Hey ladies, want to know why you can’t seem to find a long-term relationship? Tracy McMillan has some choice words for you. She says it’s either because you’re a b–, a slut, a mess, a liar, selfish, not good enough, crazy, shallow or godless.
But before you get up in arms over these accusations, know that what she means isn’t as harsh as those pronouncements sound. For example, by saying “you’re not good enough” McMilllian explains that it’s a woman’s negative attitude about herself that allows her to accept poor treatment from men. She adds that, “A lot of people go looking for in a partner something that they don’t even realize that they believe is missing in themselves.”
But the extreme nature of the bullet points of McMillan’s message did make her original Huffington Post essay, “Why You’re Not Married” set the record number of page views for the site since it was posted in February 2011. McMillan’s straight talk about how women can sabotage their own relationships is the kind of sage wisdom most dating books avoid.
“Finding someone that you are going to love one day at a time for the rest of your life isn’t something you can hunt down and kill,” McMillan says. “You need to operate in the part that’s kind of beyond what you can control. What that means to me is that he may not look like what he’s supposed to look like or have the job you think he’s supposed to have. What you need could be very different from what you think you want, and I feel like a lot of dating advice books don’t speak to that.”
McMillan explains that love is work — “the ultimate yoga” — and that it’s about examining our own behaviors before blaming the dating market.
“It’s not easy to love another person because we’re all really flawed, but I think if you can learn how to love yourself with your own flaws and work at making yourself better. You can also love another person and create a space for them to make themselves better,” she says.
Where does McMillan get all this great advice from? Being married three times. She freely admits that she’s made every mistake in the book, but all that experience has sharpened her sensibilities when it comes to dating.
“Oftentimes I’ll be talking to someone who wants to be in a long-term relationship but can’t figure out why she doesn’t have one. And I can see it,” she says. “It’s because she seems angry or she’s not nice or because she’s dating guys who aren’t willing to be in a relationship with her. I know a handful of women who can have casual sex, but that’s a handful. The rest of us, we’re so hung up on that guy six months later.”
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“Why You’re Not Married … Yet” will be released on May 29th. Reserve a copy now!
