Remembering

Tonight, I remembered with a lot of clarity what it's like to be in a relationship -- interesting because I think I had forgotten.

Also, interestingly, I saw two ends of a relationship play out for me. The beginning: the lovey dovey, call you 50-11 times part and the end: the hanging up on, calling back and hanging up on again part. And in both cases, I found myself automatically annoyed that these non-present others were interfering with the type of evening I wanted to have but then, out of nowhere, came this really... I don't even know how to explain this without sounding cheeky and crazy... deep understanding of what that person was going through.

One of my friends is ending a relationship with someone he lives with. Tonight the process of him moving out got serious when he was threatened with having his stuff put out and/or having someone come get it. I was so frustrated by the way he was obviously being manipulated. This wasn't about being wronged, this was about getting revenge. His former lover wanted him to hurt in the same manner they had and was pulling out all the stops. I was frustrated with the way he sat on the phone and repeated himself over and over. Said things he probably didn't really believe just to appease the other. But for the most part I was upset with how this was interfering with my night. How instead of having a good time we were all... not.

And I immediately was able to call up several times I was that person. I had such empathy for his situation because I remembered being in that position. Wanting to have fun with my friends but knowing I couldn't not have this conversation because I was being forced to. It was have the convo right then -- which was my then significant other's way of controlling me -- or face consequences I wasn't ready for. It was crazy how I went right back to that spot in my feelings. The embarrassment, the frustration, the anger, the fear...

Later in the night, I found myself frustrated by the other one. I thought "are you really on the phone with this person right now? While we're in the car with the music blasting? Can they really not let you have one night with your friends? Sheesh. It's 2am!" But again, I went back to those times where I didn't care who I was with. I was fine being on the phone with my person of interest whenever they called, whenever they were free -- whether I was free or not. It was a simple sacrifice (and I surely didn't think of it as a sacrifice for anyone else...)

I felt like I was supposed to see these situations and that I went back to those feelings so quickly so that I could remember and be empathetic (huge for me in terms of really paying attention to how empathy works and where it comes from -- counselors need that) but also to check my expectations, ask myself some hard questions about what I want and what I'm looking for and what I'm truly willing to risk.

I Don't Understand What You Don't Understand

Everybody does a post on interracial relationships, right? Ok. Here we go.

Belle at A Belle in Brooklyn did a flashback post today. As a relatively new reader, it was my first time reading this version of the same sad story. Here was my response:

Honestly, though. I'm tired of the whole thing. Belle, I agree with you, I don't care if individuals choose to date outside their race, I do, however, take issue with individuals who try to make it about anything other than themselves. If you have a hang up, you have a hang up and that is not the entire (enter demgraphic)'s problem. In other words, this black man clearly has a strong attraction to white and asian (I note he did NOT mention Latina women...) and instead of saying that, he wants to make it about black women, as if we're at fault. False, sir. I do not know you, thus I hold no responsibility in that. Claim your preference and take whatever comes as a result.

Further, I'm beyond trying to convince black men who think like this of the err of their ways. Quite frankly, if you don't want me, I don't want you neither. Let's skip the semantics, carry on. I've never understood why we, us black women, fight them so hard on this. They've got a problem that is theirs, so they need to work that out. I say I don't understand, but I do -- I'm reminded of the video of that black woman on Tyra's show who began crying as she spoke about how it sometimes seems like no one wants black women. We want to be wanted, that's the nature of being a woman.

I'm just ready for people to stop trying to down black women as justification for what they do. It's crap -- and that's all.

I had been thinking about doing a post on interracial dating after a conversation I had with a friend last night:

Her: So yall goin on a date for the next 5 days?
me: Uhh... are we going on a date in the next 5 days?? No. Why would we do that?
Her: Cuz I'm sure yall pass goo-goo eyes every time yall see each other! What's up with u and white boys
me: LOL. Ok, first of all, I don't do goo-goo eyes
what's up with me and white boys? Uhh... they're boys? Is this a trick question?
Her: Lol
Shut up
me: what?? ur the one asking me a crazy question. what are you really asking me
Her: What's up with yall?
Lol
me: ok then.
Her: So....?
me: i don't have an answer for that question cause there isn't anything up with me and white boys

I'm pretty consistently surprised at how fascinated people are by the fact that I do date non-black men. I date men. I'm attracted to men so I date them. This makes sense, right?

I was even more taken aback by this friend because she dates women (did everyone notice I did not say she is a lesbian? Ok -- that's important). I felt like she'd get it -- it's about who you're attracted to, and she'd go even further and say it's about being open on who you're attracted to. Now whether or not anyone agrees with that, the fact is, that's how she sees things, but she has been FASCINATED (almost to the point of criticism) by how I've dated white men. I don't get it. I wanted to respond to her "what's up with me and white boys? What's up with you and girls?" but I didn't -- that wasn't all that important.

Anywho, the point I'm trying to make is that I could go into all of the social reasons why I'm open to dating outside of my race and make some larger point about how we all need to just chill out and mind our own business, which was what I intended to do until I read Belle's post. You know, ultimately, one shouldn't have to justify why they choose to be in relationships with whomever they choose to be in relationships with. That's the individual's business and surely none of mine. No one should ever, in my opinion, justify the type or sort of people they are attracted to. Attraction in and of itself is hard to explain and thus is all the explanation necessary.

I used to be fascinated by other's fascination and now I'm a wee-bit annoyed by it. There's nothing to see here, I always want to say. I'm not interested in having some long drawn out discussion about who I'm attracted to and why because trying to explain it, to me, is like trying to justify it and I should not need to justify that.

I have found that most of the time there's a larger question they want to ask or discussion they want to have that usually goes back to how "black" I am, which is also a stupid question. I'm black. That's enough -- who I do or don't date has nothing to do with my ethnicity.

On a final note, I'll never, ever try to "justify" or "explain" why I date non-black men by placing the blame on anyone else. I date men -- period. There wasn't some wayward relationship I had with a black man that made me decide all black men were dogs and thus I'd only date white men. I take offense to people, like the guy in Belle's anecdote, who do that. If you're attracted to people outside of your race, that's fine. But we shouldn't make people feel like they have to explain it and on the flip side we shouldn't feel like an explanation has to be at the expense of a group of people, most of whom we don't even know.

You Talking to Me?

The motivation for this post comes from a couple of places.

I happened to be re-reading some old posts at A Brown Girl and saw where Alix had responded to a comment I made on "A Dilemma" Go read the post, it's thought-provoking. My comment was:

Man, this really speaks to me. I feel like this about my best friend who is male. I’m a problem in his relationships and he’s a problem in mine. To outsiders, we look like we’re supposed to be together. We know we’re not, but we truly love each other and we’re each other’s “rock…”

It’s crazy to expect anyone to just “accept” that, but it’s what would have to happen for ANY relationship to work for either one of us. *Sigh*

I’ve been in situations where my boyfriend would say something like “you need to choose…” and I would warn them that they wouldn’t like my choice and that’s all they need to hear, and I can never blame them for walking away. I know I wouldn’t be ok with competing with my significant other’s bestie all the time. It’s not fair, and yet, it’s exactly what I expect.

Alix's response:

Are you in love with your best friend though?

Having a friend that you’re that close to is only a problem if it’s made into one. When you’re in a relationship with someone, it’s your duty to make them feel safe, secure and wanted. Your partner should never feel like someone comes before them even if in reality they do…

I didn't actually see it when she responded, but when I did see it, I got to thinking...

For the record, I'm, not in love with my BFF (if you've been keeping up with "The Series" I call him "O" elsewhere in the site, I've called him "J" -- I use "O" in the series because I call the boyfriend "JD" and I don't want you guys to get confused). But, Alix makes a good point and is so right. When I'm in a relationship, it's my job to make the other person feel safe. One thing I don't think my series will really reveal is how JD was very intimidated by my BFF, and in hindsight, I didn't try to do much to make him feel better. I would always tell myself that was his problem.

The second motivation for this post, was the situation I talked about yesterday -- the one that happened to my friend, B. In relaying it to another friend we got on the topic of what you do when your BFF is cheating...

I may just be really bad at picking friends, but I don't have any friends that haven't either been cheated on, or cheated -- many of them fall in both categories. My experience shows that no matter what my relationship with a boyfriend of one of my female friends is, they will never approach me to ask if their girl is being faithful. This could be for a myriad of reasons, including they don't ever suspect it, or they are too prideful to ask, but I think it's because there's a perception about female friends that some men have that when it comes to them we won't "snitch." On the flip side, though, I've found that females who date my male friends hesitate NOT to come directly to me to find out if their boyfriend is cheating.

I've had this conversation before: You get stuck between not wanting to lie (or at least I do) and feeling a sense of duty to your friend. It took me some trial and error, but I've had enough male friends over the years to discover that my best bet is to stay out of it, at all costs. Yes he's my friend and yes I identify with the girl, but this really isn't about me, it's about them.

One situation in particular comes to mind. A male friend I've had since high school started dating a girl during the sophomore year of college. The situations with his previous two exes is VERY complicated (I may post about it some time) and really isn't worth delving into, but of course she asked him. He was vague and didn't want to answer, so she resorted to facebook. She sent me, and his two exes facebook messages wanting to know what had happened that he was so afraid to tell.

Now, the truth of the matter is, there's nothing to hide as much as what all the parties involved believe to be true may or may not be (do you see already how confusing this is?) My response message was long, but basically I wanted her to understand that her relationship with my friend, D, had nothing to do with me or his exes. I told her that knowing him as well as I did I could understand her frustration with his hesitancy to be forthcoming but I told her she either needed to walk away from the situation or accept it for what it was -- but that I would back him up on whatever he said and that this would be the last conversation we'd have about it.

Needless to say I became her enemy #1 and since then, they've had a child together who I still haven't seen in person (D sends me pics) because of that.

It gets sticky. Do you owe more loyalty to the truth or to your friend? Even since then, I've allowed my response to such situations to evolve into "If you have to ask me, then you've also probably already decided what the answer is... I suggest you talk to your man..."

B's situation with JP and MG brings to light that issue that women have. We always want to be mad at the "other woman" instead of with our boyfriends. Why is that? MG's call to B served no purpose except to confirm that B, another woman who's relationship with JP, as far as MG was concerned was, sketchy at best, actually existed. Why do we do that to ourselves and to each other?

What say the masses? How do you deal when your BFF's significant other wants you to spill the beans?

We're Just Friends

Mario - Just a Friend
Uploaded by lachula

Here's my question:

Can you go from being in a relationship with someone to "just friends"? Can you cross that line and then, well, uncross it?

I've always said no. My experience has always been that no matter what we said, no matter how much we talked about it, for one of us, at least, it was always hard to only see that other person as a "friend." My experience said that when someone says "Let's just be friends" it's there way of breaking it off without having to go through all the extra and that furthermore, they've probably been seeing you as "just a friend" for a while.

So when you're the other one, the one who got blindsided, how do you go back to "just friends"? How do you stop looking at that person and think about your future together, and start looking at them as... well... just a friend?

I hear it's possible. I hear people do it all the time. Is it only successful when both sides truly come to that agreement separately and THEN together, rather than the other way around? That is, one person doesn't tell the other one that "we'll just be friends" but rather through other conversations it becomes a mutual decision?

I'm full of questions because I'm trying to explore the possibility that being "just friends" IS possible...

Commentary...

And here we are again. I had a post in mind, and now I'm doing this because of an e-mail I got.

I always say to myself "you could do more than one post a day" and I intend to, but time constraints and the fact that we all can see I like to be long-winded makes that a little harder to do. In fact, I think the real reason I'm on twitter is to force myself to be concise sometimes.

The article I recieved in an e-mail is rather long, but I highly recommend reading it through. Here's the link: (I would normally post the text, but like I said it's long, and I'm long by myself.) :)

Menace to Sorority

Here's a (my) summary:

Chanise Alton-Smith was born female, but identifies as a male. As a result, he prefers to be called Devin and referred to using male pronouns. He attended George Washington University and had never been interested in sororities. However a senior member of Zeta Phi Beta continued to approach him and encourage him to attend their functions and get to know the sorority and it's members. He did, and he liked the sorority and so he joined. There are some instances mentioned where it became clear that his sisters didn't understand the identity issue and so, according to the article, he tried to be understanding and compromising even when they asked him to wear feminine shoes and things of the like. After he was officially accepted into the sorority, the older members who seemed to "get it" graduated and the new "administration" seemed more intent on fighting Devin's wishes to be recognized as male. They wouldn't allow him to wear male shoes to events and at official Zeta Phi Beta rush events, they would refer to him as "she" to potential members. Eventually, Devin was notified that his status as a member had been changed to inactive because he turned in a transcript late. He became depressed and eventually withdrew from the school, after destroying his paraphanalia and returning it to his former sisters.

The article details some of the specific things they did to him (which is why you should absolutely read it) that were clearly meant to make him feel uncomfortable and force him to be something he did not identify as. I think the article quotes one of his older sisters as saying "it's time for you to start acting like a woman..."

Of course, my first question was, why would he, since he identifies as male, join a sorority? GWU's discriminatory rules essentially say that a fraternity had the right to deny Devin admission because he was born a female, but a sorority could not deny him admission because he identifies as male. But I still wonder... Zeta Phi Beta has a commitment to 3 things, one of which is Finer Womanhood. Anyonoe remotely aware of the sorority knows that. Clearly womanhood doesn't apply to Devin and so again, I wonder...

And then I read the comments where someone made a good point: when the members of ZPhiB approached Devin and recruited him and then allowed him to participate in their intake process, they, at least, implied they understood his situation and were willing to be accomodating. And it should be highlighted that the girls who essentially forced him out were NOT the ones who recruited him. My concern is that not enough was done to explain to everyone Devin's situation and how it would be best handled.

I just think a lot of wrong decisions were made by both sides. The sorority members are portrayed in the article as callous and uncaring. The university didn't participate in the article so their stance, outside of what is publicly available (i.e. the rules governing discrimination) is unclear and the national sorority's opinion is also missing.

So I'm very interested in what you guys think...

Is You Gay or Is You Ain't

Siditty over at Siditty: Angry & Black Since 1976 posted the video below and has a dialogue going on about whether or not sleeping with members of the same sex makes you gay.

First the video:



He might have a point about not knowing whether or not the person performing oral sex on you is male or female, but that doesn't support his argument. If you knowingly have sexual interaction with people of the same sex you're not heterosexual.

But, as I've discussed before, are we boiling sexual orientation down to who's in your bed at night? In other words, is it as simple as who you have sex with? On that youtube video, someone asks "what about the people who've never had sex with someone of the same sex, but consider themselves gay?" and I ask the sister question: "How did the 40-yr old virgin know he was straight?" If it's only about who you have sex with, then how does anyone know their orientation until their first sexual experience?

So the answer/counter argument is, it's about who you're sexually attracted to. And I buy that on most levels, but I know plenty of people (I'm not one of them, since I think sex is kinda a big deal) who will "stick [their] thing in any thing" (click the link if you don't know where that quote comes from) regardless of attraction and that's fine -- to each his own, but if that's the case, doesn't it poke a hole in the idea that it's only about who you're attracted to? Maybe one could argue that those people are factions and don't represent the whole, but in our day and age, I don't know if we can be sure about that.

These aren't easy questions. Ultimately, your sexuality is your business (less'n you're sleeping with everybody and telling nobody because DISEASE IS REAL) and if you want to claim to be straight while sleeping with people of the same sex, as long as you also cop to your extracurricular sex activities, that's fine with me. I won't be sleeping with you, but I think honesty is important and it's fair to do what you want with whom you please. At the end of the day, these are just labels meant to put everyone in a box, because people like boxes.

Secrets

I recently came across a website called PostSecret. A guy by the name of Frank started encouraging people to write their secrets on a postcard and sending them to him. They could choose to be completely anonymous. Over time, this has grown into a small movement, where Frank has been invited to speak at various places, especially colleges (including my alma mater, though it has been since I graduated). He talks about how he his always amazed at how many people will be willing to get up in front of a crowd of strangers and share their innermost secrets. There's also an online community where people post their cell phone numbers and invite others to text them a secret, to which they will respond with one of their own. Those who have participated often describe the experience as freeing. Frank says, "share your secrets and free yourself to be yourself..."

I'm not the type to be too emotionally touchy-feely. I often reference my self-constructed "emotional wall" that prohibits me from expressing any emotion too severely. It's not fun and there are many times where I wish I knew how to get rid of it. In any case, this idea of sharing dark secrets with people who just hear them and accept them and then share their own is slightly refreshing to me.

I have my fair share of secrets. I suppose we all do. I also think we all think we each have the worst secrets ever. I believe the only thing that gives a secret power is silence. Once a secret has been revealed, whatever power it held dissapates. It is no longer a secret, it no longer has an identity. The other thing is that whether revealed or not, the secret stays true. I suppose keeping a secret quiet is one way for us to pretend it isn't true, and I guess that's what really fuels secret keeping. If we don't talk about it, then it's not really true or not really bad.

But I'm pondering Frank's call to reveal secrets so that we can be our true selves. I struggle with this idea that because I have secrets that I don't share, somehow I'm not authentic. I gather that what he probably really means is that when you don't have the burden of holding on to a secret, you can just... relax. My other question is, do you really have to share a secret to free yourself? Is holding on to secrets really the worst thing? Some secrets have to be told -- many of the secrets I read on PostSecret reference childhood losses of innocence. Those types of secrets have to be shared, but don't some secrets actually strengthen bonds? Like the secrets little girls share with each other about boys they like, or even women who share secrets about how much they hate their relationships.

Secrets can serve greater purposes and sometimes, letting the cat out of the bag may do more harm than good. I think only secrets that start to weigh you down and make your heart heavy need to be told. We all need our secrets... it's what makes us worth getting to know.