A Sad But True Story

A friend of mine has gone through something that makes me realize how important a lot of what I preach in my book is. I constantly stress the importance of making sure that you really know someone before sleeping with them to bringing them home around your child(ren). I have even recommended that you go as far as having a background check done on your man and people often think that is being a little excessive and going overboard, but when you hear what happened to a woman I know; you will realize that I am right.

Imagine meeting a man that has all of the amazing qualities that you’ve been looking for, falling in love and moving in with him. You want to get married but he gives you a song and dance about how it will happen, just not yet and keeps putting it off and you keep accepting his excuses and find yourself still living with him eight years later! You don’t really understand why he won’t marry you, but you love him and stay because your love and hope keeps you there. One day you get a call that he has died in a car accident and you’re whole world comes crashing down. All of your hopes and dreams for the future wiped away because of an accident and you are left devastated. You can’t imagine feeling any worse when you stumble upon a whole bunch of information about him that you never know. The death of a relative seems to bring everyone out of the woodwork; from those paying their respects to those looking for anything of material value that the dead may have left behind. Imagine after all of that time and then dealing with the death of the man that you love and had spent almost a decade with; children that you never knew he had begin to surface! Five different children from three different mothers—none of which he ever mentioned and you never had any idea existed!

You really do believe that you know someone after eight years and some are even convinced after only a couple of months that they know their man inside out! Love can make us do crazy things, including compromising our own safety, sanity and even our lives because we let our hearts rule and tune out what our heads and loved ones are telling us.

My friend devoted the last eight years of her life to a man who wouldn’t marry her, only to find out that he had been lying from day one. She wanted marriage, but thought that she was doing the right thing by compromising since the timing wasn’t right yet for him. She spent eight years sleeping with the enemy so to speak! Imagine seeing that man’s face every night and every morning for eight years and finding out that he was pretty much a stranger to you because he had a whole other life that you never knew about and that he obviously went out of his way to keep hidden.

Take note of all of this and realize that I am not being paranoid and just too old fashion when I stress the importance of checking up on a man before things get too serious and of not living with someone before marriage. She lost the years that they were together, will lose a few more trying to deal with and move on from what she’s been through and have trouble loving again and all because she allowed it to happen. I hate to use her as an example, but she wants other women to learn from her mistakes.

Check out my Single Moms Dating Guide to Catching the Man of Your Dreams in 30 Days, for more on how to find out all about his past before committing to him as well as reasons why living together before marriage is a mistake.

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