My Midlife Reckoning on Marriage, Desperation, and Choosing Life Anyway

Welcome to Sacred Musings, a space where I share reflections from the heart on love, life, caregiving, and the lessons that shape us into who we are. My hope is that these words bring comfort, perspective, and inspiration to anyone walking their own path of healing and growth.

I was watching a YouTube video essay about the manosphere and Derek Jackson about the kind of influence a polished, attractive man can have, especially on Black women who are tired, hopeful, and hungry for something real. The essay wasn’t just “tea.” It was a mirror.

It got me thinking about how easily people can be taken, not because they’re stupid, but because they’re human. Because we want to believe. Because we’ve been carrying too much alone for too long. Because a man who looks good and speaks with conviction can sound like salvation.

And then I thought about my own life. The truth I don’t usually say out loud. In my youth, I don’t think I would have ever gotten married or had children if I had waited for a Black American man to meet me where I was. If I’m being honest, it might not have happened at all. I might have ended up a single woman with no kids, no family in that particular way. Not because I wasn’t worthy, but because I wasn’t positioned in a world where love was likely to find me.

I was desperate in the way young women can be desperate, desperate to be chosen, loved, taken care of. And I married an African man who was desperate too, desperate for a green card. That is a hard sentence to write, but it’s the cleanest version of the truth: two people trying to survive different kinds of longing. When I look back, I realize something else: I always positioned myself in communities where marriage was the expectation. Because I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I thought, maybe marriage is what you do. Maybe marriage is purpose. Maybe marriage is stability. Maybe marriage is how a girl becomes a woman.

Why I chose the Muslim community. I placed myself in the Muslim community because marriage had a timeline there. It was assumed. Encouraged. Expected. There was structure. There were rules. There was a path. And I followed it. I got married. I stayed married for years, five or six, if I count it honestly. But by the time I approached 30, I realized I didn’t want my life to look like that. I left around 25, and when I did, I went straight back to college. Not because I had a master plan. Because I didn’t know what else to do. I started collecting degrees the way some people collect proof they’re moving forward: associate degrees, more education, more credentials, like if I kept building something, I wouldn’t have to feel what I didn’t want to feel.

My first husband was African American, but fully indoctrinated into Islamic culture. And we never had children not because I didn’t want them, but because he couldn’t. I won’t share the details. That’s his privacy. But it mattered. It shaped everything after.  “Self-improvement” didn’t bring love the way I thought it would. After the divorce, I did what women are told to do: glow up. I tried to dress better. Improve my skin. Take care of my teeth. Become “the version” that supposedly attracts the kind of love that stays. The kind of love you can rest in. And still nothing.

Nothing happened until, once again, I positioned myself in a situation where marriage was the expectation. And that’s when I “magnetized” my son’s father. Of course he wanted marriage. He wanted citizenship. I wanted love and safety. It was familiar: two different desperations bargaining in the same room. And after that? Another husband. Another mess. More evidence that what I was calling “love” was often an arrangement built on hunger. The little girl expectation vs. the grown woman reality.

I don’t think it’s going to happen for me, the fairytale version. And I’m not saying that in a bitter way. I’m saying it as a woman approaching 50 who has learned to stop negotiating with reality. It’s okay. But it’s still something I expected for myself when I was a little girl.

That’s the part people don’t respect enough: you can be “over it” and still grieve it. You can accept what is and still mourn what you thought would be. Why relationships with “my culture” felt impossible. Here’s the part I’ve been turning over in my mind: maybe one of the reasons I haven’t been able to have the kind of relationship I wanted with someone from my culture, someone who feels like home is because I was trying too hard.

Desperation has a scent. And people can feel it when you’re performing for approval. When you’re doing things to make someone like you. When you’re trying to earn compliments you should receive freely. You want to be told you’re pretty, you’re good, you’re worthy, you’re special so you overgive, overexplain, overfunction, overextend. And the worst part? Some people withhold exactly what you crave because they can tell you crave it. They weaponize your hope. They let you audition. They let you exhaust yourself. That is one of the cruelest social dynamics on earth: being punished for wanting love too loudly. What I’ve learned after nearly 50 years. I’ve learned a lot in these years. Not from books. From living. And what I’ve come to is this: The best thing for me is to do what is life-affirming. To take care of myself. To work. To work out. To save money. To make money. To buy my properties. To build and maintain my business. To put myself in spaces where my skills, services, talents, and passion are needed. That’s it. Not because I’m giving up. But because I’m choosing life. I’m choosing the things that move. The things that build. The things that strengthen. The things that don’t require me to beg anyone to see me. A softer ending than a fairytale but a truer one.

Some people will read this and want to fix it. To offer hope. To say, “Don’t say that you’ll find love!” Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But I’m done making my life depend on a maybe. I want a life that is already full, already stable, already mine whether romance shows up or not. Because if love comes, I want it to meet me in a life I’ve made sacred. Not in a life built around waiting. Not in a life built around begging. Not in a life built around being chosen. I’m choosing myself. And that is the most life-affirming thing I’ve ever done.

By Kimberly!