up to be 'independent' so to speak grown black women.

I can't state statistics or percentages, but a quite deal of us have grown up in single parented homes reared by women. A lot of us have had absentee or non involved fathers. So we grow up in an environment where we not only watch and learn, we're taught to not have to rely on men for anything because there's no guarantee that's he's going to stick around rear his children let along be around for you.

So based on our mother's experience and making do and based on some of our own experience with unreliable fathers. We adjust and just be.

That's why I find it difficult to understand the angst many black men have towards black women. If these statistics are true, if past okp conversation is true, many of them have grown up just as fatherless. So, in that respect, they don't know what its like to be men in the midst of strength because someof them fled it. Not all, but some.

So don't take this difficulty as something to be ashamed off. In fact, there is nothing wrong with you. But rather something wrong with the guys who collapse in their manhood within your presence. I wouldn't say that was a man to begin with. I tend to make distinctions between being a male and being a man.

A man would appreciate knowing that his woman would be ok even if he wasn't available immediately for assistance.

Not needing doesn't constitute not wanting.

Wanting doesn't constitute neediness.