Madame Noire | Black Women's Lifestyle Guide | Black Hair | Black Love

From Your Tango.com 

My affair with a married man lasted longer than most marriages. At 25 years, it certainly lasted longer than mine.

I met Sam in 1981 when I was 39 years old and going through a miserable divorce. My husband had left me and our 14-month-old daughter and didn’t want to pay even basic child support.

I needed a good lawyer. Two attorneys I knew and respected came up with the same name and same prophetic endorsement: “You two were made for each other.”

I began to develop feelings for him. I knew he was unavailable: a married man with a nice wife and grown children. But I was lonely and frightened—I hadn’t experienced a loss like this since my mother died when I was ten—and my heart spoke louder than anything in my head.

I persuaded him to come to my apartment by saying, “How can you make an argument about how much it costs me and my daughter to live without seeing our home?”

Feeble? Sure. But he bought it. Once he was in my bedroom, I reached out and began to unbutton his pants. “Oh no, not that. Anything but that,” he said in a soft but somber voice.

We started having lunch at my apartment, when my daughter and her babysitter were off at a toddler enrichment activity. Sometimes he would take the afternoon off and we’d go out to Coney Island. After we’d been seeing each other for two years, he gave me a custom-made gold and brown enamel ring with “Always” inscribed on the inside of the band.

His wife began to suspect he was having an affair and confronted him about it. It happened to be one of the few times we had quibbled about something and weren’t speaking to each other so he was able to tell her truthfully that it was over. She never asked again and he never updated his answer.

Being The Other Woman
My married friends, Arthur and Lynne, criticized me for settling for the role of The Other Woman. But the other woman was the role I knew best.

Read the rest of A.J’s story at Your Tango.com.

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Source: takemyjunkct.com

From Your Tango.com

I like scruffy guys. You know the type. The semi-bearded guy who doesn’t know the difference between a mani and a pedi. The sort of guy who can repair a car and kill bugs with his bare hands. The kind of guy who isn’t afraid to get a little dirty. So when I had a vision during yoga class that I would meet a cute scruffy guy later that day, I thought for sure it was a blessing from the Universe when I met Josh that very evening.

I was quietly sitting at a local bar sipping on a hot toddy and typing away on an article I was working on, when I heard, “Have you tried the popcorn here?”

I turned to my right. In front of me was the very vision I had seen earlier in my mind; a tall, thin, bearded guy with a skull cap and a hoodie. I couldn’t believe my powers of manifestation. Or maybe it was just my powers of intuition. As a cartoonist with vegetarian tendencies, he seemed right up my alley. After we spent several hours chatting, (and munching Old Bay-seasoned popcorn), I finally decided to call it a night. He offered to walk me home, carrying my yoga mat and shopping bag. When he asked if he could take me to an art exhibit over the weekend, I was swooning. Dating Disaster: A Guy, A Girl, Her Gas
Our first date was what many a first date is; sweet but nervous. After leaving the gallery, we had drinks and he walked me home, shyly telling me had a good time and would love to see me again. When it came time for our second date, I was excited. He seemed sweet, gentlemanly and relatively normal. So of course, I was stoked.

Until he let the bomb drop; the stink bomb.

When he picked me up in his truck for our second date, I almost threw up when I stepped in. The car smelled like the worst NYC taxi on the hottest day of summer mixed in with a tub of ripe onions. I was horrified. I knew we hadn’t kissed on the first date and he did have several layers of winter clothing on, but I hardly suspected a stench worse than a steaming pile of garbage was lurking beneath. Granted it was his car I was smelling and not him, but his truck had clearly obtained the stench from him. I quickly rolled my window down in an attempt to alleviate the assault on my nostrils.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, clearly perplexed as it was 35 degrees outside.

A mess! Find out how she got out of this one at Your Tango.com. 

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From Your Tango.com

Infidelity — sexual, emotional, or, heaven forbid, both — can really tear a relationship apart. After all, once your partner commits the ultimate betrayal, how can you ever trust him/her again?

In this video, licensed psychotherapist, author and YourTango Expert Dr. Tammy Nelson addresses this very issue. The trick, she says, is learning to trust your own instincts about whether or not someone is telling you the truth. “A betrayal can throw off your whole sense of what’s right or wrong in the world,” Dr. Tammy explains. Therefore, you’ll need to focus on trusting yourself if you ever want to trust your partner — or anyone else — again.

See what this expert had to say at YourTango.com.

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From Your Tango.com

Do you know exactly what kind of partner you’re looking for? While it’s almost always wise to know what you want, some experts insist that having a list of criteria for your future mate only sets you up for failure. After all, no one will ever meet every single standard … or will they?

In this video, Psychotherapist, Author & YourTango Expert Jasbina Ahluwalia addresses whether having a list of must-haves is a good idea, or whether it’s a recipe for dating disaster.

Watch what Jasbina had to say at Your Tango.com.

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Source: thenetng.com

When you think about it there are several similarities between a good, genuine laugh and sex. The release you get, the euphoric feelings that linger once you’ve finished. Plus sex isn’t supposed to be some stuffy obligation. It can actually be quite fun.

See how else these two seemingly unrelated activities come together at Your Tango.com.

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From Your Tango.com

Current television programs, magazine articles, movies and music don’t represent marriage very well. The area they do the worst job covering is married sex. In many ways, even though most of the single people I know want to get married, the marriage rate has gone down. Couples who believed that cohabitating would keep their sex hot have been disillusioned and disappointed when they find out that what keeps sex hot is the security of a committed relationship.

Moving in together without a commitment to one another may have made the sex better at first, but once the couple began leaning more on one another and having expectations of one another, the sex dwindled just as it does in a marriage that isn’t working. No matter how perfect you are for one another or how great your marriage is, you will get bored with one another from time to time. It is fascinating to talk with a couple that has been married for twenty years while you try to imagine what they still see in each other.

How can anything be novel or exciting, and how do they beat the boredom?

Find out how they keep it spicy and how you can too at Your Tango.com.

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From Your Tango.com 

There is this stereotypical perception out there that women are total nags when their guys are trying to watch the big game. She’s asking what color paint swatch would look best on the dining room walls, prodding him about where he left the vacuum, insisting that he kill that massive spider, basically doing everything but letting him watch the game… And eventually, when she finally gives up on getting his undivided attention and decides to just sit down and watch it with him, she’s asking questions during key plays, making him miss the game-winning jumper six feet off the three-point line…

Oh, no. You. Didn’t. Just know, seeing that epic moment live is everything. He dies a little inside if he misses it and can’t quite feel the same rush as his buddies when they rehash it the next day at work.

Find out how you can enjoy the game with your man instead of making him miss it at Your Tango.com. 

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When a long term relationship ends, it may take you some time, maybe even years to be “over” the person and the ending of that relationship. While you’re struggling to find closure, your former better half just might be walking down the aisle.

Say what?!?

Yes. While this certainly sucks, different people respond in different ways to heartbreak and coping.

Find out what a relationship expert has to say about this subject at Your Tango.com. 

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Source: blackchix.com

From Your Tango.com. 

Men tell us what they love about women (and it includes our jiggly parts!).

So what do men love about women, really? We asked a handful of men what elicits lust, love and everything in between. What we received was an eclectic mixture of womanly charms—some we knew, some we didn’t—that cause even the most rugged of men to utter “I Love You.”

Find out why they love us. Some of these may surprise you. Check it out at Your Tango.com. 

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It’s a taboo subject in our culture: Married women, who dislike, or even hate, having sex with their husbands. It’s a subject usually held in silence, behind embarrassment, confusion and sometimes even apathy. It’s consoled with inner thoughts, such as, “There’s more important things in a marriage than sex,” “This is just a phase,” or “My attraction will increase when the kids are older.”

But at the back of minds, a thought lingers: What if this is forever? What if I’m abnormal? What would outsiders think if they knew the truth about “us”?

Find out what happened to this woman and the fate of her marriage at Your Tango.com. 

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