Demetria Lucas is the Relationships Editor at Essence Magazine. She is also the author of A Belle in Brooklyn: Your Go-To Girl for Advice on Living Your Best Single Life (Atria). Demetria offers My Savvy Sisters an inside peek into her personal life and the best relationship advice her mother gave her concerning men.
1) What fascinates you the most about living in New York?
The overwhelming opportunities. It’s impossible to get bored. It’s also very much a hustler’s city. Everyone here is so driven and ambitious. That energy is contagious! With so many people, there are lots of options [for dating.] It’s great when you can think of available men in terms of abundance.
2) What is the difference between dating in the south and dating in New York?
There aren’t really that many. Men are men are men. That doesn’t change much based on geography. One thing that stands out though: in the south, there’s not as much public interaction. As soon as you step outside in New York, you have the opportunity to meet people- walking down the street, on the subway, waiting on the corner. People everywhere means possibilities everywhere.
3) What lessons did your Mom teach you about dating?
Her best lesson– and she started telling me this when I was 10– “Don’t act like the wife if you are not the wife.” She wanted to make sure I knew that I knew unprotected sex, cooking and cleaning, splitting bills, living with a guy were wife duties and should not be done by girlfriends or dates.
I took it a step further and made it, “Don’t act like the girlfriend, if you are not the girlfriend.” That means, if we aren’t committed, I’m free to do as I please and see who ever else I please.If you want me to yourself, you have to offer a commitment.
4) Do you ever feel like you’re behind the curve when it comes to relationships?
No. Never felt that way. I’m pretty secure with myself and I determine what I want based on.. Well, what I want, not by what other people have or think I should have. I’m more than content. I’m happy. I have a very full life.
5) What are some of the things you do to make yourself feel good?
My favorite single girl habit is sitting on the kitchen counter in hot pants and knee socks eating crackers with jelly and reading women’s magazines while I blast Kanye albums. Nothing beats it.
6) What are some of the things you celebrate in life?
Everything– big or small. Every time anything goes the way I want, I make a big deal out of it. I do the same for what happens with my friends. For instance, every Friday I go to dinner to celebrate the end of the week and the upcoming weekend. Sometimes it’s me and my girls, sometimes it’s just me. Either way I have fun.
7) If you could fast forward to any time in the future, at what age and projected stage in life would you most like to hurry up and get to?
I wouldn’t. I’m good with today, flaws and all.
8) How have your friendships encouraged your relationship status? Do you find that most of your friends are single too, or the opposite?
I’m not that fluid that my friends’ status determines my own. That said, of my four closest friends, three out of five of us are in relationships. Go figure.
9) A word for women who are discontent with being single?
Why?
For more of Demetria’s musings on love, life and living the single life in New York, you may visit her blog A Belle in Brooklyn.
