Sneak Peek at my new book.....
The Pitiful Prostitution of the Single Mother
LeAnne Love (c) 2015
This month was a close call. I paid rent twenty days late, receiving my second 72 hour notice.. I could have had my rent paid a week ago, when a long time woman friend of mine offered to ask her boyfriend about loaning me the money. Driving along, while I listen over my speakerphone, she lays out her proposition, "I think that if you me and Dave have a threesome, then I'll ask him to loan you the money, and he won't say no." I'm slack jawed. My driving companion seems less surprised and shrugs as if to say 'Well it's money.'
Just two weeks ago, a male friend of mine had texted me a picture. A crisp $100, laying on his bed. How nice, I guess he was short on the landscaping work I'd asked about, a year ago.
I declined both these offers, nevertheless, I am wondering now, if I were on TANF (welfare cash assistance), would I have to report such earnings? Is there a box for that?
With three children and no husband, or any imitations thereof; it's all on me, to see that rent is paid, dinner is on the table, clothes are clean for the next day and the garbage gets taken out, not to mention seeing to all the household repairs, etc. I chose this I suppose. I asked for the divorce, now I'm a single mommy statistic. I have two kids from my marriage. The whole 'single mom' title reality didn't hit home until, long after, my divorce when I had my little 'love child.' My daughter Charli, born out of wedlock, upped my status. I was now, not only a single mother of three but I had also earned the title 'Baby mama,' and ended up with a 'Baby daddy.' I chuckled a little, before I cried.
I journeyed out, onto womanhood's very own "Trail of Tears." I ended up in a new kind of reservation, called HUD housing. For the uninitiated, HUD stands for Housing and Urban Development, designed to provide affordable housing to the 'Low-Income," or disabled population. These projects, once dubbed, "The Baby Mama Projects," felt like some strange petri-dish for ongoing poverty, drug addiction, bad relationships and what I have now come to see as the pitiful prostitution of our single mothers.
The independent modern woman, raising children on her own, has only a few options for survival. Keeping that in mind, I am not passing judgment on neither man nor woman, rather I think it's time we 'get real' about the dating/mating situation in America, because ladies and gentlemen, this affects much more than our own love life. The depth and severity of damage done to our children is immeasurable, and will perpetuate itself through the generations.
We already live in a nation where a good portion of our parents divorced- and I would guess the majority of you reading this book grew up with either no father, or in a 'blended family', going back and forth between two worlds, Mom's house and Dad's house. Most of the people I know now have simply chosen not to marry. Their children though, still experience the pain of having 'divorced' parents. They also lose out on the training needed to become a man or woman.
How else do we learn how to be good mothers and fathers if we don't have one to teach us? In this same way, we learn how to be good husbands and wives, watching our parents dealing with each other, we learn how to live and give love and even fight. It seems logical to think that a boy must learn from his dad how to be a good spouse, and a girl from her mom. What I have found to hold true is that we, instead, learn how to become a desirable spouse from who our parents show their love and adoration to.
It is from our parents that we sought approval, they, having been the most loved and important people in our world. The next 'most-loved' and important person is to be your spouse. It makes sense we would want to do everything in our power to make sure we get all of our spouse's love and approval. A man leaves his mother's home and cleaves to his wife's (B), and for women it is the husband who takes over the father's position. Clearly, it would be necessary to learn what most pleases the opposite sex, so we will know what the heck we're doing when we're married.
We spend our childhood observing the person that most pleases our parent. If you are dating, watch out who you put into this grand role. For instance, a boy will be looking to his mother, taking mental notes on how she reacts to her spouse. If dad yells and screams, and mom doesn't like that, he most likely, will not do that to his own spouse. The boy will want his new wife to be happy. Yelling and screaming doesn't seem to be the ticket. A girl will see that her father is always happiest when mom wears a nice dress, so she will make it a point to do that to please her own husband.
It is a little girl's wish to please her father, to be Daddy's little girl. He provides for her everything she needs, including validation of her worth. Commonly it is heard that a girl grows up to marry a man like her father, often this saying is found to be true. When a woman marries, the bride is literally handed off by her dad into the capable, secure hands of another man, the groom. He is to assume all the responsibilities which the father is handing over to him. She, likewise, takes the man from his mother and is to assume all future care for the man.
Dating is not the same as marriage. Dating does not come with the obligation to serve, to provide, or even to stay. In fact a date, by definition, is something that happens and then passes, onto the next date. We tend to put up with a lot more in the initial part of a relationship too. In the beginning, and particularly once intercourse has happened, we become so 'high' on love hormones, our eyes are blinded to many things which do not please us. Our bodies mix up a hypnotic and addictive blend of dopamine and seratonin among other things, whenever we are around our new lover. We literally get high on love, especially the sex part. We also, literally, experience withdrawal when they're not around.
Funny thing about those 'love hormones,' they tend to last about 9 months into most relationships, or 18 months at best,post-coitus. Just enough time to make a baby, at which time nature doesn't need a fancy chemical cocktail to keep the pair together. There is the baby, a supreme source from which comes the couple's drive and inspiration to continue pleasing one another.
By the time the baby is born, the love bug has run it's course and what that child gets to witness is two imperfect people, trying, together, to make this life work for the sake of their child who loves them both unconditionally. But pause here and delete the supreme source of inspiration from the center focal point. Insert Step-Dad A or Step-Mom B into the picture. Because there is no glue (the child) holding it together, it's like starting back at square one with all those sticky hormones gumming up our brains.
In full-view of the child, we go through the initial phases again. The phase where we put up with a lot of things we wouldn't, and because the child, already existing, is not the product of this union, what happens when nature's chemical cocktail wears out? The relationship dynamics change of course, as they should, it's nature's way. Without marriage to serve as a prior commitment, or a child together (remember, the supreme source of inspiration), many relationships come to close right here.
So what have we learned? That sticky hormonal glue is best kept out of reach of children, as it is a dangerous and fatally flawed phase for a child to learn how to please the opposite sex. All the child's mental notes, wasted,or worse yet, permanently implanted, by some boyfriend or girlfriend that turned out to be a less than desirable mate.
I understand this is the 21st century, we don't just mate for reproduction anymore. Unfortunately no one told our DNA about this, so it carries on doing its job, making cocktails and finding pairs. We cannot escape our animal brains, though we certainly try. Since the advent of birth control, relationships and engagements go on much longer than they ought without any reason for commitment. By the time the love bug leaves us, we're lost as to why we should continue trying to please this other person.
That is what dating is about today, finding that some "one" whom we please the most and who also makes us happy. Negating any purpose however to do so, but still expecting to find some magical romance where you meet the perfect person, and better still, you become the perfect person once you finally meet. I think we may be setting ourselves up for failure here. The perfect spouse does not exist, and though I don't know you, my better judgment tells me you are not a perfect person either.
The end result is we have a whole lot of people our here, pretending to be perfect and when they're found out, they hit the trails. Who wants to be less than loved by the 'most-important' person in their life. If our only goal is to find love than we have forgotten nature's purpose for this whole mating ritual- to create the child, who will actually love us as the most important person and wholly accept us, flaws and all.
(B)...The two shall unite and become one flesh."
First comes Love, then comes Marriage, then comes having sex. Anyone who has sex, without the explicit intention and purpose to create a new life, is simply pretending that's not what the act was made for. No wonder scripture is so adamant about protecting the marriage bed. It's where we get to create life of our own. Making love; is our given moment in time, to bear witness and yield to the Universe's abundant and expansive creative energy. Where life that did not exist before, is suddenly sparked into existence by the mutual love shared between its parents and is carried until birth without anything more than the genetic coding it began with.
We are born to become sexual beings, we are created with the capacity for great love and nurturing, who are we kidding ourselves today, saying "I prefer to be single," or "I don't want to be married." Truth: you don't want to be with any of the guys you've met 'so far' and men, you haven't found a girl worth marrying. Besides: WhATs the POINT?
It is especially upsetting when we don't even get what we believe we were paying for; undying love, which is a fallacy. It was only nature's way of bringing you close enough to complete the circle. Left 'untied' it will fall apart.Not all bonding makes a baby, but that is also what commitment is for. It seems silly to invest all that time, service, energy and 'love' into someone that isn't even sure they want to stick around. This was a whole different matter back in the days where dating and sex were not synonymous. People moved on a lot faster, their animal brain had not been switched on yet by sex, their vision was clear and their motives were untainted. When sex finally did occur, within the marriage bed, it was safe grounds. Safe from rejection (what we fear most from our parents), and perfectly in line with nature's intention. For even if a baby does not result, the couple have a reason to carry forward, hoping a baby does result, no matter how many times they have to try.
Somewhere along the way we got to thinking that this whole relationship 'thing' was to find maximum love and maximum pleasure. There are 'plenty of fish' in the sea, or wherever you find them, we can afford to throw back the lesser fish and keep trying, right? Just remember that someone has a line out there for you too, and no one likes to get hooked then tossed back. And our kids, if we have them yet, are all the while watching to learn what sort of bait to take or which fish to throw out.
Inevitably some of us end up throwing out our finest catches, and some of us end up falling for some terrible bait, or worst of all, willingly sacrifice our hearts to someone who tosses us aside anyway. We have humans have come up with some clever, and some not-so-clever schemes to avoid these painful situations and also to increase our odds of finding the 'perfect' match:
The Pitiful Prostitution of The Single Mother (c) 2015 LeAnne Love
CHAPTERS TO COME:
"I Love You"
What every woman wants to hear, and every man has learned to say.
"Let's Play House"
Where paying for half the bed is not the same as paying for what happens in it.
LeAnne Love (c) 2015
This month was a close call. I paid rent twenty days late, receiving my second 72 hour notice.. I could have had my rent paid a week ago, when a long time woman friend of mine offered to ask her boyfriend about loaning me the money. Driving along, while I listen over my speakerphone, she lays out her proposition, "I think that if you me and Dave have a threesome, then I'll ask him to loan you the money, and he won't say no." I'm slack jawed. My driving companion seems less surprised and shrugs as if to say 'Well it's money.'
Just two weeks ago, a male friend of mine had texted me a picture. A crisp $100, laying on his bed. How nice, I guess he was short on the landscaping work I'd asked about, a year ago.
I declined both these offers, nevertheless, I am wondering now, if I were on TANF (welfare cash assistance), would I have to report such earnings? Is there a box for that?
With three children and no husband, or any imitations thereof; it's all on me, to see that rent is paid, dinner is on the table, clothes are clean for the next day and the garbage gets taken out, not to mention seeing to all the household repairs, etc. I chose this I suppose. I asked for the divorce, now I'm a single mommy statistic. I have two kids from my marriage. The whole 'single mom' title reality didn't hit home until, long after, my divorce when I had my little 'love child.' My daughter Charli, born out of wedlock, upped my status. I was now, not only a single mother of three but I had also earned the title 'Baby mama,' and ended up with a 'Baby daddy.' I chuckled a little, before I cried.
I journeyed out, onto womanhood's very own "Trail of Tears." I ended up in a new kind of reservation, called HUD housing. For the uninitiated, HUD stands for Housing and Urban Development, designed to provide affordable housing to the 'Low-Income," or disabled population. These projects, once dubbed, "The Baby Mama Projects," felt like some strange petri-dish for ongoing poverty, drug addiction, bad relationships and what I have now come to see as the pitiful prostitution of our single mothers.
The independent modern woman, raising children on her own, has only a few options for survival. Keeping that in mind, I am not passing judgment on neither man nor woman, rather I think it's time we 'get real' about the dating/mating situation in America, because ladies and gentlemen, this affects much more than our own love life. The depth and severity of damage done to our children is immeasurable, and will perpetuate itself through the generations.
We already live in a nation where a good portion of our parents divorced- and I would guess the majority of you reading this book grew up with either no father, or in a 'blended family', going back and forth between two worlds, Mom's house and Dad's house. Most of the people I know now have simply chosen not to marry. Their children though, still experience the pain of having 'divorced' parents. They also lose out on the training needed to become a man or woman.
How else do we learn how to be good mothers and fathers if we don't have one to teach us? In this same way, we learn how to be good husbands and wives, watching our parents dealing with each other, we learn how to live and give love and even fight. It seems logical to think that a boy must learn from his dad how to be a good spouse, and a girl from her mom. What I have found to hold true is that we, instead, learn how to become a desirable spouse from who our parents show their love and adoration to.
It is from our parents that we sought approval, they, having been the most loved and important people in our world. The next 'most-loved' and important person is to be your spouse. It makes sense we would want to do everything in our power to make sure we get all of our spouse's love and approval. A man leaves his mother's home and cleaves to his wife's (B), and for women it is the husband who takes over the father's position. Clearly, it would be necessary to learn what most pleases the opposite sex, so we will know what the heck we're doing when we're married.
We spend our childhood observing the person that most pleases our parent. If you are dating, watch out who you put into this grand role. For instance, a boy will be looking to his mother, taking mental notes on how she reacts to her spouse. If dad yells and screams, and mom doesn't like that, he most likely, will not do that to his own spouse. The boy will want his new wife to be happy. Yelling and screaming doesn't seem to be the ticket. A girl will see that her father is always happiest when mom wears a nice dress, so she will make it a point to do that to please her own husband.
It is a little girl's wish to please her father, to be Daddy's little girl. He provides for her everything she needs, including validation of her worth. Commonly it is heard that a girl grows up to marry a man like her father, often this saying is found to be true. When a woman marries, the bride is literally handed off by her dad into the capable, secure hands of another man, the groom. He is to assume all the responsibilities which the father is handing over to him. She, likewise, takes the man from his mother and is to assume all future care for the man.
Dating is not the same as marriage. Dating does not come with the obligation to serve, to provide, or even to stay. In fact a date, by definition, is something that happens and then passes, onto the next date. We tend to put up with a lot more in the initial part of a relationship too. In the beginning, and particularly once intercourse has happened, we become so 'high' on love hormones, our eyes are blinded to many things which do not please us. Our bodies mix up a hypnotic and addictive blend of dopamine and seratonin among other things, whenever we are around our new lover. We literally get high on love, especially the sex part. We also, literally, experience withdrawal when they're not around.
Funny thing about those 'love hormones,' they tend to last about 9 months into most relationships, or 18 months at best,post-coitus. Just enough time to make a baby, at which time nature doesn't need a fancy chemical cocktail to keep the pair together. There is the baby, a supreme source from which comes the couple's drive and inspiration to continue pleasing one another.
By the time the baby is born, the love bug has run it's course and what that child gets to witness is two imperfect people, trying, together, to make this life work for the sake of their child who loves them both unconditionally. But pause here and delete the supreme source of inspiration from the center focal point. Insert Step-Dad A or Step-Mom B into the picture. Because there is no glue (the child) holding it together, it's like starting back at square one with all those sticky hormones gumming up our brains.
In full-view of the child, we go through the initial phases again. The phase where we put up with a lot of things we wouldn't, and because the child, already existing, is not the product of this union, what happens when nature's chemical cocktail wears out? The relationship dynamics change of course, as they should, it's nature's way. Without marriage to serve as a prior commitment, or a child together (remember, the supreme source of inspiration), many relationships come to close right here.
So what have we learned? That sticky hormonal glue is best kept out of reach of children, as it is a dangerous and fatally flawed phase for a child to learn how to please the opposite sex. All the child's mental notes, wasted,or worse yet, permanently implanted, by some boyfriend or girlfriend that turned out to be a less than desirable mate.
I understand this is the 21st century, we don't just mate for reproduction anymore. Unfortunately no one told our DNA about this, so it carries on doing its job, making cocktails and finding pairs. We cannot escape our animal brains, though we certainly try. Since the advent of birth control, relationships and engagements go on much longer than they ought without any reason for commitment. By the time the love bug leaves us, we're lost as to why we should continue trying to please this other person.
That is what dating is about today, finding that some "one" whom we please the most and who also makes us happy. Negating any purpose however to do so, but still expecting to find some magical romance where you meet the perfect person, and better still, you become the perfect person once you finally meet. I think we may be setting ourselves up for failure here. The perfect spouse does not exist, and though I don't know you, my better judgment tells me you are not a perfect person either.
The end result is we have a whole lot of people our here, pretending to be perfect and when they're found out, they hit the trails. Who wants to be less than loved by the 'most-important' person in their life. If our only goal is to find love than we have forgotten nature's purpose for this whole mating ritual- to create the child, who will actually love us as the most important person and wholly accept us, flaws and all.
(B)...The two shall unite and become one flesh."
First comes Love, then comes Marriage, then comes having sex. Anyone who has sex, without the explicit intention and purpose to create a new life, is simply pretending that's not what the act was made for. No wonder scripture is so adamant about protecting the marriage bed. It's where we get to create life of our own. Making love; is our given moment in time, to bear witness and yield to the Universe's abundant and expansive creative energy. Where life that did not exist before, is suddenly sparked into existence by the mutual love shared between its parents and is carried until birth without anything more than the genetic coding it began with.
We are born to become sexual beings, we are created with the capacity for great love and nurturing, who are we kidding ourselves today, saying "I prefer to be single," or "I don't want to be married." Truth: you don't want to be with any of the guys you've met 'so far' and men, you haven't found a girl worth marrying. Besides: WhATs the POINT?
It is especially upsetting when we don't even get what we believe we were paying for; undying love, which is a fallacy. It was only nature's way of bringing you close enough to complete the circle. Left 'untied' it will fall apart.Not all bonding makes a baby, but that is also what commitment is for. It seems silly to invest all that time, service, energy and 'love' into someone that isn't even sure they want to stick around. This was a whole different matter back in the days where dating and sex were not synonymous. People moved on a lot faster, their animal brain had not been switched on yet by sex, their vision was clear and their motives were untainted. When sex finally did occur, within the marriage bed, it was safe grounds. Safe from rejection (what we fear most from our parents), and perfectly in line with nature's intention. For even if a baby does not result, the couple have a reason to carry forward, hoping a baby does result, no matter how many times they have to try.
Somewhere along the way we got to thinking that this whole relationship 'thing' was to find maximum love and maximum pleasure. There are 'plenty of fish' in the sea, or wherever you find them, we can afford to throw back the lesser fish and keep trying, right? Just remember that someone has a line out there for you too, and no one likes to get hooked then tossed back. And our kids, if we have them yet, are all the while watching to learn what sort of bait to take or which fish to throw out.
Inevitably some of us end up throwing out our finest catches, and some of us end up falling for some terrible bait, or worst of all, willingly sacrifice our hearts to someone who tosses us aside anyway. We have humans have come up with some clever, and some not-so-clever schemes to avoid these painful situations and also to increase our odds of finding the 'perfect' match:
The Pitiful Prostitution of The Single Mother (c) 2015 LeAnne Love
CHAPTERS TO COME:
"I Love You"
What every woman wants to hear, and every man has learned to say.
"Let's Play House"
Where paying for half the bed is not the same as paying for what happens in it.
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