As he walked me back to my car, my date for the evening a fine brother from Mali, who looked lots like Felony Bae (yes, this is me humble bragging), asked me the dreaded question we ladies are prone to hear whenever he is kind of feeling you like that:
“What exactly are you looking for in a man?”
I hate that question with the passion of ten Christ-films. In fact, I have been putting off dating for some time in hopes of avoiding having to answer that. For me, who struggles in general with decisions (you should see me get stuck at Dollar Menu), the answers to this question are not easy ones. Firstly, I’m not quite sure yet if my “looking for”-list is complete. And secondly, I don’t know if I can be too honest about all the “looking for” on my list.
But that night, I decided to give frankness a chance:
“Honesty, but not to the point that one is cruel. Be thoughtful. Kindness, but not a sucker for love ass trick because that’s always been a red flag for passively controlling men, in my book. Compassion and patience – for both yourself and others. Loyalty,” I paused to smile.
He smiled back and interjected, “Those sound like good qualitie-”
“…and security,” I said, quickly finishing my thought.
His smile turned sideways and his eyes bent into a squint, “What kind of security?”
Bank. Benjamins. Bread. Bucks. Cheddar. CREAM. Coins. C-notes (lots of them). Ducats. Lettuce. Cabbage. Capital. Moola. Scratch….basically, the financial kind. Not to sound like I’m stanning for #TeamGolddigger, but in the immortal words of Gwen Guthrie, “ain’t nothing going on but the rent. You got to have a J-O-B, if you want to be with me…”
And not just a job, as some of y’all are quite content telemarketing your ways through lives. I’m looking for someone with a future that includes some proof of advancement, keen financial planning, investments and retirement plans. A “job,” which he can buy a house, lease a car on his own, raise families and/or dogs, and pay for decent dates with. No this is not a golddigger’s anthem, but rather an acknowledgment that for some of us ladies with bills of our own, romance and finance goes together like steak and cheese. Philly. And nobody – and I mean, NOBODY – has time to front you and me at the same time. Sorry fella but this mule is quite stubborn and those 68 cents per every white man’s dollar, do not stretch that far.
Besides there are tons of women out there willing to date men, whose pockets are less than ambitious. I meet them all time; paling around with guys, who are homeless, jobless, always down on their lucks but with tons of child support. They sleep on couches, drive their cars and borrow money, which never gets paid back. And the only thing they can spare is what’s swinging between their legs. There are women out here carrying such a huge part of the financial load in the relationship that they can actually claim these men on their taxes as dependents. Hell, even yours truly has entertained, in my day, a scrub or two or maybe even three…Awl, who am I fooling? There were five. Five scrubs got past my pearly gates, okay?
The last financially challenged dude was an actual boyfriend. He was smart, funny, creative “artist” and lived at home with mom. He also didn’t have a car and worked a low wage job. It is true: going into it, I knew he was broke. But I had been listening to the Steve Harveys of the world, who suggested I lower my expectations and I look inward at a man’s soul. After all, conventional, male centered wisdom is that women often times pass up great guys on the come up in blue collars, for half-way decent ballers and other bad boys, all because they got a little extra change. Women like that were bad, according to the Harveys. And for all intents and purposes, I believed that nonsense.
And when he told me how his momma’s house was just a brief pit stop on his journey to financial solvency again, I believed that too. And I let his sense of humor and overall charm fill in the gap for what he lacked in security. However six months into our dating, it became apparent Struggle Bae wasn’t done struggling. And in fact, despite his proclamation that his address was temporary, his own mother snitched that he had been actually living there two years prior to the beginning of our relationship. She told me this because she thought I had a right to know – and plus she was mad that he forgot to turn the dryer on.
She also thought I had a right to know I shouldn’t put my glass down on her coffee table without using a coaster, or how she thought I couldn’t put my feet on her couch when he and I watched movies together. Or what she thought about me spending overnight visits at her house. Don’t get it twisted: his mother was cool enough, but I was tired of being the reason why she was yelling at him all the time for daring to have company when he was barely helping out around her house.
Did I also forget to mention that Struggle Bae didn’t have his own car and couldn’t even get a squatter because he credit was too bad, which meant I had to drive him around everywhere? Worse, he never offered gas money. Nor did he own a suit and some nice shoes – not necessarily because of lack of money but because, in his words, “I’m not about putting on airs.” And also he once turned down a promotion and a raise at his job, which would have been the kickstarter needed to get himself out of his mother’s house, because he didn’t want to turn into a “corporate drone.” Eventually I would stop listening to the Harveys of the world and told Hobo Joe to take his handkerchief bindle and hit that chow line. alone. Seriously, I can do bad by myself.
Now this is no shade to the brothers out there with a dollar, a dream and real life motivation. If don’t nobody else care, Tupac cares – but mostly from a distance. And if there are any job leads or other opportunities, I will be certain to pass them along. And this is not to say that if you suddenly lose your wealth, I’m gone too. I am not that callous. But rather, what I discovered from that broke relationship (and the others), that in spite of the narrative about women passing over good dudes because of their financial inadequacies, sometimes there is a clear and direct correlations between his financial insecurities and his ability to be a good partner. And sometimes a man on the bus is there, not because he’s taking the long way up from fries to restaurant chain CEO, but because he is trifling, a spendthrift and just flat out irresponsible. And those are signs, which should not be ignored for the sake of being polite or appearing less like a golddigger, which I suspect is the real reason why many women fret so much about requiring men to pull their financial weights.
Hell, we hold women daily to traditional roles of gender (ie. Being able to cook and take care of children), why can’t men be held to the same standards? By the way, African Felony Bae had a good job and a vehicle and apartment of his own. Also during dinner, he got into cute little tussle with the other suitor, who were double dating with, over who would take care of the whole bill. So far, so good…
