Last week on Christmas Day, my fiance and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary of being engaged. Yay! Milestones are great opportunities to self-reflect and celebrate overcoming hardships. So, reflection…GO!

Let me tell you, engagededness (totally made up word) is all kinds of fabulous and wonderful. I got the ring, said yes, started planning the wedding and found the dress, but even during all of the rainbows and sunny filled days of being engaged, I will never forget that it was just a short time ago that I was super single, often wondering when my time would come — where was my husband?

A few weeks ago, I had dinner and drinks with two of my old co-workers turned great girlfriends. We talked about how every Wednesday we would gather in one of our offices and marvel at the Just Engaged and Just Married posts on Essence.com. [Sidebar: I was even more proud to join the Triple B team when I learned that the Black Bridal Bliss founder Bridgette actually started (!) this weekly feature prior to launching her own platform dedicated to Black brides.] Each featured couple seemingly had a perfect love story, and equally perfect engagement and wedding pictures. For the so called lack of “good” Black men, it seemed as if week after week, Essence had no trouble featuring countless stories of #blacklove. At that time, none of us were in committed relationships at the time and were like many other professional, successful, beautiful black women…single. It seemed like we had everything going for us in all aspects of our life, except a loving, committed relationship. Now, fast forward, 5 years later and we are each either engaged or in committed relationships. Talk about the power of prayer and patience! (LOL)

Prior to meeting my Vlad, I was in a unilateral, monogamous relationship. Sounds crazy? Because it totally was. I, like so many women, believe what we want to believe and fall victim to that irrational voice in our head that doesn’t allow us to use our good judgment, but rather rely completely on our emotions. Although we were not monogamous, we had traveled together, spent birthdays and holidays together, met each other’s friends and family, visited each other in our respective cities and talked frequently. Yet, still, there was no talk of commitment. As I’m writing this, I can’t believe I was so naïve and allowed this foolishness to continue for as long as it did, but we all have to experience those situations that are not right for us so that we can come out on the other side and embrace what is 100% right for us. I later came to realize that this man showed me and told me exactly who he was and his intentions with me very early on, as most men do, but I ignored these signs and continued down this path of a relationship, albiet a relationship that was totally in my head. After a couple of years of back forth, with me basically chasing this man (hereinafter referred to as “Mr. Not The One”) who did not want to be caught, God does, as He always does, completely jolted me back into reality.

About 5 months before I met Vladimir, I found out that “Mr. Not The One” was engaged. When I received the phone call from my friend who saw the Facebook status change, I immediately felt a loss of air — gut punch feeling in full effect! If the day couldn’t get any worse, later that afternoon I found out that I was going to be unemployed — my job had been eliminated. I had phoned a few friends to let them know about the engagement, then a few hours later, I updated them with news of my new unemployment status. Talk about a day to remember, right? Well, it definitely was. So, how could I move past what singlehandedly was one of the hardest days of my life?

To be continued…

What are your thoughts on the number of single, professional Black women? Does increased professional success mean decreased success in love?

Check out my last Road to Mrs. post here.