WHAT GIVES ME THE RIGHT?

What gives me the right to write a book concerning the choices women make when it comes to men and relationships? I pose this question because it was the first one I heard when some of my female friends previewed the concept for this book. The question is valid, as you typically do not find a book like this from the male perspective. I took some time to truly understand the question and to come up with an answer.

Men have insight into why a woman may choose a man who is wrong for her. A man can be very slick in the beginning, so a woman may think she's choosing him for the right reasons. But another man will clearly see that he is wrong for her.

I have been married three times — but to only two women. The simple explanation is that I married my high school sweetheart, and then I married the woman I met during our divorce. I married my second wife twice. Although I have always heard advice not to do that, I did it anyway. I loved my second wife very much and felt we would be together forever. But forever is a long time. I was damaged emotionally and didn't know that if I would only be patient, I would save myself a lot of unnecessary pain. Let me explain.

Before the document was drawn up to divorce my first wife, I was developing feelings for the woman who would eventually be my second wife. This scenario happens all the time but is seldom admitted by those in it. I was involved in this weird scenario because I was immature, impatient, and doing what so many women do when they are in love — compromising, making excuses, and accepting a lot of crap — because I thought I couldn't live without her. Truth be told, women, you can and will live without him, and being alone until you find the right person is not a bad idea. But I was in such a rush to be in love that I forgot the basics. I needed to end my current relationship, heal, and learn from it before I started another relationship. So I took a good look at my life, who became the inspiration for writing this book.

I want to start by saying that I dearly loved the women I married and still respect them as the mothers of my children. Looking back, I acknowledge that we were all messed up, and I was chief among them. I am not perfect and realize that most authors of books like this try to present themselves as such. However, my intent is to be informative on this topic and to present something for you to consider — or ignore, if you so choose. The key is that it is your choice. But remember: with every choice there are consequences. You must exercise patience for your decision to prove it as a correct one or not.

The best part about making a relationship mistake is that you have the opportunity to learn more about your own flaws and what you need from a man. As you get older, you should start to realize that if you aren't inviting what you need into your life, you will get what you don't want instead.

I needed to be patient when it came to the women I loved and married. Although I was very much in love with them, I was unable to make them stay when they desired something or someone else. I had to come to the understanding that maybe I was the wrong man for them and that they were the wrong women for me at the time. Realizing that you might be the wrong person in a relationship is never easy, but that realization will help you become a better person down the road.

I finally decided to be patient and wait for a woman who would be willing to support me in a way that I needed. I am not going to say it was easy, because it wasn't. It was extremely hard, and I was so bitter at women and upset with myself for my contribution to the demise of my marriages.

It takes time to truly understand what you need in your life, and time equates to being patient. It takes time to forgive yourself for the wrong you have done, whatever that may have been. I could have lost my mind and acted like a fool, but maybe I wasn't the man for them. If that was the case, I couldn't allow that to stop me from believing that there was someone out there for me if I used better common sense. It all comes down to your decisions and approach when you are not getting what you want in a relationship.

Men have similar pressures when it comes to relationships, and those pressures often lead to their making the wrong decisions. I had the same conversations with myself that women have with themselves. Men, like women, battle low self-esteem. We wonder why we aren't good enough for a particular woman and if we will ever find a good woman. You may not know this, though, because men often do not feel safe enough to share these thoughts with anyone.

Decision-making is not gender biased, which means that no man or woman is above making the wrong decision. In regard to your choice in men, a man may be able to recognize why you seem to be attracted to the wrong ones. You must understand that your decision concerning a man has the ability to harm you emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Choosing the wrong man can even cause you to doubt your ability to recognize a good man.

Relationships and marriages are crumbling now more than ever before, but please note that there is nothing wrong with loving people. There is nothing wrong with relationships; rather, flawed people make relationships difficult. There is nothing wrong with the institution of marriage; rather, flawed people make marriage difficult. Flawed people can be selfish within a relationship. When you understand that your selfish desires have nothing to do with what the man is doing or not doing, you will then realize your role in your own unhappiness.

Let me share a story that will explain why I wrote this book about women choosing the wrong men. When I was in the military, there was a woman whom I will call Jane. Jane worked at a satellite hospital that was adjacent to the well-known mother hospital in that area. She was single and looking for love but, unfortunately, in the wrong place.

One weekend Jane met a fantastic guy whom I will call John. She told me that he might be the One. He was fine, well groomed, could sing, and seemed very sweet. Because dating had been difficult for Jane, it was a joy hearing about a man who seemed to have great potential. However, his reputation preceded him, as I knew about his womanizing. When Jane asked for my opinion concerning him, I couldn't tell her what she wanted to hear. I could only tell her the truth.

I wasn't sure why she even wanted my opinion, and then I realized that she was desperate. I advised her to leave John alone because he was no good when it came to relationships. I explained that he would dog her out in several different ways and that he may spend her money, eat all her food, and run up the mileage on her car. This information killed some of her excitement, but it was what she needed to hear. I understood her disappointment, but she had to hear the truth from someone who was not emotionally attached to the situation or the outcome.

Still, Jane began dating John anyway, who slowly started doing exactly what I said he would. He started spending her money, as he had access to her checking account, drove her car while she was at work, stole money from her, and ate her food. He even stole one of her credit cards.

This relationship messed Jane up for a long time, and it all came back to her decision to ignore my advice. She made a decision that I would presume was out of loneliness and the illusion of what she thought was her dream man, which soon turned into a complete nightmare.

I just could not understand why she asked me about John if she wasn't going to listen, but then it dawned on me. She had to date him until she understood that her problems with men had nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, they had everything to do with her decisions when choosing them.

The point I'm making is that in our attempts at finding love, we oftentimes ignore what we see; sometimes we also ignore good, sound advice from others who have our best interests at heart. Love is a powerful thing, and it should never be underestimated, because it is something that we all crave and need as human beings. So in attempting to answer the question "What gives me the right to tell a woman anything about men and relationships?" I actually don't feel that I have the right to tell a woman anything, but I have the responsibility to speak out about a situation that could damage her emotionally. It doesn't matter who the woman happens to be. We all should look out for one another whenever possible, and that concept has been lost in our selfish society.

The truth is that some women may be the cause of their own emotional pain and may not even realize it. Decisions are important, so we need to make every decision with great care, for we sometimes have no idea of its consequences until the damage has been done to our self-worth. We make decisions on who to date, who to have sex with, who to marry, and when to have kids, so how can we continue to go through life thinking our decisions are meaningless? A bad decision can impact our lives dramatically. A decision can be life or death even under the most innocent of circumstances.

I have spoken with women who said they married without even loving the person that they married. Who does that? I will tell you who does that: a person who had the wrong intentions and a woman who was broken and never allowed herself to heal, which led to that terrible decision. Instead of healing, she continued the cycle in a broken state of consciousness and never really experienced true love in the end. When a woman is broken, she will normally use her bad experiences as a warning to the younger generation regarding what not to do in a relationship. The bad experiences serve as a guide, but oftentimes it is misguided to the very person delivering the message. You will hear a person say, "Watch out for this type of guy," and "Watch out when he says this to you," and "Don't ever let a man do that." Decisions are what created those bad experiences. Because she can blame the guy, she sometimes never blames the decision to be with the guy, even when she knew it was a mistake from the beginning.

I once dated a woman who was instructing her daughter only to date white men. When I came to the house for the first time to be introduced to the family, there was a subtle uproar from her daughter because I wasn't a white man. I heard the daughter talking to her mother upstairs, saying, "All this time you've been telling me to date this way, and you bring something else home." This was a poignant moment for me, for I became "something else" — and I stopped being a man who wanted to love her mother.

Truth be told, I made a bad decision that day myself, for this woman told me that she was not looking to date a guy like me but I seemed to be different. I knew I had become a science-fair project, but I stayed anyway, like a dummy. I knew going in that this would be difficult, but I still did it and suffered some emotional hurt because of my inability to recognize that my decision was a bad one in that moment. Let's just say that it was the longest year and a half of my dating life. I would have been perfect for her if I were white, but my color and her experience with black men in the past got in the way of her belief that a black man could never do right by her and that he would always let her down. I chose to speak on this topic because I have seen it, lived it, and am also a product of bad decisions over the years.

I care about people in general, and if I can expose something or say something that might minimize the possibility of a hurtful situation, I will attempt to do so. Decisions come with consequences and can be extremely costly, depending on how bad the decisions are as well as the circumstances surrounding them.

As for Jane, she will ultimately be fine physically, but the emotional cost may be felt down the road when she meets a nice guy who is confused by how she is treating him. He will have no idea that John was able to damage Jane emotionally concerning men years earlier. I did not have the ability to control Jane's decision, but I attempted to inform her about something that I knew more about than she did.

If you knew the ramifications of your decisions at the beginning, before they were carried out, I wonder if you would make the same decisions. If you knew that a decision that makes you feel good now would mess you up — and perhaps your children — later, would you still make that decision? If you knew the decision to date that man now would cause you to have trust issues later, would you still date him? I gather you answered those questions appropriately by saying no. But a lot of us, including myself, often ignore the warnings and our own instincts because somehow we think it can't happen to us. The decisions made today will determine your future as far as relationships, self-esteem, and how others view you.

I will continue to sound the alarm if I notice that the pathology of a decision in choosing a man might be the reason for unnecessary hurt. There are times when a man has the ability to pour kindness into a woman's life, and although it may be totally unexpected and can oftentimes be rejected, that won't stop me from trying. If God is able to speak words of wisdom through a donkey, then I would hope that I am jackass enough to share something that could help someone. The ability to make the right decisions is not gender based. We all make bad decisions when it comes to relationships, but I hope you allow me to share something that you may not have thought about and may want to consider.

ATTRACTION

Attraction is a peculiar thing that can be hard to explain, and it's difficult to put your finger on the reason it is so powerful. When choosing the right man, it is oftentimes an art in which you will find yourself losing more than you win. But losing is not always a bad thing, for growth and learning happen through mistakes. The reason I say that is because we are all attracted to different things at different times in our lives. What I find attractive is not necessarily indicative of what you would find attractive. Attraction is based on individual preferences that are typically born from our experiences and interactions with many people, places, and things during a lifetime.

You may not have been attracted to other nationalities when you were young, but now that you are more mature and your exposure to other people has increased, you may find yourself attracted to other nationalities. The nationality didn't change; you actually changed your view of what is attractive and included such people on your list. If you are currently in a relationship, there was something about that person that attracted them to you. Attraction can be so intense that it pulls you blindly, without your totally understanding the cause of the pull. Different things attract different people in different ways, but we could probably agree that we have all felt an attraction to various people at different times of our lives.

Attraction incorporates the traditional five senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. We use these five senses every day, but we are never more aware of it than when it comes to the attraction of the opposite sex. As a woman, have you ever walked past a guy and the subtle aroma of his cologne was so alluring that you just had to give him a compliment about how good he smells? It probably made you do a double take in order to get a second sniff or look at this guy because the smell as he walked by you was attractive. The corresponding actions, comments, and compliments are all tangible things we do once our senses have been aroused. These are all the by-products of attraction.

If you are completely honest with me, you have probably had this moment happen to you at one point in your life. While minding your own business, all of a sudden you encounter the most attractive, handsome, and alluring man that you have ever seen in your life. You proceed to express your visual pleasure with a mumbled comment to yourself. If this has happened to you, did you try to take him all in with your eyes? Pupils dilated, head in a steady position, and total attention on the target ... We all have an internal image of what we deem attractive to us individually, and when we actually see it, it can be overwhelming in that moment. Where does your image of that perfect person originate from? Think about it ...

I remember talking to a certain girl on the telephone for the first time when I was about fifteen. She was around the same age, but she went to a different school. I remember being nervous to call her on the telephone and speak with her for the first time. You see, she was a blind date setup from a friend of mine, so I was blind to what to say or how to respond on the phone. I got up the nerve to call her and immediately developed knots in my throat as I picked the phone up and dialed the number. Once it started to ring, talk about scared — I was a nervous wreck. A woman answered the phone.