Tag Archives: relationships

Important Online Dating Road Rules

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By Denise Turney

online dating couple meet in person holding hands
Wikimedia Commons – Picture by Dtd1986

Online dating is exhilarating, not unlike meeting someone face-to-face. Desire, intrigue, imagination and untarnished expectations are at play. It’s a wonderful experience, but there are drawbacks.

Let love serve as your anchor, steering clear of delusions and unsafety. Enter virtual romance with your eyes wide-open. After all, romantic attraction can be addictive. In the world of romantic illusion, you get to rule. You get to make relationships (even if only in your head) turn out the way you want them to. Is this what makes online dating so appealing?

Curbing Risks

After all, online dating allows for ample creativity. For example, if you’re 4’11”, you could post on your profile that you are 5’7″ tall. Who would know?

You could misrepresent your age, career, educational background and past relationships. Of course, the people who you connect with using dating apps could lie to you too. But that happens with in-person dating as well.

Drawbacks aside, what if you really do want true love? To get there, forget making the relationship up in your imagination and then expecting anyone to live up to your inner script. Don’t do it. It’s just a great way to set yourself up to feel frustrated.

Easy Road Rules

Even more, to save yourself the emotional pain of getting played, follow road rules. Check out these online dating road rules that could save you heartache, not to mention hundreds or thousands of dollars.

  • Avoid sharing too much information online, including within your online dating profile.
  • Don’t use gifts to convince yourself that someone loves you. The person may appreciate the gifts. But that doesn’t mean that they love you.
  • Meet the person you’re dating online in person in a safe, public place. Meet in person early to avoid creating fantasies and illusions that could, over time, seriously cloud your judgment.
  • Really get to know the person before considering introducing her or him to your extended family, including your children.
  • Check statements and facts that people share via online dating apps. Search engines make it easy to check facts and backgrounds.

More Smart Online Dating Practices

Give yourself time to get to know someone you’re thinking about dating online. Don’t rush the relationship. That, by itself, could keep you from creating dangerous blind spots. While you’re letting the relationship develop:

  • Listen to feedback that relatives and friends share about the person you started dating.
  • Practice safe financial skills. Do not share your financial information, including bank accounts.
  • Don’t send dates money or ship products for them.
  • Get to know family members, friends and colleagues of the person who you’re dating online. This way, you can start to get other perceptions of the person. In turn, this may help prevent you from creating fantasies or illusions of the person you met online.

Keep In-Person Relationships Strong

While you celebrate a deepening relationship that started in the virtual world, continue to invest in face-to-face relationships. In fact:

  • Nurture and grow offline relationships with friends, relatives, colleagues and neighbors.
  • Live a rich life. Avoid isolating yourself.
  • Be honest with yourself and the person you’re dating online. Acknowledge what you see and hear. Having strong in-person relationships could keep you from denying facts and behaviors, including behaviors you don’t want to accept.
  • Don’t make excuses for your online date. Know when to let go, leaving the relationship.

Remember that your online date is not here to save you. Regardless of how online dating goes, you’re still responsible for navigating this world’s highs and lows, twists and turns.

Accept What You See

 A final thought – Who doesn’t want love, to join with and actually feel a part of love? Who doesn’t want to give and receive love in its purest forms? Love is beyond amazing. There really are no words to define or accurately describe it.

Love is too big to be defined or described. It encompasses everything real. And it flows, seemingly changing at whim. But that doesn’t mean that you should toss common sense to the wind and run off with every person who tells you that she loves you.

Right now, every person may not be ready to love, even if she shouts that she is ready. This applies with online dating and offline dating. Therefore, consider practicing a few online dating road rules while searching for a deeper relationship. After all, practicing online dating road rules could save you more than hurt feelings.

Falling in Love with an African American Man

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Falling in love with an African American man can be beyond words rewarding. The relationship that you share with an African America man can be insightful, deeply engaging, nourishing and long lasting. So, why aren’t more African American women enjoying these relationships?

Rolling Relationship Dice

For starters, romantic love seems to just happen. You weren’t trying to join in love. In fact, you may have sworn off joining in love with another person. And yet, it has happened.  

African American woman hugging African American man she loves
African American man and woman couple smiling, Wikimedia Commons Picture

Feels like rolling relationship dice. What you do now could impact your relationship for months, years. You could do yourself a favor and not give meaning to what the man you just met does or says. If the feelings are mutual, this gorgeous African American man could be trying to woe you.

He wants you just as you (although you may hate to admit it) want him. He may tell you what he thinks that you want to hear.

Instead of giving meaning to what he says and does as soon as you two meet, consider becoming an observer. Allow this African American man the room to be himself. Avoid steering him with judgment, praise or compliments. Observe and watch where his inner compass is headed.

Romantic Relationship Curiosity Pays Off

Consider holding back on placing a goal on the relationship. After all, you two just met. Just because strong emotions have erupted doesn’t mean that the relationship has to end in marriage. If you think back over other times when you’ve been an African American woman in love, you might see how beneficial observing without judgment or goals could be right now.

As strong, smart and insightful as you are, that doesn’t mean that you and the wonderful man you just met don’t have baggage to let go of. It doesn’t mean that you and the man you just met don’t have childhood trauma to work through.

Curiosity in what could become a blooming romance may allow valuable insights from this African American man and you to surface. As a smart woman, you may find that it’s best to work on your communication skills, patience, forgiveness and self-awareness before you advance further into the relationship.

Honesty Matters

An example of this could be allowing the man to be himself and observing him being patient with a new store cashier or cutting off a waiter who make mistakes with your dinner order. If he practices self-awareness and he’s loving, he should catch himself and change his unloving behavior all on his own.

Another example could be you saying Up just because he said Down or you saying Right just because he said Left. Be honest. Have you done this in other relationships? Are you afraid that you will lose something, perhaps yourself, if you are agreeable? Think about working on this communication habit before you advance the relationship. Your decision could save you headaches down the road.

Both of these examples are instances when you accept what is. You don’t rationalize, ignore, hide from, lie about or try to explain away what is happening. You observe and accept what is.

Moving Beyond Childhood Trauma

If the relationship proves rooted in love, you could be entering a blessed union, even if it doesn’t lead to marriage. You’re an African American woman who’s investing in herself and the beautiful African American man you love.

African American romantic relationship picture of couple in park
Smiling African American man and African American woman in park – Wikimedia Commons Picture

Together you can move beyond challenges and childhood trauma. This is what Brenda decides in Love Pour Over Me. She’s young, in her early 20s, when she meets Raymond, an incredibly gifted and loving African American man.

But Brenda’s not curious enough. She’s also scared of being hurt. She scared of disappointing her family by choosing the wrong man to share her life with. You can learn from Brenda. There’s no need to repeat her mistakes.

Childhood Trauma Signs

Outbursts and anxious behavior that catches you or the African American man who you’re in love with off guard (as though you have no idea why you said or did something) are signs that you may have childhood trauma to move beyond. Being shocked by what you say or do may be a sign that there’s an unhealed part of your mind outside your conscious awareness. Shutting down emotionally or abruptly ending communication with people you love, people you know care for you, are other signs that there may be childhood trauma to work through.

Unexplained irritability, fatigue and worry are other potential signs. The relationship is new. The man or you could be triggering past memories that one or both of you have been running from for decades, just as Raymond runs from his childhood trauma in Love Pour Over Me.

This is when your budding relationship could be a gift. Consider not forcing your relationship to fit into an image or fantasy that you’ve been wanting. Stay curious and allow the relationship to unfold organically. (Warning: This might be harder than you think.)

Invest in Personal Awakening

Should you become aware of childhood trauma in yourself or the African American man you love, invest in personal awakening. The man will have to invest in his own personal awakening. You can’t make this decision for him. If he doesn’t choose to do this, consider moving on. You should always be advancing.

Taking time each day to be still and remember the Creator is the best personal investment. Drinking plenty of fresh water, exercising, getting ample sleep and treating yourself to nature stays (e.g., outdoor walks, bike rides, reading good books while sitting outside on the porch) are ways to invest in personal awakening.

African American romantic relationship couple dining picture
Older Loving African American Couple – Wikimedia Commons Picture

Keeping a journal, writing down your dreams, meditating and listening to soothing music are other ways to invest in personal awakening. Being honest with what you feel and think may be at the top of the list of ways to invest in personal awakening. Above all, do not lie to yourself even if the truth means that this marvelous African American man and you are not ready to enter a romantic relationship.

Ongoing Support for Loving Relationship

Be patient with yourself whether you’re an amazing African American woman who’s moving forward with this relationship or an amazing African American woman who’s letting this new relationship go.

Ask for help should you get stuck or feel like you can’t get through childhood trauma on your own. There may be no greater act of loving yourself. Support may come in the form of discussion support groups, counseling or therapy with a licensed psychotherapist. Should you choose this path, consider working with a licensed therapist who has completed deep therapy herself. Avoid receiving treatment from an unhealed therapist who is not consistently working on herself.

After all, we are all awakening. If you’re looking for a book that shows an African American couple working through childhood trauma and investing in personal awakening, consider Love Pour Over Me.

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now

Are you choosing bad relationships over real love?

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Picture of young couple in love
Wikimedia Commons, Picture by Yudi bhardwaj

By Denise Turney


It’s no secret. Everyone wants to receive and to give love. Our childhood experiences can create fear in us as it regards love. Grow up with a parent who exhibits unpredictable behavior, particularly dangerous or abusive behavior, and we could come to believe that we must be on guard all the time, even putting up inner alarms against closeness.

Why are you afraid of love?

Unwanted endings like relationship breakups and stagnation can also create fear in us regarding love. Before long, we’re guarding ourselves against real intimacy. We can also guard against closeness, including closeness with a good friend.

Think of it this way. If every time you walked through a red and purple gate in a neighborhood in New York City you were bit by a dog, there’s a strong likelihood that you would eventually feel anxious and afraid as you neared any red and purple gate, regardless of the city or the neighborhood that the gate was in.

The thing is that, despite your fear and your dedication to avoiding closeness, you want to receive and to give love. Every living being wants to receive and to give love. It is how we are created. If we are extensions of love itself, what else could we want?

For safety’s sake, we may make and feel intensely attracted to a substitute for love. Result of this could be an intense attraction for dysfunctional relationships. Drs. Mark Borg, Jr., Grant Brenner and Daniel Berry discuss this phenomenon with me on Off The Shelf book radio. It’s a topic that continues to attract interest from psychologists, counselors, couples and singles.

Head down the right road this time

And no wonder. We want to know why we keep feeling intensely strong emotions (like the wrong relationship is absolutely right) for the relationship that won’t help us to grow and experience love. You guessed it! Our fear is actually taking us down twists and turns, in effort to protect us, that will keep us from real love, the very thing that we need to be healthy, balanced, joyous and thriving.

Signs that you might be headed for the wrong relationship start with you thinking that someone is perfect. Another sign is thinking that someone will complete you and make you feel happier. When we expect too much from another person, we do not know ourselves. We feel that we are lacking, an erroneous belief that sets us on a path to find someone who has what we think we are lacking.

When the person doesn’t live up to our expectations, we may feel cheated, angry, frustrated, sad, depressed and — once again, cheated. As Drs. Mark Borg, Jr., Grant Brenner and Daniel Berry share on Off The Shelf book radio, we actually set ourselves up for this trap, a trap that we may not even realize that we have stepped into until we’re months or years into a relationship.

We may not choose our parents, but, we can choose to do the inner work and stop replaying the script for childhood dysfunctional relationships. It beats staying in a stagnant relationship, putting up with abuse or running and hiding from closeness and love. These are just a few of the lessons that Raymond Clarke and Brenda, the love of Raymond’s life, learn in my latest book, Love Pour Over Me.

As we start our journey into a new year, commit to doing the work to awaken more. Start to recognize when you are running and hiding from closeness, real intimacy and healthy relationships. Do the work to remove any fears that you have of love and watch your attractions change, setting you up for real, healthy love relationships.

**Thank you for hanging out with me. Keep up with track and field, drag racing and the wonderful world of books by visiting my blog often. Grab your copy of Love Pour Over Me at https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html or http://www.amazon.com/Love-Pour-Over-Me-ebook/dp/B007MC0Z2C or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-pour-over-me-denise-turney/1109600654