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Should Someone Have To MAKE You Feel Loved?
For about a week now, I've been been bumpin' Stephanie Mills's "Something in the Way You Make Me Feel" pretty heavily. First of all, sis can sang and definitely could still school a few folks in the industry about why sometimes "sing" gets an "a" instead of an "i". Second, I remember that video being pretty dope, in a timeless kind of way. (And her body is killin' it in that black dress and white top and pants.) Third, if you're not even remotely familiar with the tune and you're at a place where you can't click on the hyperlink right now—here's the first verse:
I've been up and I've been down/Until you helped me put my feet on solid ground/I've been rich and I've been poor/Then you showed me that there's so much more/Than the rat race and the fast pace/Could ever offer me/When I look back, baby/You've always been there for me
From there, the hook says, "Something in the way you make me feel," a few times, and she ends the chorus with a word that is poignant for today's article. She doesn't say that her man makes her feel loved. No, what she declares is that her man makes her feel good---real good, in fact. The difference between the two is what makes some relationships healthy (ie. "The Right Relationship IMPROVES Not CHANGES You" and "If He's Right For You, He Will COMPLEMENT Your Life") or not-so-healthy---even needy, to tell you the truth. You ready?
The Subtle Unhealthiness of Wanting Someone to 'Make' You Feel Loved
Just the other day, I not-so-randomly ran into a young woman with some of her family members. We had never met before but ended up striking up a convo while I was sitting at a friend's mall kiosk. Anyway, as we got deeper and deeper into our convo, the young lady mentioned that she was in her early 20s and had been married for a couple of years. She and her husband had dated for several years before marrying, but they were still going through some major adjusting as a married couple. One thing that got on her nerves was that she is much clearer about her life's purpose than her husband. She also admitted that she is a control freak (but that's another article for another time.)
As she aired out some of her frustration and asked my opinion (I mentioned that I was a marriage life coach), I said, "That's why I'm not big on people getting married until a man knows what he was put on this planet to do." A college-aged male? While there are certainly exceptions, that is typically the time when they should be figuring all of that out with as little distractions as possible. (This is why I don't think women should put pressure on themselves to "find a husband" during that season of their lives either.) For me, the foundation of a lot of how I see things in life is the Bible. Genesis 2:18 defines women as being helpers--- warriors and lifesavers if you want to get real specific. How can we fully support a man, in the intimate and lasting way that a wife does, when he has no clue what he's doing—or wants to do—with his life?
I just recently saw one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. It's calledHoney Boy. In it, actor Shia LaBeouf is playing his own real-life abusive father. (Shia is definitely an acting force to be reckoned with; his freestyle flow is pretty sick too).
A line from it that stayed with me is, "A seed must totally destroy itself in order to become a flower." A lot of us women try to "make a man a flower", rather than giving him the time and space to be a seed, totally alter himself, become a flower and then help him, as a "flower"—as the man he was designed to me—to thrive.
Believe you me, y'all, I have been the woman who has tried to nurture far too many "man seeds" that were both emotionally unavailable and immature. While those guys were "destroying themselves" in order to become better, oftentimes their own mental and even spiritual upheavals ended up harming me in the process. Yeah, I know that was a little on the poetic side of things, but I hope you still got where I was coming from. If you want to be in a healthy, stable and consistent relationship, date less "seeds" and be open to more "flowers". Not doing this is a huge mistake that I think a lot of us make in the pursuit of love.
Know what another one is? Thinking that it's a man's job to "make us" feel loved. Whew. I can't tell you how many times a woman has told me that a relationship has come to an end—usually a pretty bitter end, at that—and it's all because a man didn't make her feel loved. It's no secret that I strive to be pretty word-specific, so whenever I hear that, my immediate reaction is, "Is that a man's job? Should anyone MAKE you feel loved?" Whenever I ask someone that out loud, they tend to look at me like I'm crazy, mixed with a bit of patronization. The way they see it, of course, he should. Me? Not so much.
Personally, there are only two people who I think should make us feel loved and that's because they are our first introduction to a human form of love; that would be our parents. When they jack that up, that speaks volumes into why a lot of us spend the result of our lives looking for other people to do it. But by the time we start to entertain romantic relationships, there really should be such a self-love within us that we're not looking for them to make us feel like we're loved.
Because, when we already love ourselves, other people tend to reflect back to us what we already feel. While it's nice to be loved by them, we don't really need it; we appreciate it, we enjoy it, it feels awesome…but if they left, we know we'd be alright. Love was there before they arrived, so we know that love will still exist should they ever go.
A good example of someone who I think has this concept down pretty well is YouTuber StarPuppy. She's wacky. She's quirky. She's hilarious. She also seems to have grown up with a family who taught her about love. (She actually says so in this video). Her ability to be unapologetically wacky, quirky, and hilarious is seamless, but just think what she would be like if she didn't love herself---if she looked for guys to make her feel loved. If the guy had enough influence over her, he could probably convince her that her personality wasn't appealing, that her humor was corny. and, quite possibly, that she should stop doing all of her fabulous natural hair and random-musing posts.
That's why I said in the article "What Loving Yourself Actually Looks Like" that people who love themselves move differently. When you, on your own, are all about things like self-care, enjoying alone time, embracing your strengths, not needing a relationship to fill any voids and celebrating yourself—you don't need any outside sources or forces to make you feel loved. Make means "to bring into existence". People who love themselves don't need anyone to bring into existence what already, well, exists. So yeah, if a relationship comes to an end, it should be because someone didn't "bring love into existence" for you. That is giving them way too much power. It should be because they didn't reflect what already exists and they didn't do enough of what Ms. Stephanie sang about.
A Man Making You Feel Good Is Much Different than a Man Making You Feel Loved
God is love (I John 4:8&16). If you believe in a higher power and that God created you, then you automatically come from love. Prayerfully, your parents echoed that sentiment and raised you in an environment of love but, even if they didn't, you still have the ability to learn how to love yourself—to self-nurture in such a way where you're not out here looking for someone to teach you about how to love yourself. Real talk, I think that's why a lot of us are single much longer than we'd like to be. It's because God, the source of love, knows that we need some time to learn how to love ourselves so that the "wrong teachers" won't come along and totally alter the way He wants us to see ourselves. He knows that if we allow Him to teach us about self-love, we'll recognize, rather quickly, when someone is coming into our lives to manipulate our own definition of love or when they're coming along to intensify the feelings of love that we already have for ourselves.
That's why I dig Stephanie Mills's song so much. If all of us were back in high school English class, we'd probably be taught that an interjection definition of the word "good" is "an exclamation of approval, agreement, pleasure, etc."
Stephanie wasn't exclaiming that her man makes her feel like she is loved—which usually actually translates into being worthy of love. Nope. She said her man exclaims that he approves of how she loves herself, that he's in agreement with how she loves herself, that he brings pleasure to the love that she has for herself. He makes her feel good not loved. See how powerful that is?
Back in the day, Bonnie Raitt's song "I Can't Make You Love Me" used to almost crush me. Don't get me wrong. It's still one of my favorite songs ever, but on this side of self-love and self-awareness, I hear it very differently. When she—or Tank because he did a cool cover of it, too—earnestly sings, "I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make the heart feel something it won't," I used to hear that a man was choosing to deem me unlovable even though I so desperately wanted his love. I now hear, "I can't make you see in me what I see. And ninja, that's OK." And I mean that. There is so much love already here that I don't need him to hold me one more night. Actually, I'd rather have him out of the way so that the man who is excited about my self-love can come along.
Y'all, please get how profound that is—to want a man who is drawn to how you love yourself and then desires to celebrate that right along with you? That beats looking for a man to make you feel like you are worthy of love by a long shot. Use this very precious time to get to that point and place so that you can see a true "love cheerleader" rather than "love manipulator" a mile away.
So no, I don't think that a man should make a woman feel loved. That is God's and that woman's responsibility. If a man wants to come into said woman's life to embrace, esteem, and encourage the self-love along the way—by all means, brotha…do that.
I'm gonna hop off of here, play Stephanie's song once more and go on about my day. It feels good to know that I don't need a man to make me feel loved. Now that you see why I say that…how about you, sis?
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our newsletter here and check out the related reads below:
My Eureka Moment For Why I'm Not Into 'Nice Guys'
Why We Love Men Who Are Absolutely No Good For Us
6 Reasons Why You STILL Can't Over Your Ex
Why You're Always The One Who Prepares A Man For His Wife
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Different puzzle pieces are creating bigger pictures these days. 2024 will mark a milestone on a few different levels, including the release of my third book next June (yay!).
I am also a Professional Certified Coach. My main mission for attaining that particular goal is to use my formal credentials to help people navigate through the sometimes tumultuous waters, both on and offline, when it comes to information about marriage, sex and relationships that is oftentimes misinformation (because "coach" is a word that gets thrown around a lot, oftentimes quite poorly).
I am also still super devoted to helping to bring life into this world as a doula, marriage life coaching will always be my first love (next to writing, of course), a platform that advocates for good Black men is currently in the works and my keystrokes continue to be devoted to HEALTHY over HAPPY in the areas of holistic intimacy, spiritual evolution, purpose manifestation and self-love...because maturity teaches that it's impossible to be happy all of the time when it comes to reaching goals yet healthy is a choice that can be made on a daily basis (amen?).
If you have any PERSONAL QUESTIONS (please do not contact me with any story pitches; that is an *editorial* need), feel free to reach out at missnosipho@gmail.com. A sistah will certainly do what she can. ;)
This article is sponsored by Hulu.
UnPrisonedhas returned for its highly anticipated second season, delving deeper into the complex dynamics of the Alexander family.
The series premiere comes a year after its debut season garnered rave reviews from fans and critics and earned record-breaking ratings for Hulu's Onyx Collective brand. UnPrisoned's success can be attributed to its raw, relatable themes and comedic appeal.
Inspired by creator Tracy McMillan's life, the show follows Paige (Kerry Washington), a therapist and single mother whose life takes an unexpected turn when her father, Edwin (Delroy Lindo) --who was released from prison-- moves in with her and her teenage son, Finn (Faly Rakotohavana).
Throughout UnPrisoned's first season, viewers witnessed how Edwin's incarceration deeply affected Paige's life and relationships. In the series, Paige unpacks her trauma through interactions with her inner child and her online followers. Meanwhile, Edwin is overcoming specific struggles with his own past that led to his life of crime, including a dysfunctional upbringing and his mother's arrest. As the Alexanders attempt to reconcile, new challenges arise.
This new season promises to further explore their unconventional family dynamic. Here are several compelling reasons why season two of UnPrisoned should be on everyone's watchlist.
The Alexander Family Life Is Still In Shambles
UnPrisoned's second season resumes where the series left off, with Paige grappling with the fallout from her troubled therapy practice and Edwin navigating life independently after moving out. Meanwhile, Finn faces his own challenges. The teenager is battling anxiety and seeking information about his father—a topic Paige avoids discussing.
The Alexander Family Are Attending Therapy To Resolve Their Underlying Issues
Amid the chaos in their lives, the Alexander family decides to mend their bond by confronting their past traumas. They seek professional help and attend therapy sessions with a “family radical healing coach,” played by John Stamos, a new cast member. This collective effort aims to unravel the complexities of their shared history and strengthen their relationships.
The process of unraveling each character's internal conflicts and their potential impact on future relationships may clash with Paige's textbook therapy approach. While Paige is used to being in the therapist's seat in both career and family, this forces her into the unfamiliar role of a patient during therapy sessions. This shift would compel her to look in the mirror and try a radically different approach.
The Alexander Family Learned A Big Lesson During A Therapy Session
In therapy, the Alexanders are tasked with addressing their individual traumas to salvage their remaining relationships. One of the family therapist’s eccentric suggestions was an exercise involving a family wrestling match. During this session, Paige faces tough questions about her refusal to share information about Finn's father.
While it's unclear whether this scene is reality or fantasy, the image of the family duking it out in the ring certainly makes for hilarious yet compelling television.
Paige Tries Dating Again Following Failed Relationships
Amid her life's chaos, Paige decides to step back into the dating field. However, her many attempts have left her with mixed results. The dating apps have turned out to be a fail, and an outing with her ex Mal (Marque Richardson), who is also her father's parole officer, doesn’t go quite as expected after he brings an unexpected guest – his new girlfriend.
The situation takes an awkward turn when Mal's new partner learns why the former couple split, partly due to Paige's self-sabotage.
UnPrisoned Is A Perfect Balance Of Comedy And Drama
As a dramedy, UnPrisoned takes a comedic approach to its heavy subjects. The show takes us on a ride with Paige's dating misadventures and navigating a friendship with her ex.
Other lighthearted moments include Edwin's attempts at CPR based on online videos and, of course, the antics of the Alexander family's unconventional new healing coach.
The second season of UnPrisoned is now available on Hulu.
UnPrisoned | Season 2 Trailer | Hulu
Feature image courtesy
Summer Travel Guide: 9 Safest Vacation Spots For Black Women
When it comes to planning and choosing our international travels, there’s one question that is bound to come up: “Is it safe for Black women?”
At times, our travel plans can be halted by whether or not our desired destination is safe not only for solo travel but for overall protection as women of color. We want to have fun, go on excursions, taste the food, and let our hair down, so the last thing we need on our minds is navigating microaggressions and worrying about our safety.
According to a report by The Mandala Research Firm, 17% of Black Americans take one or more international trips and travel locally more than six times per year. Even more exciting, 42% of Black Americans said they would spend more in 2020 on travel than in 2019 (pre-Covid), and 50% of Black adults (16% more than the general population) are more likely to travel to locations associated with their ethnic or cultural heritage. All of this goes to show that we’re not afraid to pack our bags and book flights to our heart's desire.
Our passion for travel and exploration highlights a growing desire to connect with a wide range of cultures while discovering new fresh locales. By choosing destinations with positive reputations for safety and belonging, you can enjoy your next adventure with peace of mind. And to help, we’ve provided a list of the best vacation spots to add to our travel bucket list.
1.Havana, Cuba
Known for its vibrant culture and welcoming locals, Havana offers a unique travel experience for you and your girlfriends. Stroll through the historic streets of Old Havana and immerse yourself in the lively music and dance scenes that make this city unforgettable.
2.Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Famous for its Carnival, stunning beaches, and warm hospitality, Rio de Janeiro is a lively and safe city to explore all year long. Don't miss a visit to the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue and the bustling Copacabana Beach for a true taste of Rio's energetic spirit.
3.Belize
With its beautiful beaches, diverse wildlife, and laid-back Caribbean vibe, Belize is a safe and adventurous destination for travelers. Discover the underwater wonders of the Belize Barrier Reef and explore ancient Lamanai Maya Ruins.
4.Paris, France
Who doesn’t have Paris, the city of lights, on their travel list? Renowned for its art, fashion, and iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Paris offers a blend of romance and safety for travelers. Wander through the charming neighborhoods of Montmartre and Le Marais, explore the Louvre, and indulge in the city's exquisite culinary delights.
5.Lisbon, Portugal
Portugal's capital city, Lisbon, charms visitors with its historic architecture, delicious cuisine, and welcoming atmosphere. Enjoy breathtaking views from São Jorge Castle and savor traditional pastries at the famous Pastéis de Belém bakery.
6.Bali, Indonesia
We’ve all seen the viral photos off the Bali coast and Gates of Heaven, so why not make it a reality? Famous for its lush landscapes, vibrant culture, and serene temples, Bali offers a safe and enriching travel experience in Southeast Asia.
7.Tokyo, Japan
Recently, the value of the Japanese Yen has seen a significant drop, making it the lowest it has been against the dollar since 1986, which also means that there’s no better time than now to make your travel plans to the renowned cultural hub.
8.Accra, Ghana
There’s no FOMO like the kind felt from seeing all the beautiful faces enjoying their holiday at Ghana’s Afrochella Festival, so let this be your sign to start planning the trip now. Often referred to as a welcoming home for the African diaspora, Ghana offers rich cultural experiences and a sense of belonging. Explore the vibrant markets of Accra and visit the historic Cape Coast Castle to connect with the nation's poignant past.
9.Seoul, South Korea
You may be surprised to find this city on the list, but for Black travelers, Seoul is said to be one of the safest and most exciting cities to travel to. There will be plenty to eat, buy, and experience from this city’s rich history and culture.
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