Not Quite June

After much deliberation and even more medication, life with Daniel has returned to “normal,” but my girlfriends haven’t been so lucky. I suppose that we’re all dealing with the awkwardness that only our men can bring. Who isn’t? Oh, that's right: the single gals. I remember the days when I was ashamed to be single. Imagine that.

My gals D & D are both still dealing with those passive-aggressive men. You know these types. This particular breed of men has an odd obsession with tidiness, provided that they can regularly shit all over your relationship. And, they love to make messes the way that I bounce checks: they ignore any transaction of significance, doing nothing until they receive that uncomfortable “overdraft” letter. From that point, they wonder about what could have occurred, inducing a cold (and clueless), unpleasant phone call about the “mix up.”

My sistas’ problems are simple: these big, strong men recoil at their first sniff of confrontation. Their parents, these men claim, never fought. So, they say, why should we? At times, it seems like it would be easier to throw in the towel by throwing in our opinions too just to keep the peace from shattering to pieces. In our post-June Cleaver relationships, is it okay to disagree wit yo’ mans? Should we demand homogeny in a relationship the same way that we require monogamy?

This problem is a pattern that is occurring not only with the men that I date or with the men that my sistas date, but it happens with the men that we’re all dating. Is it us? Or, is it them? More importantly, why does it always have to be somebody?

The solution as my sistas and I see it: it is preferable for two romantic partners to be different from and to believe independently of the men we're dating. Provided that he's neither a member of the KKK nor a Republican (I know; we'll pretend that they're not the same thing), why does one need to begin to gradually resemble her partner? I believe that true peace between lovers will come when he's okay with him being him. Only then, I would argue, will he be truly comfortable with us just being us.