The Risks of Dating or Marrying Someone who Appears to have Potential

There are some people in our society today who are encouraging women especially, African American women to marry men who seems to have the potential for success in the hopes that these men will improve themselves academically and financially throughout the years. Educated African American women who are unable to find equally educated men are sometimes given this advice. Some people feel a need to give these women this form of advice because statistic shows that 70% of  Black women in their 20s in this country are single. However, some men may be given this advice too. There are several risk factors associated with this type of advice. While some men or women who seemed to have the potential of success worked hard and become successful in their chosen careers, there are others who have no intention of improving their lives and settled for less than enough.

Risk Factors

• You can only change yourself and trying to instill ambition into someone who does not see a need to improve himself or herself is futile. Marrying such a person can caused financial strain on the family because they cannot pay their portion of the bills.
• If you marry someone who appeared to have potential to improve his or her life and during the marriage that person remains the same month after month and year after year, this pattern can cause lots of stress in the marriage. This situation can be very stressful because you will be faced with the fact that you are married to someone you had no intention of spending the rest of your life with.
• Some of these men or women may lie and make promises that they have no intention of keeping just to stay in the marriage. They may promise their spouse that they would go to school or that they would change jobs; however, none of their promises ever become reality.
• Some of these people who seemed to have potential will be satisfied with working menial jobs for the rest of their lives.
• Others may be happy with not working or doing anything to improve themselves: Life with these people can be very challenging.

How to Prevent Yourself from Marrying the Wrong Person

• Do your research on the person you intend to marry: Talk to family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors.
• Let him or her explain to you his or her life's goals and specific plans on accomplishing those goals.
• Observe carefully: Is he or she really working on his or her life goals.
• Is he or she truthful or do you catch him or her telling lies frequently?
• Does he or she follow through on planned events?
• Is he or she willing to not take failure as an option?
• Is self improvement important to him or her?
• Is he or she committed to accomplish his or her goals?
• Is he or she willing to sacrifce immediate pleasures for future successes?
• Does he or she display good morals?
• Does he or she has a positive mindset?

At the end of the day, it is your life; so, you decide whether or not you want to take the risks of dating or marrying someone who seems to have the potential to be successful. If you choose to do so the least you can do for yourself is to do your homework well on that person. You may find the prevention methods above very useful in helping you choose the right person for you: You should be able to answer "yes" to all the questions if you are using them to help you decide on who is right for you. Wishing you success in finding the right person for you.