In my time away I’ve had the chance to romantically grow and develop into a much better person that I was a year ago. I’ve learned how to adjust to challenging conflicts and different personality types. I’ve learned how to let all the personality I have overflow from my workday into my relationship. All these things I try to do in order to improve the areas I think I regressed in over the years due to all the pain, hurt and strife I experienced in relationships with other Black men.

I’m trying to allow myself to not be the true Alpha Male that really sits inside my body. I try to ease myself back a bit and give the kinder, gentler side of me. I’m trying not to speak out as much as I normally do and attempt to understand the perspective of someone else with all my might. But, that still doesn’t seem to be enough. It seems that showing the love that I am still isn’t enough. It seems that I can never seem to quite get it right. There seems to be this disconnect no matter what alterations I make to how I handle my lover.

Have you ever been in that position where you know that all the hard work that you’re putting in really doesn’t mean much because the person is defeated within themselves, which means that your efforts are defeated until he comes around to getting out of his own way. Why do so many men claim to want that well-rounded man. That man that makes them question themselves at times because he presents that which they’ve always wanted and are never seemingly ready to handle.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Love you hard or love you from afar it never seems to be right or enough. Maybe it really is me. That becomes the narrative that I have to pitch to myself. Yes I know that if I talked to any of those close to me about it, they would say that I’m crazy and it’s not really about me; that in reality it still is about the other person because they have to address their own issues and wrestle with their demons.

While that assessment may be true, I think that when you are continuously told that you are too good, or you are exactly what someone wants but they’re not ready for it, you just have to wonder if maybe you are ahead of your time, or if you need to be more selective with who you talk to because the liberalness with which you are selecting isn’t working anymore.

I’m still trying to find the answers to this quagmire and who knows if I will figure it out sooner or later, but the one thing that I do know is that I’m at the point that I’m tired of loving and feeling empty at times on the inside. That to me should never happen when you’re truly loving someone and they love you back.

What do you think?