dating

My boyfriend is ignoring me. I am 32 and he is 34. We have been together for six months. We are both pretty busy with work etc, but I always make him a priority. I always feel like I am giving more than he does and it’s come to a crisis point.

At some point in my teen years, I developed an unfathomable fear of being alone. Despite the warmth provided by my loving family and countless friends, I wanted to have some boy in my life. If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I had some back-burner type boy.

...for two years of my adult life, I didn’t date — at all. On purpose.

I am a heterosexual woman looking for a relationship with someone I am attracted to, has a sense of humor, and isn’t a serial killer or too depressive. Someone that hopefully doesn’t have children, lives within…three hours of me, doesn’t think that monogamy “just isn’t natural,” and wants to date me, maybe even forever. That’s basically all I am looking for.

In the past four months, I’ve undergone a veritable dating hurricane. I ran out on my 10-month-old marriage in August. I texted my decision and departure to my closest friends, live-tweeted my flight from upstate New York to the New Hampshire seacoast, and have written extensively and publicly about separation, my estranged husband, and the terrors of emotional pain ever since.

As an African-American woman, I sympathize greatly with the plight of Black men in America. The most troubling issue for me is the slanted press and stereotypes Black men endure, resulting in them carrying a skewed reputation of being violent, lazy criminals everywhere they go.

I went on a date last week. We had drinks, we chatted — an overall good night. At the end he asked me, “Do you want to go somewhere?” I said “sure,” thinking it was just a walk.

We can’t control the events that the world will throw in our paths, but we do have the authority to manage our reaction to each and every one. That’s not to say that pain, fear, anger, and other negative emotions cannot play a role, but there comes a time when one must let go.