Keeping It Real: How to know if your new man has a future!
I speak to my daughters regularly about how to choose a good
man. Of course, their preferences often
differ from my own, and I accept that.
When one of my girls said that she would marry Lil Wayne, I had to
explain that you may not want to chase after a drug addicted man who says he
wants to sleep with every girl in the world, who also gets two girls pregnant
at the same time. I hope she got the
point.
I sometimes write about the conversations I have with my girls,
mainly because I believe that a lot of our young women make mistakes because
they don’t have a father’s advice to guide them. Right before our New Paradigm forum this
year, Dr. Steve Perry and I were discussing his show, “Save My Sons,” and I
told him that, in the same vein, we need to make similar efforts as black men
to save our girls from all the things in the world that might seek to harm
them.
Finally, I believe that every young woman deserves to have at
least one older man around to protect them, who is not trying to sleep with
them at the same time. So, I use my
platform as a chance to be that man for whoever is in need of good advice. That’s why I’m writing this article.
A recent conversation I had with one of my girls led me to
believe that I should share the advice with anyone who might want to
listen. It had to do with how to choose
a man who is going to have a good future.
Some people are so caught up in what a person offers today that they
can’t see what they will (or won’t) be able to offer in the future. So, the popular athlete that you’re dating in
college may turn out to be an uneducated, washed up, bankrupt, STD-infected
clown 10 years down the road because he spent all of his earliest years
throwing away all of his potential:
That’s what some of the rappers on the radio taught him to do.
So, here are a few ways for young women to know that their man
will probably have a good future:
1) If you call and ask what he’s doing, does he usually appear
to be doing nothing? A man who is
usually doing nothing is creating a life that has no basis. You can’t build something on top of nothing,
that defies the physics of success. Most
of us forget that what you do everyday serves as the building blocks of the
life you’ll have in the future. When I
was in college studying eight straight hours on Friday nights, I was becoming a
scholar. Had I been doing something
else, I would have been becoming something else. The same way they say that you are what you
eat, the fact is that you also are what you do.
2) Does he talk about his goals a lot and then back them up
with action? If you don’t have a plan to
get where you’re going, then you’re probably not going to get there. Also, talk without action is nothing but
wasted breath. Where a man is in his
life doesn’t matter nearly as much as where he’s going and what he’s doing in
order to get there. Just ask Michelle
Obama: I’ll bet she nailed the first
black president after a lot of other women passed him up.
3) Is he into drugs or alcohol?
Almost nothing great has ever been done by a group of people who sat
around getting high and drunk all day.
Drugs and alcohol increase the chances that the person is going to do
something stupid, and weed makes you lazy.
You don’t want your family to be headed by a lazy man, because a lazy
man is unable to protect your children and face the challenges that life will
put in front of him. I won’t even
discuss how many families have been destroyed by substance abuse.
4) Does he already have a child or two that he can’t
afford? A man with baby’s mamas may
bring unnecessary drama in your life. He
may also bring a slew of financial difficulties, since child support is
expensive. It’s hard enough to be the
instant step mom that his kids resent, let alone knowing that you’ll always be
trying to play catch up financially. I’m
not saying that a woman shouldn’t date a man with children (I had a child when
I was 18), but if the load is already too heavy for him, it might be indicative
of an even heavier future. Most brothers
I know with a stack of baby’s mamas are flat broke and dodging the police on a
daily basis. It’s very sad to watch.
5) Is he getting an education and working hard to be a good
student? Every person should get some
kind of education or training to allow him to compete in the world. I also advocate for all black men to learn to
be self-employed, since white folks just aren’t giving us the same jobs they
are giving to each other. But being in
school isn’t enough; he should also be a serious student. A man going to school and studying hard is
likely going to possess values that are consistent with hard work and
education, which are going to be the values that you want to pass on to your
children.
Remember ladies: Every
date is a potential mate. So, before you
give that man your phone number and let him enter into your body, make sure
that he has proven himself worthy:
Scrubs need not apply. At the
same time, you must also work to step up your own game so that when the right
man comes along, you are able to identify him and also add value to his
life. Good men don’t want scrubby women
either. Productive love must be
reciprocal. Ya Dig?...
