death of your relationship, when those are the VERY issues you need to approach head on. Once you do that, how can you proceed on some kind of schedule, knowing that around every corner is a discovery about each other that will challenge everything you know about that person.

Marriage is a wonderful and powerful institution. It is older than Communion and baptism and the very bedrock to culture as we know it. Getting it right is the difference between one nation under a groove and one nation under God, Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.