Hello Christelyn-

I have been a lurker for several months now & really appreciate the wealth of warmth
and intelligence I’ve seen on this blog. The participants are incredibly insightful
(most of the time 🙂 and I’m very captivated by this not-so-new venture into
opening up myself to dating all types of men, period.

I am a 36 y.o. American with brown skin & coily hair (hate the term black). I also
am very much interested in dating, esp caucasian men, but feel oftentimes like they
as well as all of man kind don’t even see me and if they do, I’m given a cursory
glance & that’s it. My self-esteem has taken a particular beating as I am this age,
very much single and wish not to be, and have been unemployed for the past 14 mos. I
am a nice size, have a feminine disposition, pretty woman, but my eye contact is
crap. I’ve been told all of my life that I’d end up with one of them, but I don’t
see anything happening. Is it even wise to try to date given my current career state
or should I navigate this widened dating pool with a more shrewd approach? If I
should jump in, I have no idea how to go about overcoming my insecurities with my
shyness and inherent feeling of unworthiness as I cannot financially care for myself
at this time. Is this even normal? I hate that I even have the urge to date right
now, but I so do! Thanks to your & others’ advice and inspirational stories, I
really want to be ready. So, any advice?

Thank you, J

J, there’s a myriad of issue we need to tackle: Your lack of self-confidence, your shyness (they go hand in hand), your age (not a factor) and problems with eye contact.

First, your employment status is not different for A LOT of people these days. African American unemployment is at 20% nationwide. But more importantly, your employment status should matter little to your dating options. I know we’ve been trained that down is up and up is down and you gotta bring home the dough to be a worthy mate, but your employment status is only relevant because you’re MAKING it relevant. I asked my talented, self-employed and very good-looking friend, Joe Wheeler about this question, because I thought you’d receive it best if you heard it from the mouth of the horse:

There you have it. I could go on and on, but I’ve a pretty deep crew who can weigh in on this like Samurai warriors.