No More Ms. Save-A-Brotha

Admit it. You do it. Once in a blue moon, you scroll through your cell phone and start deleting names from your phonebook. Delete. Delete. Delete!

Right when Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives goes into commercial break, you get bored, and start scrolling through dozens of names, removing folks from your phone -- and your life -- because you haven't talked to them for 8 months anyway. It's not rude. It's honest.

Sometimes, you must survey your territory and decide who and what you need inside your territory. And in life, some people just aren't meant to be around until death do you part.

So, after my man started ignoring me and giving the world his best, and after I realized it wasn't my place to rescue him from his circumstance, I started to wonder how I'd even gotten into this emotional mess anyway. How is it that I ended up pursuing and clinging to a man who, despite telling me he hoped I was "the one," was basically showing me his ass?

Then I started to survey my life just like my cell phone. Was my spiritual/church life in order? Was my home in order? How about my work life? My girlfriends, too -- were they all still drama free? Check. Check. Checkity-check. Check!

Then I surveyed the men in my life, some of whom are reading this very Relationship Revelation right now.

What I found shocked me! Every man that I am in regular contact with is in a state of drama/trauma to some degree in their romantic relationships. Every single one of them. I'm talking about:

Divorces
Custody battles
Legal separations
Unexpectedly-my-wife-walked-out-on-me-and-the-kids separations
Teenagers diagnosed with HIV
Sexless marriages
Divorces on hold because money's tight
No money
No job and no money
Too many women to handle
Crazy live-in women
Living with the ex-wife because his money's tight
Ex-wives taking child support payments when DADDY HAS THE KIDS!!!
(There's more, but I'm tired of typing this mess!)

And I was in the thick of it with all of them. One would call, and I would listen. The next would call and I'd be right there absorbing the drama and offering whatever advice I could. The next one would drop by my place and walk my dog with me just to escape their issues. These men were all sinking in their circumstances and I welcomed them all like the Statue of Liberty beckoning for them to give me "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."

Suddenly, as if a young Laurence (then Larry) Fishburne was screaming "Waaaake Uuuuup!" like he did at the end of School Daze, it occured to me that somehow, I'm not attracting men to me that are happy in their romantic relationships.

Many of the men I mentioned above are friends, some are family. But some are men I've dated (past and present -- I'm not a ho). One thing's for sure though -- the constant here is ME. So, I can't blame these men for my lack of success in the love department -- at least not entirely. Afterall, I'm surrounded by men in varying degrees of relationship turmoil. As for the ones I was linked to romantically, there were some cheaters along the way. And there was one who lied about his vasectomy knowing I wanted to have children. And then there was the man who argued with me like I was a DUDE! (Whoa, was that one ever scary!) But all in all, I attracted these men to me.

And now I'm clear on the concept.

I don't want to rescue any more men. I don't want to save any more men from their relationship drama/trauma. I don't want to be Ms. Save-A-Brotha. When it comes to the early phases of dating, I don't want to be the one he leans on in a time of need. Not now. I just don't.

Hear me out.

I am willing, as Chaka Khan says, to go through the fire with my man. But not if it's a fire that's already an inferno by the time I arrive on the scene. A little smoke I can work with. But no 4-alarm blazes while I'm still learning this man and trying to build a foundation. How can I build a solid relationship with a man when the FOUNDATION IS ALREADY SHAKY??? (If you have an answer...I'll wait.)

Basically, it isn't working for me. And when I talk to God today my prayer for my future "significant other" has changed. I simply want a man who is currently happy and in a good place in his life. I pray that he's calm, no longer bitter and has room for me in his life. Quite simply, I no longer am willing to wait for a man who must squeeze me into his drama, penciling me in between the custody hearings and ex-wife-can't-get-it-through-her-head-it's-over phone calls.

All I'm saying is, I'm at peace and I simply want my man to be -- at least for now, in the beginning. And if I see billows of smoke begin to rise along the way, we can go both through the fire together.

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