We Have to Fix the State of Marriage in Black America
NOTE: The phrase “physically intimate” is substituted in many cases below due to abusive realities on the web and in the physical world.
In some cases there was no way to make the substitution work, and the word “xxx” was used instead. Hopefully, there will come a day where this is no longer an issue…..
Marriage, the union of one man and one woman, is a personal and public relationship with great significance in and on our communities.
This is not to say that we should discriminate against other relationships, but we have to heal the damage to the state of marriage in our communities that has resulted from systemic forces during slavery and afterward — mostly due to the War on Drugs.
Studies have shown that when we address these problems, and as we improve the quality and number of marriages in our communities, we will see:
- Better physical and emotional health and better longevity for men and women
- Better wealth, better salaries, and better economic status
- Better lives for our children, better experiences in school, and better emotional well-being
- Lower incidence of domestic violence, and lower rates of crime
- More effective parenting
- Lifestyles that are more personally and socially beneficial
http://www.foryourmarriage.org/what-are-the-social-benefits-of-marriage/
How to Have a Quality Marriage
Some tips to having a high quality marriage are:
- Don’t have too many “physically intimate” partners before you meet “the one.”
- Find someone who is right for you, who you are right for, and where your love enables you both to make a lifetime commitment together
- Have a big wedding
- Realize that finding the right person is only the beginning. Be determined to “grow” your marriage together and to face whatever comes together.
- Be ready to face challenges in your marriage. Over the years, expect to see change as you both grow. Be determined to grow and change together. Make sure your spouse understands that though you have changed, the love and commitment to grow together are still there.
- As you face obstacles, overcome them no matter what. If you have to do research, if you need counseling, do whatever it takes to get your marriage back on track. That’s the meaning of “‘Til Death Do Us Part”.
- If there is conflict with your family:
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- Give it time. Be ready for it to take months or even years to resolve some conflict with your family.
- Find out the reasoning behind their hate. Finding out the reason might better guide you into helping your family learn to like him!
- Don’t tell your spouse. That can add unnecessary tension while people are working through the issues. Do, however, stand up for your spouse when your family starts to talk trash about him or her.
- Talk to your family. You’ve got to make sure the communication is there. You might have to have a detailed conversation with your family about your spouse and explain why you love her and why you are with her.
- Realize their side. Make sure that you understand why they might hate your partner and why they might not appreciate your relationship.
- Explain your feelings to your family. Now that you’ve taken their side into account, they should take your side into account too! Explain exactly how you feel and let them know how their feelings can actually impact your relationship.
- You don’t want to make it awkward for your spouse or for your family, but your wife or your husband is very important and they need to understand that.
- Ultimatum. In the end, if you do need to come up with an ultimatum, it just has to be that way. It shouldn’t get to this point, but sometimes you might have to choose between your husband ( or your wife ) and your family.
- Come to terms with their feelings. Finally, if they are not making things awkward and uncomfortable for your partner, you might just have to come to terms with their feelings. They might not be right, but these are their feelings and you can’t change them. It’s hard to accept sometimes, but if you’ve tried everything, you might just have to come to terms.
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http://love.allwomenstalk.com/things-to-think-about-if-your-family-hates-your-spouse
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-high-quality-marriage-study-20140819-story.html
A few quotes to help set the tone – Emotional heights and Determination
“The Secret to marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re right if you love to be with them all the time”
— Julia Childs
“Happily Ever After is not a fairy tale. It’s a choice”
— Fawn Weaver
“The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds they mature slowly”
— Peter De Vries
“When we got married I told my wife ‘If you leave me, I’m going with you.’ And she never did.”
— James Fineous McBride
“If I get married, I want to be very married.”
— Audrey Hepburn
“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half-shut afterwards.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.”
— Leo Tolstoy
“The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.”
— Maya Angelou
“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.”
— Toni Morrison, Jazz
“Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.“
— Toni Morrison, Paradise
My Note: There are probably as many ways to forge ( the meaning of “create” with the sound of “force” ) a quality marriage as there are personality types. In the end all that matters is that it lasts a lifetime and that it has a positive effect on all members of the family — the children, the mother, and the father, in that order. As in the rest of Life, as obstacles come, the opportunity comes to grow spiritually and to develop the strength to overcome them. The greater the obstacle, the greater the opportunity. But the responsibility is the same. “Never, Never, Never give up.”
On the Question of Divorce
Marriage is a lifetime commitment. You have to be ready to work as hard for your marriage as you would for your last breath if you were drowning.
If however, you do drown, recognize you have faced the greatest obstacle — Death. And in a way you have lost, but in another way you are re-born. At first you will be a baby. You will grow again, part adult, part child for awhile. As a person, you have suffered incredible loss. And with that loss, as with many cases of loss, you might also have experienced incredible spiritual growth.
Continue to contribute to your childrens’ lives and their growth as much as possible. If this is not possible due to court decisions or other possible complexities, contribute to someone else who might have lost their parents through another twist of fate. Find some way to balance the spiritual and psychological forces that will exist as a result of your situation.
Ultimately, you must live again. Life is why we’re here. You define your life. Let nothing whatsoever stop you from expressing your own spirit in this world. Nothing. Period. Continue to Bless and Be Blessed. And show your children what they need to see to grow their own strength.
How to Know You Should Marry Her
There’s something that happens to us guys when we fall in love. To be more precise, there are lots of things that happen to us, some of which I’ll talk about here.
- At first men go through an “infatuation stage“, where there is an identifiable intense passion for the woman, that is short-lived
- A potent mix of chemicals is rained on our brains. Dopamine, testosterone, oxytocin
- Serotonin levels go down, causing our libido to go up
- Dopamine levels are increased by “physically intimate” activity creating a feedback loop of feeling-good and loving-feeling
- Ther are several stages that have been identified that men go through while falling in love.
- Finally, if a man’s convinced that he truly likes the woman and wants to be with her, he enters this final stage of love where he’s ready to fall in love with her.
http://www.lovepanky.com/women/dating-men-tips-for-women/how-men-fall-in-love-stages-of-love
Once a guy has found a woman and gone through the initial phases of infatuation, attraction, etc and finds himself falling in love with her, there are several signs that she is a good candidate for marriage:
- She’s one of the sweetest women he’s ever known. This kind of woman can be hard to find — especially in a big, tough city, and especially in a culture that doesn’t really promote that. So a good woman is surely a keeper. When you find a woman who is as sweet as any you’ve known, you haves a very very good reason to put a ring on it!
- She supports his dreams and makes an effort to help you achieve them in any way she can.
- She’s a good partner. His life is better with her in it. She’s someone he can build (and imagine!) a great life with. Picturing having a family with her is a no-brainer, because she’d be a good mom.
- She thinks he’s a dime piece. He catches her checking him out pretty often. He might be in gym shorts, or in black tie formal, and she always thinks he’s the sexiest man alive.
- He can tell her anything. There’s nothing he ever feels like he needs to hide from her. Ever.
- He thinks she’s hot and sexy. She could be fully dressed, or sans clothing, but when he looks at her, he thinks “Daaaamn.” He knows he’s lucky, because she’s so hot and sexy.
- He wants to take care of her. He feels that natural instinct to want to love her and protect her even if he knows she can completely handle her own.
- They share the same hobbies but also have their own lives too. They have no problem indulging each other’s interests but also have other hobbies they like to do solo.
- He doesn’t feel threatened by her need for space. He understands when she just needs to take an afternoon off to do her own thing either by herself or with friends. He doesn’t need to know every single detail of what she’s up to.
- She doesn’t have a problem with his need for space. She doesn’t crowd or smother him. Man days, man nights, man cave, you name it — she doesn’t fuss about his “man” things.
- They don’t try to change each other. They both accepted a long time ago the unique quirks that both make them themselves Sure, each might not understand why the other does everything they do but that’s okay. They’ve accepted each other’s flaws and imperfections.
- He actually likes her friends and family. Maybe not all of them. Maybe not all the time. But he doesn’t mind hanging with her and the girls if they invite him out.
How to Know You Should Marry Him
Knowing what makes love happen is an interesting study in neuroscience, biochemistry and psychology.
While love isn’t just a bunch of chemicals, still brain chemistry plays an important role in why we feel the way we feel about other people.
The brain releases dopamine when people — women or men — experience any kind of pleasure, including love. Dopamine also increases the amount of testosterone the body produces. The increased testosterone is why people sweat when they’re around someone they’re in love with, and why people have a higher “xxx” drives when love is new.
When women fall in love, their bodies also produce norepinephrine and phenylethylamine. These increase focus while creating a sense of euphoria. That’s why women often become focused on one man to the exclusion of other things when they’re falling in love.
Oxytocin is also released during cuddling and intercourse. Women produce way more of it than men. (Men don’t produce it during orgasm, instead getting a rush of dopamine, which is why they’re less likely to fall in love with someone strictly as a result of intercourse.) Oxytocin breaks down emotional barriers, making people feel comfortable and getting them to “drop their guard.” Oxytocin is what creates that sense of attachment we feel to another person when we’re falling in love.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/leslie-cole/2014/06/10-stages-of-falling-in-love-with-a-guy/
Some of the stages a woman goes through while falling in love are:
- Sitting in class, at work, at home, etc. she catches herself thinking of him for the first time.
- She finds, after some time, that he’s all she’s thinking about anymore. Not in a needful way, just in a pleasant way.
- Because some friends are starting to wonder about changes in her routine and habits, she begins telling her close friends about him.
- She tells her family about him, no matter how few details might be shared. She has now let him all the way into her life.
- After awhile almost every conversation she is in now somehow resorts back to him.
- She starts to accept the inevitable. She starts to feel like he’s something blessed beyond any imagination. She starts to wonder how she could deserve something so pure and all-consuming.
- Finally, she shares her hopes and dreams with him. She doesn’t feel the need to tell him every little boring detail about her life, but for some reason she wants to.
Once a woman has gone through the process and knows that she is in love with that fella, there are signs that he would be a good candidate for marriage:
- Happiness and Emotional Support. The right person will not be negative, selfish, wishy-washy, silent, embarrassing, critical, or a slob. You don’t want to spend your life with a jerk.
- You Want to Share Everything With Him First. Whether you get that well deserved promotion at work or your co-worker just took credit for your huge project, your partner is the first person you call to share your joy or sorrow. You know he’s always there for you.
- You find yourselves doing lot of talking together. You both want to know all about each other, your hopes, your dreams, his fears, his expectations for marriage. You find yourselves talking about possible situations that could arise in a marriage and finding out how you would both would handle it.
- You will know you are marrying the right person if you are “xxx”-ually compatible with one another. If the two of you view “xxx”-ual intimacy differently or have vastly different libidos, your marriage relationship will suffer.
- The right person is kind, considerate, and polite. Little things in life such as saying ‘thank you’ and holding a door open may seem old fashioned, but they do reflect the amount of caring and kindness in a person.
- The right person will encourage you to make decisions to live a healthy lifestyle by eating healthier foods and getting exercise. The right person will want to work with you to balance your work and personal lives.
- You Both Talk About Being Together in The Future. Both of you talk about having a future commitment without fear. You feel excitement about possibly being together for the rest of your lives. You see the ability to grow together as a couple.
- You’re (Still) “Xxx”-ually Attracted To Each Other. You and your partner are best friends, but you also have that exciting tingle in the pit of your stomach when he kisses you or when your eyes meet his from across a crowded room. If there isn’t “xxx”-ual attraction and chemistry, the relationship won’t last.
- You and he share the same vision of his contribution to the upkeep of the home, the finances, and his role with the children when the time comes.
- You Both Want To Resolve Conflicts In A Healthy Way. You and your partner can work through any problems in a constructive manner. All relationships will endure conflict, but having the desire to resolve conflict and then continue loving each other is essential to a healthy and lasting bond. All relationships take work. You must want to put in the effort.
On the Question of Common Law Marriage
Looking into Common Law Marriage we can see that, while there is some level of stability in those relationships, there is still not enough stability on average to prevent damage to the children or the adults from the increased occurrence of break-ups, as compared to children of married couples.
Because of the increased number of breakups, there are many effects:
- Decreased economic performance of the community. More children grow up without reaching the potential of children of married couples on average. When the numbers of children affected are large enough, there is an observable affect in our communities. In many cases, when these children become parents, their reduced aspirations contribute further and a vicious cycle is created.
- Because more of these relationships result in break ups, and because of the effect on the children, our communities have more crime and domestic violence.
- The psychological burden handed to the children as a result of the increased numbers of breakups include feelings ( in many or most cases ) of rejection, fear, and insecurity.
- In more of these cases, the father rejects his responsibilities in the growth of the children, who then tend towards similar behavior and a vicious cycle begins.
- The children of the community become aware that more women are having children with three different fathers, and that some men are living with one woman while having several others on the side. This changes the children’s idea of what is expected when they face temptation later as adults.
Some solutions offered are:
- A united effort to go through the community and educate the people on these issues
- Churches blessing the people and raising focus on the issues faced by those in or out of common-law relationships
- Coordinating mass weddings for those in common-law relationships who desire to be married.
- Coordinating campaigns and offering discounts on wedding rings.
- Coordinating campaigns to open savings accounts for newlyweds
- Coordinating baptisms and other religious ceremonies for children born out of wedlock and who do not have any similar support structure
In addressing these issues, we have to increase our awareness as a community that the people aren’t to blame. Our ancestors were subject to systemic conditions that led to he breakdown of marriage in our culture, and the most effective solution will be to systemically address and correct them.
The reasons for the higher incidence of Common Law Marriage in our communities go back to slavery.
Personally, after collecting the material for this post, I believe the effects of Common Law Marriage and other semi-committed relationships in our communities probably contributes to something like 15 to 20% of the 68% of Black Americans who are unmarried.
Slaves were prohibited from marrying before the civil war because, as long as they were under slavery, they couldn’t enter into any legally enforceable civil contracts. Once emancipated and granted the ability to contract, the right of freed slaves to marry was undisputed.
But the destruction of marriage in the Black American community is actually more due to the War on Young Black Men, a.k.a. the War on Drugs
The War on Young Black Men
More recently, rates of marriage in the Black community fell from 61% in 1960 to 32% in 2008, compared with a decline in the white community from 74% to 56%. Noted that the difference between 74% and 61% is huge. It represents 50% more unmarried people, and all the problems and pressures in the community that come from that.
But the decline from a severe 61% to a number like 32% is more like a sociological lynching. The effects on communities, on children, on their mothers is astronomical. The effects on the fathers would be also, except they’re already victims of a war and it’s the result of that lynching that is causing the next.
Some citations from Dr. Boyce Watkins at the Huffington Post listing troubling statistics from the War on Drugs:
- Black men are being sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of White men.
- The disparities are particularly tragic in individual states where Black men are sent to federal prison on drug charges at a rate 57 times greater than White men, according to Human Rights Watch.
- About 8.5 million Black Americans have been arrested on drug charges since 1980.
- The Black populations in state prisons are majorly disproportionate: In Georgia, the Black population is 29 percent, the Black prison population is 54 percent; Arkansas 16 percent -52 percent; Louisiana 33 percent-76 percent; Mississippi 36 percent-75 percent; Alabama 26 percent -65 percent; Tennessee 16 percent -63 percent; Kentucky 7 percent-36 percent; South Carolina 30 percent-69 percent; North Carolina 22 percent-64 percent; and Virginia 20 percent-68 percent.
- According to the Global Commission on Drug Policy arresting and incarcerating people fills prisons and destroys lives but does not reduce the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations.
https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1262&context=faculty_scholarship
http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/why-has-marriage-declined-among-black-americans
These lives and these families are being destroyed for some reason other than any progress seen in its effect on the prevalence of drugs in our communities. The result is our communities have the negative effects of the drugs, the criminal organizations, and then also the negative effects of the misbegotten war to address them.
And the results from this War on Drugs include, more crime in our communities, more domestic violence, more harmful psychological effects for our children, lower health, lower wealth, and overall lower quality of life for our children, our women, and our men. Everyone suffers.
Conclusion
The Black community is under attack in America, consciously or not. And we need to work to break some of the effects of vicious cycles resulting from that.
We need to reach out to the parts of our community feeling the greatest pressure ( in some areas innocent people are being arrested 4 and 5 times a week! ) and promote the behaviors and attitudes above that will help in the family while the realities that people are living with in these areas are being brought back under control.
We also need to confront the War on our Young Black Men head on. Find out the statistics in your area, comment about them on blogs like this one. Write your congressmen in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. Google their websites. Write your Mayor. Write your Governor. Talk about the problem with your friends. We have to change the dominant public opinion where we live as a first step at least.
NOTE: This post started out being a systemic analysis of the state of marriage in the Black Community, and only during the research was the level of the effect of the War on Drugs discovered. So as not to de-emphasize the important information about marriage, the marriage-oriented material was left at the beginning of the post, and the information about the War on Drugs included in the section about historical cause.
The War on Young Black Men has much much more far-reaching effect in our communities than indicated in this post, but will be re-addressed in future posts.
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