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Letter to a Fabulous and Confused Woman
silhouette of couple on terrace

Mr. C and I broke up…again. It’s like the saga of Carrie and Mr. Big–without the rich, fabulous life in NYC part.  And believe me, I will not be dragging out any relationship drama with anybody for 10 years–or anything close to that.  One of my good girlfriends asked me how I found the courage to let someone that I love go.  This was my response, and she thought it would be helpful to my readers, so here it goes.

Dear Fabulous and Confused,

I think of my life like a play where I am the main character–or maybe like a concert recital where I share my love, gifts, etc. with other people. Some people earn and deserve front row seats, others the nosebleed seats in the balcony. However, lots of people don’t even get a ticket to come into the theater hall.  If someone is going to come to my play, and be constantly fidgeting and moving, getting up and leaving, being disruptive–and sometimes, sometimes applauding and being attentive and making me feel good–he gots to go.  There are men who can sit in their seats and be there for you and give you a standing ovation.  He may not understand everything that is going on in the play, but he doesn’t leave because it’s too boring, too zany, too unclear, or making more money than his play. He stays there in loving attention and helps you grow, telling you how you could improve, and giving you a front row seat and backstage pass to his play.  Obviously, life is not a performance, but it’s just a helpful way for me to think about what I should and shouldn’t tolerate in my friends and significant others.

I tend to stay in relationships far past their due date. When I encounter disrespect or disinterest from a guy, I tend to redouble my efforts as if I alone can make it work.  Then, I finally just get tired of feeling anxious, disappointed, and neglected.  I get fed up with feeling starved of love and attention.  Some of that can be solved by giving myself more love and attention (going to the gym, cooking more, etc.) but it’s also a result of me giving more time, energy, and attention way more than I am receiving.

I also try not to take it personally. It’s not that Mr. C doesn’t love me; it’s just that our relationship is not a priority for him right now. He hasn’t made it to Steve Harvey’s place of security in his title, money, and whatever else it is, so there’s nothing I can do to make him ready. I could wait around for him to “get his” but I’d be putting my life on hold. He obviously wants to focus on being in B-School, getting settled in his career, etc.  If he had showed me that he could balance our relationship and his hustle, I’d still be there.  It was just obvious to me that he wasn’t willing to.

I also have faith that God wouldn’t make the one guy for me out of my reach.  I want me and Mr. C to be together, but not if it means I have to wait around for two years for him to even think about getting engaged. I’m going to go live my life, date other guys (this is very important to my bouncing back rather than sinking further in), and he can knock on my door if he ever is ready–and maybe I’ll be single and interested.

That last paragraph is the one that helps me the most. I heard a quote that God never gives you a dream without the means to accomplish it, so (most of the time), I don’t fear being one of the “Black women who will never find love.” Why? Because I’ve learned to open my heart to good men in whatever color they come in. I still need to be physically attracted, emotionally attracted, etc., but my experience with Mr. C taught me how important it is to love the guys who love you in actions and their words–not the ones you wish would love you.

You are beautiful, smart, funny, successful, ambitious, and inspiring. I know the semi-single life gets very discouraging at times. My main advice to you is to have an open heart and open mind and to let go of anything or anyone that does not serve your higher good.  Abundance is your destiny–not scarcity!
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5 Reasons Me and Teens are a Match
two person sitting on rock staring at body of water during daytime

Last week, I submitted a book proposal for a dating memoir titled Chronicles of a Dating Dummy. It was about—guess what—my many bad decisions made during my Dating Dummy days. In the proposal, I submitted two short sample chapters that I thought were pretty funny and engaging. When asked who I thought my target audience was, I stated matter-of-factly “women aged 18-35.” “First of all, that’s way too broad,” Mr. Powerful Publishing Man said. “Second of all, this book is hilarious—and is for teen girls aged 15-19.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I knew he was exactly right. My dating memoir wasn’t for jaded 20- and 30-somethings. It was a wild ride for teen girls who had most of their Dating Dummy days ahead of them—not behind them. Mr. Publishing’s assessment of my book’s target audience was confirmed when I submitted my “11 Signs He Is In Fact Your Boyfriend” post to Loveawake, a dating site disproportionately visited by teens, and it got 25,000 views in a week! That’s the same number of views as my top 10 posts combined here on my blog! I’ve since submitted other posts, most only getting about 1000 views, but I still learn a lot about what teens think and care about from the 400+ comments they have left on my posts on Datingish thus far.

So why do me and teens go together?

1. Teens are very into dating—and so am I.

For some reason, being interested in dating seems to be a rather taboo subject among late 20-somethings. Perhaps because we’re marrying age or something. I don’t know. It seems that everyone acts like it’s a very big deal to outwardly discuss dating and the ups and downs involved in it.

2. I’m less private than most people my age.

Most of my peers are very concerned with their public and online images, since they want to work for large corporations which might frown upon reams of information about them floating around on the internet. Teens, on the other hand, are truly digital natives, who grew up with Facebook as an integral part of their adolescence. The person they are online is the same person they are offline, so there is no need to draw such a big boundary between the two.

3. Teens are more emotional.

I named my blog “CrazyGirl Nation” for a reason. Sometimes, I feel like I’m going crazy! I know that I’m sane in the medical sense, but I definitely get swept away by my feelings and emotions—be they good ones or bad ones. Teens are infamous for being “emotional” and I like that they are expressive and in touch with their feelings. Me and teens could stand to put some distance between our emotions and our actions, but for now, we can be crazy together.

4. Maybe they don’t know any better.

Plenty of people don’t agree with my advice. (They especially love to tell me so after they’ve had a few drinks). Maybe I’m catching teens when their minds are soft and impressionable. Maybe my dating advice is like a gateway drug into even more crazy, off-the-wall advice! First, I’m telling teen girls how to make their boyfriends miss them. Next I’ll be telling them how to sell all their possessions and move into a tree house! (sounds kinda fun…) Actually, I don’t think I’m tricking anyone. I stand by my advice, and I appreciate that teens are so responsive to what I write. Not all of them like it, but they tend to be much more engaged with what I write.

5. Maybe I provide answers they are looking for.

I get lots of direct emails from teens asking me to provide advice on their personal dating situation. Although I can’t answer most of them directly one-on-one, I try to write posts that address their concerns. The teen years are interesting in that you feel like you know everything, but you also begin to have a lot more questions about everything too—especially when you enter college and are plucked out of the world that you grew up in. Maybe when everything else is changing and becoming unclear and confusing, my posts provide a little clarity in a blurry world. Whatever the reason is, I love that teens connect with my writing. Cheers to the teenagers!
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White Woman’s Burden
man kneeling in front of woman
My mother is a Jewish white girl from Delaware and my father came to the U.S. from Hong Kong as an immigrant med student. In the south, in the 70’s, when my mother tried to sign a credit card slip as “Mrs. Chan,” it got her arrested for fraud. No one would believe she was married to a Chinese man, and when she was out for a stroll with her Asian-featured babies, strangers at the mall always asked where she got us. After 20+ years of marriage, theirs recently ended in divorce. Fast-forward to my dating life: because of the environments I’ve grown up in (a white, upper-class Massachusetts suburb and a predominately white liberal arts college) I’ve only ever dated white boys. Unlike my parents though, no one has ever questioned me dating outside my race or looked askance at my relationships. My current boyfriend has a white mother who grew up internationally and a white, Jewish father. As children of Jews and foreigners, in many ways it feels like we’re intrinsically the same, but racially we’re not. As a bi-racial Asian woman dating white guys, technically I’ve only ever been in interracial relationships, but it’s never really felt that way. On paper my parents were an interracial couple and my boyfriend and I are an interracial couple, but the way we are viewed by society and they way we’re treated is fundamentally different. Part of that has to do with the communities I’ve lived in versus my parents, but most of it I believe is not only about race, but gender. According to Loveawake dating site research, mixed-race marriages are statistically 13% more likely to end in divorce than same-race pairings. And, the most ill fated pairings overwhelmingly occur when the woman in the relationship is white. Gori Girl, a white American woman married to a Bengali man, does a great job here breaking down divorce statistics and brings to light some unexpected facts, most notably:
  • Interracial marriages that have one white person and one person of another race mostly only show higher divorce rates when the white spouse is a female (i.e. white guy + other race girl don’t show particularly high divorce rates compared to same-race couples).
  • Black husband/white wife marriages are twice as likely to divorce as white/white marriages, and Asian husband/white wife marriages are about 60% more likely to divorce as white/white marriages.
  • White husband/black wife were nearly 50% less likely to divorce than white/white couples, and white husband/Asian wife couples had pretty much the same divorce rate as white/white couples. (emphasis own)
Apparently some pairings are, on average, more difficult than others. Couples like my parents, a white woman and an Asian man, were in trouble (statistically speaking) from the start. On the flip side, it seems that a black woman and a white man have an institutional advantage, with a lower probability of divorce than a same race couple. To me, the real question is: why is it intrinsically more difficult for white women to date outside their race? I doubt that white women are inherently more racist than any other group; rather, I think that the lens through which society views these relationships adds its own unique strain. White men taking women of other races has historical precedents in slavery, imperialism, even Vietnam war-brides. Distasteful or not, culturally, we are more used to seeing white men take “exotic” wives. White men are congratulated for bringing home an interesting prize and seen as sophisticated. Conversely, non-white men have a much harder time bringing home a white woman to their families. Black men can be seen as traitors. My Chinese father was disowned by his parents for marrying a white woman. Only years later did they “re-own” him to have access to their grandchildren, but still made it a point to ridicule my mother for pouring tea wrong. For white women, there’s simply a higher degree of cultural discomfort- people’s minds don’t easily jump to realize that your husband is black, Hispanic, Vietnamese…they’re more likely to think your kids are adopted. Inter-racial dating itself isn’t necessarily the challenge- what matters is which side of the equation you’re on. Currently, society makes it easier and more acceptable for white men to date outside their race than women. My mother is dating a wonderful white guy now. She’s ecstatic.
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