2002-03 Broadcast Season
Broadcast Program Transcripts
Episode #1816
Making Relationships Work

Lewis: Mitchell Lewis, moderator
Durant: Dr. Lauren Durant, clinical psychologist/relationship coach
Major: Marcus Major, author
Raye: John Raye, motivational speaker

Voiceover: Coming up—relationships. Why do some become a thing of the past, while others seem to stand the test of time? A discussion next on Black Issues Forum.

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Lewis: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell Lewis. It appears that love relationships that used to last for decades now tend to decay in a matter of years, sometimes months. And the promise of a committed relationship is often a dream deferred. Why the changes? And what can be done to bring commitment back into relationships? We have three special guests tonight to give us some insight. Dr. Lauren Durant is a clinical psychologist and relationship coach with Insight Corporation, and she specializes with helping women develop healthy relationships. Marcus Major is a Blackboard best-selling author who has written several novels dealing with relationships that include For Guys in Trouble and his latest, A Man Most Worthy. John Raye is a motivational speaker whose expertise in relationships includes being married to his high school sweetheart for 41 years. All of you—welcome to Black Issues Forum.

Lewis:Dr. Durant, I’ll begin with you. Now, in your practice, dealing with women and relationships, what are some of their top concerns?

Durant: I think one is always, “Where do you find available men?” Meaning men who would be willing to commit at some point, have similar relationship goals, and, I think most importantly, who offer similar levels of talent or expertise or education. Again, someone who would be a good fit for them. Probably the second thing that my women are looking for is, “Where do you find men who will commit to you?” So they are dating folks but, again, at the end of the day, the quote is, “Well, I’m just looking for a friend.” Or, “You know, I’m not too hot on relationships right now.” Or, “I just ended a relationship.” So that can be very frustrating for someone who sees potential in someone they are dating, but again, can’t sort of get from them a statement about whether or not they’ll be willing to commit to them.

Lewis: And sometimes in relationships there’s the blame game. Sometimes it’s the guys, but in some cases are there issues that some of the women are dealing with?

Durant: Oh, definitely. One of the things I try to do in my seminar and my consultations is divide what women are going through into “me”, “he” or “we” issues. So again, not always it being the man that you are picking, but some internal thing that you have going on that needs to be taken care of.

Lewis: Now Marcus, in your books you have developed a lot of characters. How do you go about developing those characters? Because it seems like they’ve been in some interesting relationships as well.

Major: The type of fiction I write is relationship-driven. The challenge for me as a male author is to develop realistic portrayals of female characters, especially in my genre and with my readership base. 90% of my readers are female, and they will have no problem letting me know if a particular female character that I write, that I create, isn’t something they find realistic. So when I create my characters, as a writer who has created characters, I found myself to become a very good listener of women, an appreciator of women, someone who has had trouble in the past, you know, putting aside my male ego, and thinking that women can’t tell me anything. And it’s helped me become a better person, help me become a better understander. And as I said before, an appreciator of all things female. I would like for my books to be considered not just for my female audience, but for my male audience too. I want honest portrayals of real African-American relationships. And that’s what I’m going for—in an intelligent fashion, with honest communication and honest dialogue. So, my characters are something that I hope will be a facilitator for communication between the couples that read my books.

Lewis: Now Mr. Raye, you have celebrated 41 years of marital bliss, shall we say? What would you say is the number one reason, perhaps, why couples don’t stay together?

Raye: Well, let me tell you why they stay together. That’s what I speak about. Well, I’m in love. I’ve loved that woman for 41 years and I love her as much now as I did 41 years ago. In speaking of why they all stay together, I think one of the major reasons is finances. If you’re broke—it’s hard to be in love if you’re broke. I tell folks, “If you are going to go out there, get you some money, so you don’t be fussing and fighting over money.” And then, don’t marry nobody broke. Find somebody who’s got some potential. I was broke when I started, but I had potential. So you find a mate with potential. But my honey was one that I looked at and said, “Look, I’m going to stay with you for the rest of my life.” I decided early on that I wanted three things: I wanted a friend, I wanted a partner, and I wanted a lover, and I got all three of them.

Lewis: A report came out from the University of Michigan and it stressed money, education, and control as the major factors in a relationship. How important or unimportant is control in a relationship?

Raye: The only thing that I control is myself. I’ve never been able to control my wife. I don’t think you should try to control anybody. The biggest person to control is me. That’s why she handles all the money. I handle no money. I’ve never handled any money. She has my paychecks, she has everything. Because to deal with me for 41 years, you’ve got to be a genius. I say, “Baby, take all the money. Do whatever you want to do with it.” So, I don’t believe in control. I do believe in self-control. The greatest control that I have is control over myself. So if I can control myself, than everything else will take care of itself. I work on controlling me. I know a lot of folks who are about control. I just don’t think that you have to control adults. You know, you control children but not adults. So I control John Raye, and when I control John Raye, the universe around me is equal.

Lewis: Dr. Durant, do you see a lot of issues of control with some of the women you talk to.

Durant: Well, I think it’s a bit different for most of my women. I think generally our society has led women to believe that they should be able to release control. And generally speaking, if you’re religious or you go to church, that’s the same doctrine that’s taught. So most of my women don’t necessarily have control issues, but I think more importantly, as Mr. Raye was saying, you don’t want your man to be out of control. And that has to do with a mutual respect for one another and really coming to an agreement about, “What do you want to be in control of?”

Lewis: You were about to say something, Marcus?

Major: Yes, I agree with both of my fellow panelists in the sense that, if you make a good choice at the beginning, at the outset of a relationship, you don’t have to be with somebody that you have to control. And I remember—it recalls a conversation one of my characters had. As she is talking to her son, a mother—she says, “A woman will follow a man, but don’t ask us to follow behind no fool.”

[LAUGHTER, OVERLAPPING COMMENTS]

Raye: I was just going to say that on that issue of—you know, I believe in trust and credibility. I learned early on that you’ve got to have a balance in this thing. The balance was that I needed a partner and I needed someone who was smarter than me. So I found a woman that was smarter than me. My wife is much smarter than me. You know, I let her pretend that she is smarter than me. I think that it’s a matter of integrity and I think I—I didn’t marry her because she was smarter, because she looked good. I married her because I was truly in love with her. I’m in love with her! For 41 years—you know, I kissed her the first day I met her and I’ve been kissing her ever since. I kiss her right now, after 41 years, four or five times a day. You know, you got to keep it fresh. You got to keep it alive. And you don’t ever let a man see everything. You don’t let him see everything. You’ve got to keep your mojo working 24-7. And see, that’s what I like about Miss Rosie—she keeps her mojo working 24-7. That’s why I come home every night. When I leave this show, I’m going right back home to Miss Rosie.

Lewis: Dr. Durant, he’s talking about mojo.

Durant: Yeah, I’m hearing you.

[LAUGHTER, OVERLAPPING COMMENTS]]

Lewis: Dr. Durant, do you feel that couples should share everything? How should that work?

Durant: Well, I think that if you try to be something that you’re not, and you try to disguise things that are unappealing about you, that’s where you get into trouble. I think quite often, when the relationship is good and there’s an honest dialogue, you just say, “Look, this is my issue.” Everybody has issues, but it’s how you are able to deal with that. Acknowledgement is the first step that—you know, you’re not perfect. And then you can see if the person you’re with feels that that’s a concern or something that he doesn’t mind helping you with. That’s really what I see. If you guys problem-solve together, whatever that problem is, that is the connection that keeps it fresh.

Lewis: Now, are there any issues or actions that you think should be sort of kept close to the vest and maybe not revealed within the first few days of a relationship?

Durant: No question. I don’t really have a lot of rules for my women to follow. However, I do say that there are some guidelines. And simply speaking, the most viable period in the relationship is zero to five months. That first initial—you are dating them, you are seeing each other, but you’re wondering if you might need to see other people. At that point, it’s not the time to disclose your mama stories, your daddy issues, sort of your unpleasantries about your job, your world. Let’s talk about getting to know each other. And then those other things, which you can reserve for your girlfriends, will come. But that’s something that doesn’t need to happen very early on, and, unfortunately, it does quite often.

Lewis: I see you nodding, Marcus.

Major: Yeah, I definitely agree. And another thing I would say—during that vulnerable period, keep your past close to the vest. A potential suitor, a potential person, potential partner—he is going to remember—men start remembering things immediately. Once we are interested in a woman, from the moment we meet them, we’ve made the decision that we are interested in them. Now, I’ve always been under the impression that women choose men before men choose women, and a lot of times, they won’t even let us know that we’ve been chosen. I think a mistake a lot of times with women is that they’re too open. And if they regard a man as a friend at the beginning, at the outset of a relationship, and it evolves into something else, a lot of times they regret divulging so much of themselves to that man at the beginning. As men, we have long memories and fragile egos a lot of times.

Raye: I agree with you. I think you have to—she said “to know each other.” I think that the first step is just get to know yourself. I think a man has to have a fundamental knowledge of himself. And black men have to understand that once you know yourself, you can master yourself, you can know yourself. Now, if you don’t have a knowledge of self, it’s pretty hard to deal with anybody else. I was very fortunate early on that I read The Mis-Education of the Negro by the honorableDr. Carter G. Woodson and I learned to get a knowledge of myself. Once I got a knowledge of myself, I knew exactly what I was looking for. It can get kind of confusing if you’re all messed up in the head if you don’t know who you are or don’t know what your purpose is in life.

Major: And that knowledge of self is why you have enough discipline and enough regard for self that you don’t have to control your wife. Because you feel good about yourself. Your self-esteem is at a point where you don’t feel like you have to rule over your female to feel better about yourself. I think a lot of times as men, we have to—in order for us to have healthy relationships, we have to have a healthy respect for women. I think a lot of times, we’re not ready to enter these relationships with women until we have a healthy respect for them and a healthy respect for ourselves. Because the only way you can disrespect your counterpart, the black female, is that you have to have disrespect for yourself. And once you learn to love yourself and regard yourself as someone special, you are going to regard and protect and want to honor that female.

Raye: Well, let me add one other thing. Let’s talk about this. See, I truly love my wife. I love women. I just love women. I look at all women and I love them, but I love one most of all. I just love her. There’s is a real deep admiration. There is a lot of self-hate among black people, a lot, a lot of that stuff. But see, when you truly genuinely love somebody, you don’t hurt them. I mean, when you really love them. And see, the real secret that isn’t taught is admiration. Admiration is the way you stay married and stay with somebody a long time—when you admire them. ‘Cause if you look up to somebody else, somebody else is going to look up to you. And I look up to my wife. I mean, I really love that woman. And that’s why, when they say, “Why are you happy all the time?” Because I’m in love. After 41 years, I am in love, man! And I say, look, if you love somebody, love will come back. Whatever you give out comes back. And I give out that love. I looked at her and—I’m gonna tell you something, I like a pair of good legs, you know. I watched that woman’s—one day she was walking past, and I looked at her legs. I said, “Whoo, what pretty legs!” I looked at them legs and I went from the leg right on up, on to the top, see?

[LAUGHTER, OVERLAPPING COMMENTS]

Lewis: Okay, it seems that we are traveling into something else here. Let’s talk about…

Raye: Well, that’s what got me, brother—it was the legs!

Lewis: But, not only talk about physical attraction, but, in a sense, what is really love? People throw the word “love” around…

Raye: I really think it’s a healthy respect for a person. I think it’s an admiration. When you admire someone, you truly, really, genuinely love them. I think when you have that kind of love for somebody else, it only means that you have a love for yourself. A deeper love for yourself. And when you have a deeper love for yourself, it means you have a true understanding of what your role is in life. I am very, very clear—I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what a man is supposed to do. I’m not confused about that. I know that if you respect, admire, uphold, and treat someone with genuine compassion then that will be reciprocated and come back to you.

Lewis: Dr. Durant, I noticed that you are nodding there. What are some of your thoughts as it relates to what truly are the building blocks of love?

Durant: Well, I think that the primary dilemma is that there is no definition of love. There is nothing to reference to figure out if you’re feeling love. I talk a lot about confusing initial chemistry, which is based on the physical being and the attributes that you see when someone walks into the room, and thinking that overwhelming attraction, which generally I call lust, is what love is. And what happens is that supposedly the relationship works out. You marry. Well, when you don’t get that overwhelming feeling anymore, people start thinking that something is wrong with the relationship, that obviously what we had is gone. That spark is missing. But no—what you transcended into is a different phase of love and it doesn’t feel the same. And as you age and get older and you’re looking for relationships, the feeling of love in connection again changes. I think what happens is that you have to figure out what you are looking for in a mate. You are looking for a best-fit hypothesis. If you go with the characteristics that are a best fit for you, you will automatically reap this feeling, this admiration. And you will know that that is love.

Lewis: We sort of touched on this earlier, as far as presenting oneself. How important is that in the overall relationship?

Durant: I think it’s huge. I say, “If you don’t want to date you, why would anybody else?” And so, if you don’t look good and you don’t feel good—see, because that’s connection—if you don’t think you look good, then you don’t feel good, hence you present yourself as though you are not good enough. And that is quite often what I see. I say, “You spend a lot of time investing in things and people. Invest in yourself.” You need an honest assessment of what are your deficits. You know, maybe you aren’t the most attractive person, but you can bet that if you dress yourself right, and you have presence about you, then people are going to be attracted to that.

Raye: Let me say... You said “presence” and my wife has a presence. I don’t ever get hung up on boobs and butt, you know? [LAUGHTER] But now, her legs did look good. But also she had presence. If you dress out there just to get someone’s attention, and that is all it is, then you are going to be attracted to that. I said, “Look, boobs and butt don’t get me.” I look for something much more fundamental and deeper. I wanted a helpmate. I didn’t want a primadonna. I didn’t want somebody that just had a good-looking face and a butt that wide. I didn’t want just that, I wanted somebody who had some sense. See, I looked for people who had some sense, because I knew that if I had somebody that had some sense, we could both get down the road a lot quicker. So then we developed this mutual respect for one another—looked at my shortcomings, looked at her shortcomings. And we don’t focus on our shortcomings, we focus on our strengths. You focus on your strength, you don’t focus on what you don’t have, because if you focus on what you don’t have, then you are adding loss to loss. You can’t get strong by adding loss to loss. You have got to add success to loss, and add success to success. What I did was to focus on: “How do I present myself? How do I carry myself?”

Durant: That’s right.

Lewis: How do I respect myself? When you have a healthy sense of respect for yourself, your mate is going to pick that up, provided he or she has respect for themselves. I not only respect my wife, but I had a healthy dose of self-respect for myself, and that made our relationship much easier.

Lewis: As far as timetables, Dr. Durant, I’ll start with you. Do you feel that there is a timetable that you think people should be in a relationship before they take it to the next level, perhaps marriage?

Durant: Absolutely! I have a timetable where I literally outline, from day one through however long you are with that person, what are the milestones. And I do it by months, because most people can say, “I’ve been with this person x amount of time.” Zero to five months I consider a time where you need to establish emotional and sexual monogamy, if you are engaging in sex. Because what quite often what happens is that you are having sex with this person, and that person, and how can you get to know someone if you are focused on all those around you? Again, in the beginning stages, you need to sit down and have a conversation about, “Is it true that we are only going to be with each other?” Concentrate on getting to know each other. And most women—this is the phase where they delay. You are in a year or two years and you still don’t have a title. That is a problem. Then you know, as you go from six months to around 10 months, you should be working on establishing couplehood. Simply meaning: you need to establish a title for what you are doing. Is it a relationship? Are you friends? Where is this going? Again, at this point, you should have a title. “This is my man. This is my woman” We, again, are still getting to know each other, but we are a couple, and everyone around you will acknowledge that you are a couple. Again, as you go further down, let’s say between 10 to 12 months—again, the older you are, the less time you spend at certain phases, but by 12 months, you should definitely be a couple. You should only be seeing each other exclusively. Again, whether you have sex or not is up to you. I don’t have guidelines on who wants to become sexually intimate, but I do say that you should never even think of being sexually intimate if you haven’t been together at least three months, and established couplehood, and some level of exclusivity between each other.

Lewis: What about people who are involved in long-term relationships, and the question keeps popping up, “When are you going to get married?” How do you deal with situations like that?

Durant: Generally speaking, if you are in a long-term relationship, there could be a number of reasons for that. The younger you are, the more likely it is that you are trying to establish who you are as a person. Establish a career, and a financial base for you guys to co-exist. But the older you are, it’s usually because you are with a non-committer, or with someone who has been emotionally injured, and they are reluctant to commit again. So you have to establish what your relationship goals are. If your goal is to live with someone, then find someone who wants to do that. If you want to marry, then you need to find someone who also wants to marry. I do not establish what your goal has to be, I only direct you in identifying that goal, and then in the steps on how to achieve the goal.

Lewis: Let me ask this—because we are getting close to our time—to the three of you. Marcus, I’m going to start off with you. What advice do you have for people who really want to make their relationship work?

Major: At the beginning, or while they are already in the relationship?

Lewis: As they are developing their relationship.

Major: Make sure that you have mutual goals. A very important thing, I feel, is to make sure that you are with somebody that you respect, and that you have a high regard for. If you are with a person just because she is attractive, or you are with a man just because of how much money he makes, then that is not a relationship that has a healthy base. And obviously, there are a bunch of other different factors that aren’t as important as respect, regard, and appreciation. To me, you have to have an appreciation, and a high consideration for that person’s talent, and that person’s potential, if you are going to make a long-term relationship work.

Lewis: Folks, I thank you so much for this discussion. Very lively, I must say. Thank you, Dr. Lauren Durant, Marcus Major, and John Raye for being part of our program, and thank you for watching Black Issues Forum. If you’d like more information on tonight’s program and guests, or for a transcript, please log on to the Black Issues Forum website, at www.unctv.org/bif. When you visit, be sure to send us your comments and program suggestions. You can also call us on the BIF line at 919-549-7167. Join us each and every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. for another edition of Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell Lewis. Good night.

[THEME MUSIC]

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.