Black women and marriage
Lisa Marbly-Warir 8/9/2016 Hey everyone. This is a beaten to death topic on many Black social media sites, but it’s a topic that can’t be ignored. As much as I try, believe me, lol. I see how marriage and the benefits of marriage can help our community. I just recently published a book Sisters, Can We Talk? that has been on my mind to do for many years. Long before my grandmother passed-she’s been gone for 6 years; I used to tell her that one day I was going to write a book about singleness and marriage, preferably wanting marriage. Back then, the negativity about marriage wasn’t so prevalent. I think the negativity about marriage is more so online where you have a great number of like-minded women who can feed off of each other-but IRL women are more likely to admit to wanting marriage. I grew up in a time where young ladies sat around and talked about their future wedding plans, and what our groom/husband would look like etc or what we hoped he would look like. I would say somewhere in the past 15 or so years those days has turned into-marriage is not important, wives are desperate, pathetic, weak creatures, marriage only benefits men etc. But somehow having children with a man who refuses to marry you or step up to the plate is somehow acceptable, and the scary thing is, it’s become so commonplace that marriage does indeed seem like a foreign concept to many. Somewhere however, many young Black ladies are getting the message that marriage is not beneficial for women and that all men cheat, and so why bother with marriage? Now I would like to say that-for women who genuinely don’t want marriage based on their own personal reasons, I’m not talking to those women. I more or less talk to women who I know want marriage. I think there are a few things going on that has made the idea of marriage go down a slippery slope, hopefully not to the point of no return. I don’t believe the desire for marriage will ever go away for most women, but we have to face the fact that more and more women are settling for shacking up, or having children with men they are not married to, and then moving on to the next man. That is not conducive to a strong community, nor is it conducive to a healthy, stable household in a lot of cases. I believe marriage is no longer seen as important to some women, because many have made choices that lead them away from marriage, and then many are dealing with men who in particular may have been raised in a single mother run home, so they never saw their mother loved and cherished by their father. This is a vicious cycle that keeps manifesting itself as more and more people are coming together to procreate, but not see the importance of making their union legal and spiritually i.e. before God, family and friends. I made a list which I put in my book about “Are you a placeholder in your boyfriend’s life?” I posted a link to that chapter found here http://lisamarbly-warirauthorpage.weebly.com/my-blog/signs-you-may-be-a-placeholder-in-your-boyfriends-life Another thing I think is going on is many women are trying to make a relationship with the wrong man work, and by default assumes marriage is broken, not reliable nor beneficial for her. It’s not marriage, often times it’s people dealing with the wrong person. I’ve often said that when you meet a man and he tells you he doesn’t want to get married, believe him, what he really means is he doesn’t want to marry you. But guess what? Women will forge ahead in that relationship anyway, get her feelings tied up in him, or get pregnant and wonder about why he left, or why he won’t man up and marry her. Some women will even say-after the baby, or after I got pregnant he just switched up. No he didn’t, you weren’t listening to what he told you, or you weren’t paying attention to his actions-however, as I mentioned, many women did listen to his words, or knew his actions weren’t lining up and went ahead anyway. At the end of the day, marriage is not broken, but what is broken are two imperfect people trying to come together. You just have to make sure you are with the right person, make sure you listen to the words men say as well as their actions. Men do tell us what they are about most times, we as women don’t always listen. I love a wedding, I love seeing two people in love come together-but at the end of the day, those two people need to know that marriage does indeed take work, there is a daily compromise, there are true benefits to marriage providing you are with the right person. Hopefully the link above will be helpful for some women who are wondering about why their boyfriend is not moving forward. Be sure to check out my books https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lisa+marbly-warir&sprefix=lisa+marbly%2Caps%2C159 Please note-the first book in my Destinee series-A love worth waiting for-Destinee’s story the ebook is .99. So check it out. Follow me Twitter @Lwarir https://www.facebook.com/LisaMarblyWarirauthorpage/?view_public_for=925912120754403
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