By the time you’re reading this, I could be married.
Last month, my boyfriend proposed to me before the Bears vs. Packers game. On February 14 — this coming Saturday — the bar where we had our third date will have ministers on hand to wed couples with valid marriage licenses. And my mother has already given him her blessing. In fact, she asks about her future son-in-law every day.
What a wild couple of months for a girl who’d sworn off love for the rest of her life.
I’m a walking stereotype: The writer in the big city who chose career over romance. Not to mention, I’m from the South, where the majority of my cousins are married with children, leaving me the only unwed woman my age. My 98-year-old grandmother prays that she’ll live long enough to see me married with children. Last Christmas, she took matters into her own hands and arranged for a young man to come over to the house for us to chat. (After she forced me to hand over my phone number, I left that man on read.)
For a long time, I was content with being single. I’m surrounded by the love of my chosen family. I have many queer, trans, and gender non-conforming friends whom I consider the loves of my life. Before I signed my book deal, my trans husband and I considered getting married in the backyard of their BedStuy townhome because I needed health insurance, in addition to being platonic soulmates. This behavior is nothing new: If you ask my mother, I’ve always had a poly, queer romantic, and sexual undertone. One of the first calls she ever received about my behavior in Christian preschool was that I was allowing both boy and girl students to play doctor on me. As expected, I followed this up with a marriage to the only other Black boy in my kindergarten class during recess.
Beforehand, I pledged that every single one of my bridesmaids would be my wife.
And, while I’ve clearly always been a lovergirl, some types of companionship have apparently fallen out of style.
In October, British writer Chanté Joseph started a ferocious online debate when she wrote, in Vogue, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”
Instantly, Joseph’s article went viral.
“Where being single was once a cautionary tale (you’ll end up a “spinster” with loads of cats), it is now becoming a desirable and coveted status — another nail in the coffin of a centuries-old heterosexual fairytale that never really benefited women to begin with,” Joseph wrote.
As Canadian-American author and writer David Brooks said in the New York Times, we are living through the Great Detachment. The sharp decline in marriage rates, community engagement, religious involvement, and child-bearing has resulted in a nation of Americans focused on the accumulation of wealth and career advancement.
“We’re seeing a systematic weakening of the loving bonds that hold society together — for community, for nation, for friends and on and on,” Brooks wrote.
I’d argue it’s even worse for Black women, the group responsible for holding the social contract of America together. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Black women suffered the largest employment losses in 2025. Black women’s unemployment rate is now equivalent to white women’s unemployment during The Great Recession. And Black women bear the brunt of this administration’s harsh economic and anti-DEI policies. These are not the Obama years of millennial optimism; we are experiencing constant attacks of massive state sanctioned oppression that makes people like me and my loved ones scared for our fucking lives.
Black journalists are being arrested by federal law enforcement officials. The majority of publications that employed Black critics, writers, and fellow journalists are being gutted with each passing media merger. Times are tough for every American. Trust in institutions has plummeted. And when you don’t trust your government, your media, or the community around you, love is a much taller ask. This mess of tariffs, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and erosion of basic human rights aren’t particularly romantic, to say the least.
The last thing any woman wants to do right now is sit across the table from a man who heavily endorses the action of this presidential administration — let alone tell her friends about it. Sure, there are Certified Good Boys like Glen Powell — or the DoorDash driver in Chicago who’s picking up shifts after his regular work day in order to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend. But generally, love and fear cannot co-exist in the same environment. Love is not the absence of fear, but the acknowledgement of it. The willingness to do what is right, even in the face of terror.
What’s difficult is that — now more than ever — Americans are yearning for love. A radical, revolutionary type of love, like the women who are providing mutual aid and support to their neighbors in Minneapolis, including ones that are donating their own breastmilk to babies whose mothers were taken by ICE. Women who are holding those accountable for the horrific actions taken against them by men in power, like Jeffrey Epstein.
Luckily, all you have to do is look around, and you’ll see this kind of love; it is the lifeblood of every social movement in history, as bell hooks tells us.
It’s clearly visible in the work of Zohran Mamdani, the underdog who made the world fall in love with his Democratic socialist agenda as mayor of New York City. His emotional interviews with constituents — singing with children, never forgetting he works for them — are moving because they radiate love.
All politicians are humans with flaws, but Mamdani preaches a refreshing love-centered ethos to New Yorkers and the world at large. In his inauguration speech, he spoke about the warmth of collectivism, in opposition to the rugged individualism that divides us, and most importantly, he thanked his wife Rama for showing him “the beauty in everyday things.” There’s a softness, but not a weakness. As Mamdani told President Trump, “To get to any of us, you have to get through all of us.”
I see this love in Bad Bunny, who implemented bell hooks’ principles in his Super Bowl LX halftime show performance, which broadcast his vision of love of the Americas to over 128 million viewers. He invited people from all backgrounds, genders, ages, and ethnicities to represent the message on a football he showed a camera: “Together we are America.” We even watched a couple get married on the field. A week earlier, he’d said on the Grammy Awards stage: “The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.”
Pop culture shows us we are desperately in need of companionship right now. We long for love and intimacy. Or else we wouldn’t all be binging “Heated Rivalry.”
Just look at Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson. Thompson has been relishing in his girlfriend’s soul food classics of fried catfish and spaghetti, BBQ chicken thighs, and baked beans. For many of us, who grew up knowing the hardships Megan has endured during her meteoric rise in the music industry, it feels good to see her be loved by her boyfriend and his family.
We are all deserving of this kind of love, so why is there so much shame around wanting to have it?
I too want a revolutionary type of love. I want a love with a clear and distinct purpose. I want a love that inspires change.
Love is not only a practice or theory, but theory in practice. I’ve always believed in the ethic of love, though I have not always been the beneficiary of it.
But I am now.
His love shows up in both grandiose and mundane ways, like waking up early to make coffee for me before a heavy work day or rubbing medicine onto my hands because of a carpal tunnel flare. He took a 6 a.m. flight on Christmas morning after working an overnight shift so that we could spend our first holiday season together. His love shows up in FaceTime conversations with my little brother about dating and relationships. And the way he makes space to talk to my mother without me ever asking him to. I’ve never met a man or a partner who loves all versions of me, including going to the altar and establishing a relationship with my ancestors. He loves me in all ways, always.
When we first made things official, one of his friends texted him: “You need to be more Anthony Mackie in London, yo ass became Klay Thompson in Texas.”
To be fair, I’ve made him my signature mac and cheese, baked beans, collard greens, cornbread, and spaghetti. In return, my boyfriend has been adamant about Texasifying himself to fit in with my mother’s side of the family. He accepted her invitation to attend a trail ride in Central Texas, which was music to her ears, because she wanted to get him a cowboy hat for Christmas. I’m ready to bring him home to Dallas, so I can take him on a tour of my childhood favorites like the State Fair of Texas. We’ll make a trip to Sunny South Dallas to stop at Two Podners for a loaded BBQ stuffed potato with piles of smoked turkey breast, butter, sour cream, green onion, and cheese, doused in their house BBQ sauce with a sweet tea on the side. Selfishly, I want to take him to SXSW or ACL, so I can eat at Canje, Sawyer & Co, and Sam’s Chicken & Ribs. It feels good to have a boyfriend that wants to learn about Black Texan culture, out of genuine love for me.
In the past, I’ve had partners mock the very traditions that I hold dear to my heart.
Now, I can tell all of them to kiss my Texas ass.
Shortly after my boyfriend asked me to marry him, I saw a Threads post that read, “A cowboys fan marrying a Bears fan sounds like the perfect marriage match for me.” I couldn’t agree more. Plus, his father was signed to the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s as a free agent, so it’s not even like I’m cheating on America’s team. It’s more like I’m bringing him back home with me by way of Chicago.
So as it turns out, no, having a boyfriend doesn’t have to be embarrassing. Having one that acknowledges your fears and still shows up with compassion is just about the most radical love we can experience in 2026.