I suppose I've had similar life experiences as many black men when it comes to dating, relationships and sex. Most statistics say that many of us were raised in a home without the benefit of a male, not to mention a positive role model and culture to pattern our life off of. Even if most statistics are wrong I far too many of us have lived, and learned through lies.

In my case, these lies have led to typical mistakes that many men make and they extend to every part of my life, not the least of which would be my love relationships. It has taken me several years to achieve many of the externals that women claim to want in a man, yet I still find myself single, alone and with few true prospects of finding real love.

On first glance one may say this is absurd, I mean I'm not horrible to look at, nor am I unemployed, I don't mess up my verbs when I speak, I love my mother and respect all women. I am very dedicated to inner growth and my community; I'm conscious, loyal and far from violent or abusive toward any woman. Add to all this that I'm a black man living single in a city of 8 million more than of which are women, I have no children, a college education, not gay or bi-sexual. All this probably makes you wonder what's really going on here.

It is my hope that what I 'm saying here is not construed or misunderstood as my being a sycophant. It is my hope that you the reader, understand that I am merely aware of the circumstances I exist in while confident I am nowhere near conceited or arrogant. It took me several years of sobering and arduous inner work to realize, achieve and bring out all the wonderful things that God has blessed me with. Yet they exist within all black men, despite what your experience has been or society says.

About five years ago, when I first thought about writing this book it was out of sheer frustration with my own lack of building and sustaining a 'romantic' relationship with a woman. Back then I was still hampered by the self-sabotaging simplistic and superficial notions as to why I and many brothas and sistas were not 'working it out' in the love department.

I like too many male and females summed up the relationship quagmire by simply pointing toward men's infidelity. I too thought it was as simple men not recognizing and 'acting right' with all the 'good' women out here. Subconsciously at the same time I often took advantage of these 'men acting bad' by playing the 'good brotha'. My game was to illustrate how different and better suited I was compared the average' no good' man.

In my angry and twisted thinking I rationalized that any woman should be 'thankful' that I even existed. And since there was supposedly so many uneducated and incarcerated brothas, I figured my chances would be enhanced in finding a 'good' woman and or series of 'together' women. On so many levels I was a living contradiction, ideologically inhaling and exhaling the half-truths, improprieties and lies handed down from one generation to the next.

Naturally such twisted and self-righteous thinking made the situation even worse, leading to continued disastrous, futile and unsuccessful attempts to hook up with the 'right' sista. Soon I would begin looking inward as ugly visions of my youth slowly began to return.

After some deep reflections I once again began to think something was inherently wrong with me, and the way I was created. Because I wasn't blessed with the 'tall, dark and handsome' idealized mystique or look of a Mandingo or your run of the mill entertainer or professional-athlete, I never thought I was 'all that', and because I was developing a external vision of black pride I knew I couldn't be, or even pretend to be, or act like a 'thug', thus I began believing that no matter how many women were out there I would never be appealing or attractive enough to find one for myself.

As I grew older my conflicted illusions and allusions often resulted in a silent depression that featured reoccurring bouts of overeating, meaningless sex and occasional nights of inebriation. Even when I did find a 'my type' of woman, she often had a man, wasn't interested in me, or for all intents and purposes was not emotionally or otherwise available. I was often in a depressed place and many times I resigned myself to a life alone without a black woman.

But even somewhere deep inside all of this, I knew I couldn't totally give up on the sistas. I knew I could never forget how black men were hung from trees because others were threatened by our manhood and humanity, nor could I forget how our sistas were raped, abused and re-arranged over hundreds of years since arriving on these shores.

I knew I needed a woman who looked like me, smelled like me, and had an idea of what I went through on a daily basis as a black man in this country. Never forgetting or letting go of this history has been the bedrock that has provided me with optimism that my African queen is indeed out there, somewhere, being prepared for this 'king'.

One day that sista showed up, not as my future queen but rather an angel. Her name was Bernadette; she had become a regular customer at the gas station where I was working in Baton Rouge, Louisiana shortly before I made the decision to move to New York City. I had known her only in passing in college. She was a slender attractive, well-groomed and educated teacher.

As she began to visit me more often at work our conversations delved into career goals, following our life's passions, and spirituality. My growing romantic inclinations for the sista were quickly doused when she said she would be soon moving to Tampa, Florida. Thankfully she did leave me with some great excerpts from a book entitled: ACTS OF FAITH: DAILY MEDITATIONS. After reading excerpts from that book and many other positive spiritual and culturally based books, I slowly began to evolve, think and grow on entirely new levels.

Five years later I've come to the realization that while the creator blesses us all with a divine uniqueness, coming in different shades, shapes, and sizes, as well as bestowed with our own special talents, and idiosyncrasies, most human beings have glaring similarities. Take a detail here or an event there, some drama over here, or trauma over there and when it's all said and done we all feel and have been through many of the same things in life. For a variety of reasons this is even truer for black folk.

In matters of life and our love relationships, colored folk have certainly seen and been through many of the same things. Whether it's the brotha who knows exactly what to say, and how to deceive even the most sophisticated sista into bed, out of her mind and sometimes even money. Or that 'strong, educated and independent sista' who on paper has it 'all together', is faithful, reliable and perceived as 'the one', yet when all the haze settles and her 'representative' leaves, is just as conniving, confused and unfaithful as 'Mr. Perpetually Wrong'.

This book is my attempt to explain the truth behind that which we appear to be. I've heard God's voice and my own spirit after picking myself up off the concrete enough to know that there's a difference between how we act and who we are created to be.

This may be a hard pill to swallow, but who and how we see, what we have experienced, and even desire, in no way resembles the reality of who black men and women truly are, nor is true happiness and love even possible with what we think we want in a mate. Take a few moments to think about what I just said before you read further.

As William Shakespeare once alluded to I've also learned that life as basically a play or series of plays, productions, movies and dramas that we all play for most of our lives. As we grow/evolve (or stay stunted and or regress) indeed we play various roles based on the many fictionalized scripts we read and this is where our life's problems are born and drama's produced.

As we drift from one negative life/love experience to another, we often begin to perceive how bad the other person acted, our focus locked solely on the after affect or symptoms of each negative event that went down, in each situation that eventually leads to the dissolution of the relationship.

Some of us will blame ourselves, but many more will rationalize that the other person was the main reason it didn't work out, usually because of some flaw in their character. If we continue to see as such and go through enough of these experiences, we often begin to formulate the perception that all men are like this or most women are like that. In this space we fail to look at our own actions, addictions or responses to such behaviors and seldom (if ever) do we question the script presented to us from the moment we arrived on this planet. Even fewer of us ask, question, acknowledge, or are even aware of how those scripts and this culture actually created the experience in the first place.

This book was created out of my real life experiences, research, and working with our community, families, children, single mothers, married couples, and youth over the last 15 years, as well as the series of workshops on relationships I've been conducting for the last four years. I was born in the Missouri, raised in California, attended, and came of age at a historically black college in Louisiana.

I have been back and forth between that place since graduating from college in 1994 and have lived in New York City for the last seven years. The one thing that is sure about all of those experiences, is that only the accents, weather, geology and geography separates them when it comes to the frustration, dysfunction and drama that goes down in our relationships. In other words life is much the same all over.

Many of us would be hard pressed to name over 5 couples over 50 who are happy, much less to couples under 40. When I say happy I mean self-assured, interdependent and fulfilled couples, beyond the things that may adorn them, or how good they look together, or where they live, or even how good they seem to get along.

I'm talking about two inwardly secure and happy individuals loving one another and everything else around them on a daily basis, and when I say loving I'm not talking about that co-dependent; overly testosterone/estrogen laced, and visually connected type of moment that many swear is love, when we first see and think some physical connection makes for a spirit/soul connection.

I wrote this book because I've come to experience real love and know that it's more than some 'gooey' emotional feeling that originates and resides outside of me. I also now know love and loving relationships are more than some unfortunate happenstance that I've been 'unlucky at.

Beyond the general misery, astronomically high divorce rates, myths and truths of dysfunctional relationships, I wrote this book for all the things I've seen my mother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends go through with their mates. Any Sunday one can go see all those older black women in church whose mates or husbands have long died before their time or since departed.

This book is partly my own shout-ing out to and about my father who died of a massive (broken heart) i.e., heart attack at 60, single, alone with nothing and no woman to care for him, due in part to his own stubbornness and the reluctance of women to even try to understand and empathize with his pain.

This book is also much more than mere observations and me telling my own individual story or one of my family members, it is a story of a people, a history, and culture that is not as unique or exclusive from yours, be you black, brown, red, white or yellow. I wrote this book for both selfish and selfless reasons because I'm still working toward being all that God created me to be, yet I'm still single and don't always understand why. More often than not, I see such promise in us finding love but I won't lie this book was written in part because I like many of you, I am tired of being frustrated and tired and would love to have a loving spiritual partner right now!

I hope this book is a wake up call to the brothas who aren't taking the time to truly look at themselves, their 'stuff' and question what they have been taught bought into and how they are living. Lord knows so many of us are tired of the many dating games, but how often do we do anything about it?

This book is for the many sistas who say there are no good or not enough good men out here, yet walk right by me and many other 'good' brothas every minute of every day without even so much as a glance. I wrote this also because I know plenty of 'good' men both single and married who are healthy content, and or are only looking for a good woman in their life.

This book is also for the brothas who are with white girls for strictly social status purposes, and all those Pookie's, RAY-RAY's and Twans who also wear business suits, have good jobs yet play some of the BIGGEST dating games out there.

But above anything else I wrote this book in the hopes of beginning or continuing a meaningful dialogue that can lead us to better understanding, communication, and healing in building healthy relationships. Call me crazy, call me a dreamer, but I do believe it can be done! For our own sake and that of our children's we need each other as women and men in healthy relationships to begin the process toward achieving hope for a better future.

What you will read are my real-life dating experiences, observations from other brothas, real letters and thoughts from former girlfriends, and other women I've dated, as well as some of my own thoughts and poetry many of which were created in the midst of my most dramatic productions. It is my hope and intent that this book will help you realize how my own erroneous perceptions, drama, and not knowing who I really am, have kept me from experiencing the fullness of love. Maybe you can relate

© August 2005 By Sumumba Sobukwe

Brother Sumumba Sobukwe will be keeping the Black community updated on the state of Black relationships. Visit his advice column regularly for new information that could help you overcome and understand the other side.

To subscribe to Sobukwe's column join the Afromerica email list to receive new information as it is updated. Or E-mail Sobukwe at: themaat.series@verizon.net

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