Nah bro, you’re not the one…
My mum is trying to matchmake me… and I have some concerns… with her.
I don’t think she is a good judge of character and I think that she would sell me down the river.
Be careful of being swept away by desperation, the same people who try and paw their useless son on you (not saying the man is necessarily useless I haven’t met him yet) will be the same people who will tell you to “bear” when that same useless man turns out to be useless but you can’t do anything because you are one or two rings deep. Maybe a couple of kids deep too.
Instead my mum believes in relationships where I can’t say no. When she tried matchmaking me with a perv in 2023 I said no. She accused me of treating him badly… based on precisely 0 evidence. Absolutely none. What had I done to this man?
Told him I don’t want a relationship with him when he’d come to collect one. He and my mum were eyeballs deep in marrying me off to the protege of my dad’s school friend that they forgot I would have to consent to this arrangement and a man touching me and kissing me. My body, mind and soul completely rebuked that and I said no. The truth is that my mum’s protege was being outshone by the man I was in love with like the sun outshines a distant star from another universe. It wasn’t even a competition. But I said no, not just for that reason but also I’m not buying what he’s selling. Complete, utter incompatibility in which he’d be lucky to have me as a trophy wife, but would I be lucky to have him? Not really. A man doing stuff for a woman is a bare minimum requirement remember.
I digress. I want to be in a relationship where I believe the moon and the stars fell out of the sky just to crown this mans head. I want to love the man deeply and not be disgusted by him. I am not hugely fussy, he has to be able to present himself well, be tall and handsome (God forbid a woman be sexually attracted to a man, whatever will we do with such immorality) a man that accepts all parts of me and isn’t trying to play “ghetto” Nor does he have any ties or connection with any sort of motherland. A man who is kind, funny, backs his words up with actions and most of all, I feel something for. Effectively, a man who is on the same levels of maturity as me. Of course he’ll have some faults and that will be my cross to bear.
I want to be hopeful in love. Being in love is meant to give you hope for the future. I had that once. I hoped for a completely different life I have now. I threw everything away under the guise of the phrase “the road is good.” I do know what love feels like, I remember what being in love felt like, a dash of colour in a cruel dark world. Even when it was one sided there was a kind of completeness to my life. A contentment because I had love. I didn’t need a lot, I had love. So as I take time to assess these men. I actually don’t know if I should bother. Black men, no matter how handsome seem to let me down and make me feel cheated of something.
My mum wants me to forget that I grew up around black men, and they were wild. Out and out hoe-duggery, financial fraud, wife beating, adultery you name it, then there was the fact that they were almost universally lazy as sin and if they move so much as a muscle for you they want an Olympic medal complete with an Olympic stadium named in every city in their honour. Seems a lot of work for not a lot of joy. They act like they are the prize or that they are the woman. Then send the damn women off to fend for themselves. There’s no safety in an african marriage for a woman. Yes including my parents marriage. If it ever came to a choice between dad’s family and his nuclear family… the “Famble” won everytime… and hint… I, as his daughter his only daughter wasn’t part of the “Famble” so whilst its cute to romantacise this madness, its made me really sick to my stomach and really remember all that I don’t want. They’ll rob you of your whole damn life, money, vitality everything. Because the relationship isn’t receiprocal.
I don’t believe in a world where I should be grateful for anyone being in my life. I am kind and generous and loving I earn my way into any table I sit in. However, my mum believes I should give, give give and never say no. Enforce no boundaries. Her protégé literally said he had a wet dream about me within a month of meeting. He also looked at me in an extremely inappropriately sexual manner every time I saw him. I don’t want to be sexually objectified. I’m a person, get to know me before you get to know my cup size. Jackass. But this man is owed a relationship with me and I should just keep on entertaining him like somesort of clown until he decides he wants to either marry me or dump me. I have no agency of my own to look at this man and say,
“Nah bro, you’re not the one.”
Why? Because I’m apparently here for the enterainment and ease of men. My uncle Claudius wants to come over, it is literally cheaper for me to pay for his hotel than to do the work that is necessary to accommodate him. Why should I spend money on him? Let’s not forget what I said earlier, when it was his job to pour into our relationship when I was a child he did not. But now I should do the most to permanently re-arrange my house for his comfort.
“Nah bro, you’re not the one.”
I feel like I have lost what it means to be lucky in love. I have been sold “settle down” mindset for so long that I wouldn’t recognise real love if it showed up at my doorstep (introverts dream) why? Because all I have been taught is “bear” when he doesn’t meet your standards… “Bear.” When he does wild wickedness…”Bear” When you don’t love him but he’s in love with you and wants the rights to your body, but not your mind and spirit… “Bear” let him put his nasty hands all over you because you want to be married right?
No marriage is worth indignity. The ignobility that a woman suffers at night and during the day, isn’t worth the big party that isn’t really even there to celebrate her in the African tradition, its there to celebrate her mother. Again, all these traditions were cute until the harsh reality of marrying a loadstone comes to bear down on you.
I don’t want that kind of marriage. I want a marriage where I love the man, feel loyal to the man, am in awe of the man. And as I have taken sex off the table before marriage he has to actually be in awe of me too.
I miss those kind brown eyes that once held my soul. The person that they held enraptured is long dead but it was such a wonderful time, so simple, everything I could want. It made loving simple as ABC and I understood love and loving implicitly, and explicitly. It finally made sense. I want a love like that, a man that makes me levitate, makes me so hopeful for the future. I can’t explain it well… I don’t live with a lot of hope. everything I hope for I graft for, I rely on no one to make my life better, however I do think about love all the time. Love is my last great hope, and if I have to “settle for less” then my last hope for a good life is gone. I do want a man who makes a good living, he needs to be the breadwinner, both financially and emotionally. I do want a man who loves and sees me for me, and not as some conquest. I do want a man who will bring out the hope in me, the joy in me, make me not so wary.
If you can’t give me that, which by the way is the bare minimum.
“Nah bro, you’re not the one.”
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother-Smith