Dating Diary: It’s Hard to Fight Naked

(Photo Courtesy: Niecy Nash)

One Super Bowl Sunday, I put on my Pittsburgh Steelers sweats and was ready to root my hometown team to victory with my long-term boyfriend (and baby-to-be’s father).  We previously RSVP’d  to attend a friend’s football party, but when I called to confirm a time, he told me he had plans to watch the game at a get together hosted by an ex-girlfriend—without me. Although I knew our relationship was rocky, the news hit hard, as if a 300-pound lineman had tackled me. Before I got up, he dumped me over the telephone. In shock, I drove to his house to find out why my contract wasn’t being renewed. I then went to the party by myself to share the story with my cheerleaders–my best friends since middle school. We figured my daughter’s dad and I would reunite and work things out as we always did for nearly three years.

That never happened. Instead, he married someone else the weekend of our daughter’s first birthday. Looking back, I’m not surprised by the outcome of the game, since we ignored red flags and pink elephants on the field. The clock ran out, and we were too tired to go into overtime.  I’m no longer bitter or angry about our fate, in part because I didn’t date for more than a year.

But now I’m back in the game as a free agent. Recently, I got advice from a relationship coach, or shall I say comedienne? I caught up with Niecy Nash to ask her about her new book It’s Hard to Fight Naked. Here are my three takeaways.

The Takeaway: Moms Should Date Someone Other Than Their Children.

The Game Plan: Niecy told me, “I was divorced after 16 years and had three children. The fact that I was able to get a do over, I learned a lot of stuff. I wanted my friends to have this same good thing, you know. And a lot of them were divorced and just sitting on the sidelines raising their children, just waiting to get them out of the door. And I’m like, ‘No girl, don’t wait! Get a man now, so that when the kids go to school, you got something to do…At the core, I feel like the thing we struggle with the most is the thing we were created for, and that’s love.” If you worry about body image post-pregnancy, I read that Niecy  “just got a tight pair of Spanx and got back out there.”

The Takeaway: Be With Someone Who Makes Your Life Better.

The Game Plan: When asked about her three top dating tips, she told me, “Be what you want to see, because you will inevitably attract what you are. Number two I would say, date for your priorities not your preference. (Fine ain’t going to do nothing if those bills aren’t paid!) And number three, you gotta get creative if you want to keep a man out of the streets and in your sheets.”

The Takeaway: Expand Your Boundaries for Meeting Men

The Game Plan:  Before Niecy met and married her husband Jay Tucker, she signed up for several Internet dating sites, such as Match.com, Black People Meet and Christian Singles. While trying to find a match, Niecy played the of a matchmaker–not on television but in real life. She set her best friend Sheri Shepherd up with Lamar Salley, and a year later the two were married.

Hey DFTM Fam: What’s the best dating advice you every received? When you were benched by a breakup, how did you get back in the game?