We were doing the make up/break up thing for months. During one of the breaks she came back saying things would change. I asked her to do two things. Yes, they would require some effort, but they werent things she couldnt do. ( Ex. I'm not saying you're an alcoholic, but when you do drink. You become beligerent. So dont drink ) She agreed. The goal was, if she stuck to it, we would marry. Something told me, she wasnt up to the task. She would say anything to get back. I started dating others. She was bliss for three months. Then the signs started showing. Finally, I confronted her. She said, "This is who I am, deal with it!" Call it what you will. I hedged my bets. I didnt feel any guilt .
I notice when this topic comes up and a guy humbly admits to some random woman that he has cheated in the past and he truly regrets it, she'll still look at him like he should be shot with a 44 magnum. Maybe this is root of why many of us men lie sometimes about certain things.
I love these questions only because there inevitably is an answer to them...the question is whether people want to accept the truth concerning it. Ok, real life story time. There was a sister from Ghana named Zakiya. Now Zakiya was what a brother would call a "slim goody" and I ain't never been into slim goodies....I need some weight on it!.. However, Zakiya had an aura about her that I actually found appealing, so I used to tease her about me divorcing my wife and marrying her. Zakiya had a child and I asked her who the father was? She told me that the father is still back in Ghana. I then told her, "he ain't gone do you no good way in Ghana". Well a few years went by and I never saw her with a man or in having any men stop by to talk with her. Suddenly a week went by and I didn't see her anymore, so I went across the street and asked her father where she was. He said that she went back to Ghana to have a baby. I was like, "but she wasn't pregnant, was she"? Her father said that she wasn't but that her husband was still in Ghana and that's where she went to get pregnant again. Ok, time out !! I had to think about this real good because to me that was crazy. I had already figured out that he wasn't coming to America no matter what she believed but yet she hadn't cheated on him. The family was Muslim and in my own mind I was like; " Now why would he come here where he can only legally have one piece of poon tang and over there he can have a couple of pieces of poon tang? So no matter what she believed, in my heart I knew he wasn't coming to this country. Sure enough, she did get pregnant by him when she went back and as of today he still hasn't come to this country and it's been at least 11 years now. Problem number one has to do with the value system of the society that one lives in. Problem number two has to do with one's definition of what manhood and womanhood is...and the majority of that came straight out of slavery where our people began imitating the European standards of manhood and womanhood that our peoples passed down to us from one generation to the next. Now here's what I found out: monogamy never gained worldwide attention until the last few centuries. The should-be monogamy idea was not popular in previous generations, not until its strong uprising in the last 150 years or so. A worldwide ethnographic survey of 849 human societies show 708 whose customs are polygamous (more than 1 wife), 4 polyandrous (more than 1 husband) and 137 monogamous. Other than the religious and supremacy factors, there can be a few other reasons for this. What does this mean? It means that according to the history and customs of the world as it exist today, monogamy is not the norm at all !! It means that we may very well be following and trying to live by value systems and a culture that has nothing to do with our actual reality, culturally and historically speaking. Obviously Zakiya already knew what her culture was and that her husband in Ghana did have more than one wife...but she wasn't going to try and explain that to me, and yet at the same time, she was being true to her husband, her culture and her history despite the fact that she is now living in a society and culture that is the opposite of her own. The question I want to ask is, is it possible that after millions of years that certain behaviors are genetically ingrained in us as a people? The idea that we try and force ourselves to be monogamous may in fact be going against what exist within us on a genetic level. We know based upon European history and culture that they have always been monogamous...but that's not our reality historically or culturally. Sure, there have been monogamous societies in Afraka also but it is not the norm. So the man who cheats may be actually giving into a genetic and cultural reality as opposed to anything else. Now this is serious food for thought! And no brothers, I didn't just suddenly give us an out, it's just something that i was able to peek in my own cultural and historical studies...but it's worth looking into. Maat HTP!