Over the years, I always hear stories of women and how a good man fell in their lap when they weren’t “looking for it” or “expecting it” or “gave up on men”, etc etc. Now, I’m not hating on that, and I definitely wish all of my female friends in that situation the best. (Sidebar: Congrats to one of my best female friends, Dawn, on her recent wedding last weekend. Thanks to Indymac I had to sit this one out.) Ok, back to the blog……… Now, a lot of my female friends (two of them today) told me that if I just stop dating and stop looking, then the right woman will just fall in my lap, because it worked for them when they stopped looking. And for both of those women, this was my response: BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, ONLY WORKS FOR WOMEN. I’m sorry, but that strategy does not work for men. We as men, along with society, are not wired like that.
Allow me to take it to the best selling book in the history of mankind, written in England during the 16th century (in part by Shakespeare) with the oversight of King James; a book that has been re-written multiple times and discerned different ways in the last 400 years…….yep, the Holy Bible. I bring to your attention the following two scriptures that will serve as the premise of my argument:
Proverbs 18:22 Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.
James 2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
Let’s start with the first scripture: Let me ask you, does it say anything in there about a man chillin at the crib and the woman of his dreams just happening to show up on his doorstep? According to this nice book here, it’s up to us as men to step out there and find/court/pursue a woman in the aim of her becoming our wife (not a jumpoff, but our wife), and not for the woman to find us. Now for the ladies who will argue “well, when I met my man, he wasn’t seeing anyone and wasn’t talking to anyone, and had no interest in anyone else”…. ok, you might be right. He might not have been seeing anyone else, or wasn’t talking to anyone seriously, but if you REALLY believe that your man didn’t have options, women who liked him, women he liked, had his eye on, a woman in his life he wouldn’t mind being with any night of the week before he met you, then your man LIED to you. PERIOD!!! We are MEN, we are visual creatures who have a natural instinct to seek and conquer. Don’t be fooled ladies. Fortunately for you, he saw something in you (and you in him) where you stood out above anyone in his past and present. If he sees you as someone he can build with, then that means you (potentially) are a good thing if you are not already married.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Now, as a Christian, I am an advocate of the saying “if you believe it, you can achieve it”, and I have faith that my Proverbs 31 woman is out there, and when it’s time, I will get what my friend Kauai calls “A Revelation for Dummies” and God will make it crystal clear who she is. However, I’m not going to reach my goal by sitting at home all day and just writing blogs like this, or watching the Lakers, or listen to my iPod at night, or getting up M-F and going to work every day and coming home. As a man, I have to keep my eyes open. Just like I kept my focus when it came to my professional goals, the same applies to finding the woman that God will have for me. Which brings me to the second scripture I displayed above, “faith without works is dead”. For the sake of my own due diligence, I tried the “I’m gonna stop looking” approach around this time last year, and I used my busy season at KPMG as my parameter for this. I told myself that from September to January, I’m not going to go on any dates, not ask anyone out, etc; I’m only going to focus on myself and handling my business at work, because growing up as an only child with 2 parents who worked 60 hour weeks I was already used to spending many of nights alone in solitude, having to work things out on my own. Now, I would still go out, did my usual 1-2 time a month support of J3 events at Noir, grab my drinks, listen to the jazz music, chop it up with friends, and be on my way. I didn’t put myself out there, and holla at women, etc; all I did was just concern myself with me, place myself in my own world, and worry about myself and busy season.
Now, I saw what happens as a man when you stop looking, and you’re not making it known what it is that you want, you end up in the exact same place where you started. Now, a woman (especially an attractive woman) who takes the same course of action as I did will not have the same results as me. Why? Because a man’s not going to know (or care) if you’re “not looking”, because he’s clearly looking at (and for) you. Bottom line: I can pray every single night for the woman of my dreams that God has just for me. But if I don’t put myself out there, and reinforce my faith in God and his plan with the groundwork, then I don’t get what it is that God has for me. POINT BLANK. It wasn’t just faith that got you the degree you have, the house you live in, the Benz you drive, and it sho’ wasn’t just faith that got this country our first Black president. AMEN?!?!
Closed mouths don’t get fed, and in relationships nothing is easy and nothing is just dropped in your lap as a man. The “game” of dating/courtship has different rules for men and women. We as men can’t sit still in this game, otherwise we will stay on the bench as we watch every single train in life pass us by. We must look for opportunities, and not let them go when they come around, because God doesn’t always recallibrate his plan for our life immediately after we let what he has for us pass by. Think on that.
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