An E-mail to JB ...

My boy JB says he's writing a book about black relationships, and asked for a little feedback on the idea of the pseudo-relationship. Here's what I sent him ...

JB,
What's good ... I saw the post, and I thought I'd chime in for a second on the pseudo-relationship game. I think it's prevalent in the black community, but I also think it's just a current trend in life that everybody - white, blacks, latinos, everybody - is kind of hip to for some reason.

Not too many people want the real commitment that our grandparents gave in the 1950s, and those that do, as you've seen, get stuck with those who won't really commit.

While I don't think it's a horrible idea to be involved in a pseudo-relationship, I think it's not the smartest route. (Then again, maybe it's a sin because it is idleness.)

The pseudo-relationship allows you to date more than one person at once, and kind of play the field with doing too much credibility damage to yourself. (But in the end, most times you do damage, and hurt others in the process.)

But the thing we forget is that we are creatures of habit.

Remember back in the day, hearing that jargon about how the things we did, were taught and saw as infants and toddlers would affect us throughout our natural life? It's true. Same goes with adolescence and high school. So much of that has set the foundation for who we are as people today.

But that trend doesn't really stop. If you involve yourself in a pseudo-relationship, that is what becomes natural and what becomes habit, and as we all know, habits, like a drug they are, are hard to break.

In all, I think this is a trend that perpetuates this whole idea of the single-parent home, which hasn't been going over all that well over the course of the last 30 years or so. So that's not a positive.

I'm not sure there's a way to reverse this trend, but I think what might work is the idea of people actually having family values and relationship morals instilled in them during their youth.
Then maybe, even in high school and college, people will cherish the idea of relationship, minus the pseudo precursor.

But like I said, I'm not sure the trend can be reversed. This is a snowballing avalanche, and if you understand the dynamic of the situation, you just need to get out of the way, and don't get caught up in a situation like the aforementioned. Anyway, it's been real.

Peace,
D. Scott

If you have thoughts about this topic, I'd love to hear them leave a comment below ...