Struggle Love Is Not a Badge of Honor

What we don’t talk about when we talk about marriage

Photo: Petri Oeschger/Getty Images

A disturbing video came across my news feed not too long ago. It wasn’t a street fight or some bloody crime scene. In fact, it was a wedding. The video showed a woman, Pamela, crying tears of joy as she prepared to wed Blair, her longtime boyfriend of 23 years. The ceremony took place in a North Texas hospital room where the groom had taken up his fight against stage 4 colon cancer. Surrounded by family, hospital staff, and local news cameras to witness to the special occasion, the couple exchanged vows, promising to love and cherish in sorrow, sickness, and health, said their “I dos,” and kissed to a round of applause. At the end of the ceremony, the officiant proclaimed that the two were now one.“We did it!” Pamela exclaimed, to a second round of applause.

However, I couldn’t help but feel sorrow for the both of them as I watched the video. Of course, I felt sorrow for their race against the progression of his cancer; there’s no denying that cancer is crushing. It strips us of loved ones, devastates families, and has a well-earned reputation for relentlessness. It’s an unjustifiable offense on human life and the groom’s cancer diagnosis, to be clear, is the most tragic part of this story.

As I read the comments below the video, I couldn’t help but also be disturbed by the less obvious tragedy I’d just witnessed — the one having less to do with physical health and more to do with the way we talk about weddings and marriage.

The comments on the video affirmed what I’ve always known to be true about society’s understanding of marriage as it pertains to women. We’re conditioned to believe that marriage is something a man does for a woman — a reward for her, if you will — not something a man does together with a woman. And as commenters applauded the groom for “finally making an honest woman” out of his longtime lover, I thought of the women in my family who had made similar sacrifices. The sacrifice of their time, dignity, and self-respect.

I don’t know what Pamela and Blair’s relationship dynamic was like for the past 23 years, but I know that no woman should have her relationship expectations and desires dangled in front of her like a carrot in exchange for her undervalued contributions and psychological buoyancy — her emotional and invisible labor. If a man finds that he cannot offer a woman what she requires to be content in a relationship with him, whether or not marriage is it, he should let her go and move on. Not because he doesn’t love her, but because people deserve to have their needs met in their relationships without being made to feel guilty for it, and it is black women who need to hear this the most.

Black women are constantly told that we should ask for little and accept even less. We’re labeled gold diggers and social climbers if we dare desire partners who are providers, something women of other nationalities and races have done and continue to do for the betterment of future generations. And we’re regularly told that the things we desire — like marriage — are out of reach, out of touch, or simply out of our league. Black women are constantly bombarded by statistics and studies proclaiming that we’re marrying less frequently, marrying less stably, and divorcing more commonly than our peers, and the underlying suggestion is that we should lower our expectations if we hope to find (and keep) a man. And this is reflected in Black media, Black film, Black television and Black music.

The “Ride or Die” chick isn’t a myth. She’s a grown woman now. She’s our aunties, our cousins, our mothers, and, truthfully, she’s some of us. She’s the caveat to every 20-year dead-end relationship, the exception to every rule. She’s the pinnacle of holding a man down, devoting her life to proving her worthiness to a person who has chosen not to see it, only to finally have all her resilience pay off in the final hour. And when the man finally comes around and gives her what she’s been wanting all along, it will be a result of his deflated perception of himself, not because of an inflated perception of her. A man who waits until his health has run out to commit to you is asking you to fulfill vows that he himself is incapable of fulfilling. Marriage doesn’t just mean “Help me get through my worst,” it means, “Benefit from me at my best.”

When one person is pulling all the weight, that doesn’t make you a partner at all.

There’s a reason marriage is seen as a social concession for men and a social achievement for women. And maybe the reason is that these relationships — marriages — were never intended to be mutually beneficial. As women struggle to walk a fine like between housewife and harlot, men are encouraged to sow their oats by engaging in partying and casual sex. The idea that marriage is “the end” of things for men is not uncommon, particularly in the Black American community. And far too often, Black men assert that marriage is for timeworn men who’ve exhausted their better years and tighter options, not for men who still have things to lose… or gain. The notion that, after you’ve had your reckless fun in life, you latch onto some man’s daughter and burden her with the aftermath of those reckless decisions is not amiss in Black social circles. And because patriarchy assesses women’s worth based on their relationships to men, Black women knowingly take the shitty deal and are applauded for doing what many others would scoff at.

If Black women are going to get married anyway, knowing the demands society puts on us both as Black women and as wives, we should do so under the best circumstances for us. Heterosexual marriage already requires more labor, more sacrifice, more change, and more give from the woman. At the very least, it should be done when the partnership is in its most productive state, not when only one person is capable of contributing. When one person is pulling all the weight, that doesn’t make you a partner at all; actually, it makes you a caretaker, and that is a role Black women have played for far too long. Marriage isn’t the prize you get for being the last woman standing after a man has exhausted all other resources. If we keep allowing ourselves to be convinced that love is all we need, that a piece of a man is better than no man at all, and that later is better than never (none of which is true), we’ll continue to accept relationships that lack purpose and reciprocity.

Marriage is about sickness and health, yes, it’s about good times and bad, absolutely. But marriage, at its core, is a legally binding agreement intended to offer equal social benefits to a team of two people who agree to work together for the betterment of themselves and society. It’s not a charitable act and it’s certainly not a favor. No amount of struggle or endurance makes you a worthy candidate to a man who sees marriage as a social reward for your suffrage. Struggle love will never pay back everything it requires of you to hold onto it, it’s much cheaper to let it go. We are deserving of love that feels good, that affirms us and meets our expectations, and we shouldn’t be asked to wait decades to get it.