Why You Should Always Be A Work In Progress.
A conversation with Lakeisha and Ronald.
Her: Lakeisha | 29 | Makeup Artist
Him: Ronald | 31 | Artist
Relationship Status: Together 8 Years, Married
In October 2017, Lakeisha and Ronald vowed to evolve together forever while always displaying transparency, vulnerability and open communication. For more than eight years, they've celebrated successes and held each other up during down moments, always knowing that they could truly count on one another to give their all.
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Q: What does black love mean to the black community?
Lakeisha: I feel like it means hope, because we’re so accustomed to couples being together for a long time and co-existing, as opposed to having a real relationship that’s more for the family than for each other. Or you’re a single mother, like my mother. My mother didn’t find love and get married until around the time Ron and I met eight years ago. She got married when she was 49.
Ronald: That’s the exact same word I thought of, because there’s not a standardization of black love. Looking at single mothers, there are different institutional situations that put us in a position to establish that, and that became the norm for us. It was the norm to be a single mother and for the father to be in jail; it was the norm not to be together. The baby mother was the norm. So now, black love in the black community is the new normal.
Q: Do you think there’s sufficient/significant representation of black love in media? Are you encouraged or discouraged by those you see in real life or in media?
Ronald: I wouldn’t say sufficient, but it’s surging and going in the right direction. It’s not where we want it to be, at all.
Lakeisha: But it is going in the right direction. There are a lot or relationships that get acknowledgement, but as far as in the media, people forget that they are people and they go through things just like we go through things. For instance, Jay-Z and Beyoncé with the whole Lemonade thing: what makes them different are their current circumstances, their successes, the access that they have. At the end of the day they’re still a man and a woman in a relationship that deal with real shit. Black love is now being idolized through relationship goals and all that stuff. People put them on a pedestal and as soon as something happens, you go to shit. People put us on a pedestal too and they’re like, “Oh, I wish I could be like you guys,” and it’s like, we only give you what we want to give you.
Ronald: People are always like, “Oh, relationship goals! How’d you meet her?” I feel like there’s a responsibility to be transparent. I tell them all the time that my wife is upset with me, or while going through the wedding process, we didn’t speak for three days. A friend of mine was saying, “I feel behind because I don’t understand women,” and I was like, you’ll never understand women. There are greater men before us who have tried. You, feeling unsure of what’s going on, is not you being behind, it’s a growing pain.
Lakeisha: We both are very transparent because you both have to be willing to grow and always be a work in progress. Like you [Ronald] said to me in our vows: transparency, communication and vulnerability are the biggest thing in a relationship, whether you’re black, white or whatever.
Ronald: But black people aren’t vulnerable ...
Q: What’s the hardest part about being a millennial in a relationship?
Ronald: When you think millennial, you think “portfolio careers.” We aren’t people at an office job for 20 years, and then retire and ride off into the sunset. We do a lot. Finding a balance is really, really hard. As a creative, you love your significant other and you love the thing you do. I tell her all the time that I love her with all my heart and I love what I do with all my heart. I refuse to choose between the two. Finding time for her, my work and for me — by the time I find balance, something switches and you have to recalibrate.
Lakeisha: I would say the same. Just like him, I love being a makeup artist as much as I love him and being a creative. What I love about our relationship is knowing that if I get an opportunity that will keep me away from him for a certain amount of time, he will never put me in the position to choose, and will never keep me from pursuing my dreams. If I’m going to be with someone and spend the rest of my life with them, they have to allow me to live out my dream.
Ronald: I think that’s where being two creatives work. If you’re not a creative, you’re not going to understand how I could love something more or as much as I love you.
Q: Previous generations had clear and specific gender roles. How do you two define each other’s roles in your relationship, if at all?
Ronald: We just know that whoever does the best of whatever, does it. We’re so different that we compliment each other perfectly. She knows that I hate cleaning bathrooms. I’ll do laundry 100 times before I clean the bathroom. People are always saying women cook and men sit home watching football. We cook an even amount and on nights that I’m working, I’ll provide food in some other way. I don’t think that gender roles really exist, it’s just what job we do best.
Lakeisha: I think it’s 50/50. I don’t ever feel like I’m "Suzy Homemaker." I am home more than he is and a lot of the house stuff does get taken care of by me, but it’s not because I’m a woman. He holds me down when I need it, and I hold him down when he needs it. When he first met me I was very independent, and that’s one of the things he always said that he liked about me: that I didn’t need him, but I still wanted to be with him.
Ronald: There was a time when she was bringing home the bacon, pork chops and the chicken, when I quit my job on Wall Street. I always say it’s the return on investment, because her letting me be free gave me the ability to work without worrying, and having to work because I had to pay bills. I was able to grow organically. I didn’t have to rush.
Q: Do you feel pressured by your family to be with someone who looks like you?
Lakeisha: No. I was probably pressured to be in a relationship. My family is very, "get a good job, get married and have kids." It wasn’t like, "get married to someone you love who inspires you." Now I have that, and we’ll be able to teach our children that. This is the first kind of man that they will know, so there’s no reason that they can’t love someone that comes from where they come from.
Ronald: Not really. My adopted mother is half white. My family is crazy blended, anyway. My mother was just like, "As long as they make you happy." She’s a hippie who doesn’t claim it.
Q: Are there any individual relationship struggles that you had to overcome?
Lakeisha: I didn’t notice until I was with him that I had trouble with self-expression, as far as my emotions go. I had very few people that I confided in as a young girl, to a teenager and a young woman. I didn't grow up in a family where everyone discussed their emotions all the time. When I did, it was with a friend or a cousin. I hold friends so dear to me because, in a way, they were the family I wish I had, as far as being able to communicate.
I also had to overcome certain insecurities that I had about myself physically. I had to overcome those things in order to grow in my relationship, in order to not feel like I couldn’t talk to him or want him to see me like this. I didn't want to think, "I need to lose weight," or "I don't want to look like this or." I needed to overcome those things so that I could feel comfortable with myself as whole, with him. I can say that right now I feel amazing. I accept myself for who I am and he accepts me for who I am.
Ronald: I feel like it’s always been work and learning to make time for those who deserve it. I’m working because I want to build my family and I want to build a future for my significant other. At the same time, you can’t build a future that you’re not an active participant in.
I am a very intense person and when I get locked in, I don’t want to be talked to or do anything except get work done. When the art came in, it was a shit show because I was working at home. You know how people tell you, “I don’t want to work from home because I’ll get distracted and won’t get any work done"? I wasn’t getting any home done. I’m glad I was lucky and successful enough to be able to move my art operations elsewhere. I don’t think we would have existed any other way.
Q: What is it about having a black significant other that impacts you the most?
Lakeisha: We can relate to each other and also, when we have children, if we have a daughter, she can have that image of what it’s like to be in a black relationship. Being in a black relationship can mean anything. I always wanted better and more for myself, so there were certain experiences that I wanted to make a reality, and people used to always call me "white girl" because I didn’t do the same things as them. It was, “Oh, maybe she’s going to marry a white guy.” I love black men. I wanted to try different things, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do that with a black man.
A girl’s first relationship is with her father, and mine wasn’t there at a crucial point in my life. The authenticity of this [relationship], the transparency and vulnerability — nothing can compare to this.
Ronald: As a man of color, it’s no secret that the last few years have been turbulent, and explaining how you feel can be exhausting. You don’t want to come home to a partner and have to explain why you feel how you feel. There’s something in the shared struggle that makes you stronger.
