Will You Marry Me? Do You Trust Me?

Hope you all had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day weekend and an awesome week ahead. So this weekend's festivities I came to realize that approaching my 30s I have two types of friends, those happily in relationships whether married, engaged or contemplating marriage, then those just single forever. Amazingly they are all drunks. Between those shots of Jameson I had a few really great conversations about marriage with some of my homeboys and how ready they are now as opposed to earlier in their relationships. I was sitting there listening to the steps they were making so far ahead that I am pretty sure their girls don't even realize is happening.




This brought me to question this trend of women proposing to their man. Now don’t get me wrong I am all about empowering women. I have a career in a “man’s” profession so my mindset at times I feel I have to overcompensate for my lack of a penis. I spend much of my free time mentoring girls so they know they can achieve anything they put their minds to. If a man has the opportunity to do it so should women. This world is changing so I am all about evolving socially but we have to draw the line somewhere. Some traditions are what has kept us together since the dawn of humans. Lately this whole being the man, thinking like a man just has to stop because we aren't men.

Disclaimer: I recently had a conversation with a lesbian and she expressed her ideas on homosexual marriage. For the sake of this post I am speaking on heterosexual relationships because the whole dynamics changes once same sex is involved and is for another post.

I grew up in a traditional household, my parents have been married for over 30 years and grandparents for over 50. Things completely changed in a professional standpoint from my grandmother’s generation where she was a housewife to my mother’s where she had her own career but still tended to her family. The one thing I noticed that remained the same was the man leads while the woman steers. This is something so fundamentally wrong with this generation. There are so many factors as to why but ultimately it boils down to trust.  We simply don't trust our men anymore. Women today have it all but we still have to learn to trust our man to be the ultimate decision maker despite how much money we have in the bank or degrees we hold. If you cannot trust a man to lead you in deciding if he wants to marry you then why do you even want to marry him? Marriage is a lifetime and my upbringing sees the man as the head of the household. In order for a man to be the head he has to be ready to take care of a household spiritually, mentally, financially etc. This new phenomenon of women proposing makes me wonder the dynamics of the household especially if the man is not ready.

Patience is something God is working with me heavy on. In the past, one of the things I learned was not to pressure relationships. Love has a way of saying yes where a no is needed. I've used ultimatums to get what I wanted. Ultimatums work when a man loves you BUT later down the line everything will go wrong. Learning this lesson the hard way, I need a man that trusts where I am steering the relationship even if it means not now. This is where communication, trust, and reality comes in. First you have to communicate exactly what you want from each other. Then trust that when he’s ready he will take you right where you steered him. The conversations I had really made me see what a man with a plan is capable of and we as women do not always see it the behind scenes. Unfortunately some cases aren't always what we want. I completely know the heartbreak of realizing a man just doesn't see the same future. I once dealt with someone that could not tell me what he wanted from me despite what I expressed. Not knowing what he wanted from me, or even taking the necessary steps to get there, made me not trust him. He obviously couldn't trust that my idea of us being great together could be a reality. I was willing to wait if the answer was not now but there was no growth and eventually this lack of trust on both sides just made it easier to walk away.

Relationships work symbiotically.  I personally will wait to allow a man to advance our relationship but will also make sure he knows where I want us to be. If he can't trust where I see us then what's the point? I've walked away and it sucks but my partner for life has to trust me as I do him.  Love is so dope but trust is even doper.

Peace and Blessings,

Lauren

P.S. There are only a few instances a woman should be on her knees and proposing sure is not one of them. Cleaning the baseboards is one of two I can think of 😜