[AKA2D '91]

Juanita Bynum Interview w/Essence Magazine

Michelle Burford: In No More Sheets, you hit on two of the hottest topics for Black women: God and sex. Sisters responded by buying up your videos into the millions!

Juanita Bynum: And some of them literally run up to me and fall onto my chest in tears, thanking me. Angela Bassett came up to me and said,"I read your book three times, and it changed my life." Then I talked to Mary J. Blige on the phone, and she said No More Sheets turned her around.

Burford: I loved a point you made in your video: A woman who has slept with a lot of men has, in a spiritual sense, married each of those men. Then when the right man for her comes along, that woman has no emotional space for him.

Bynum: That’s one reason I’m not remarried to this day. People often ask me, "Do you want to marry again?" I tell them, "I’ll get married when I get single."

Burford: And how long does it take to get single after you’ve had a series of sexual relationships? >Bynum: That depends on how many relationships you’ve been in, and the depth and length of time of each. When a woman ends a relationship, she still carries the man’s residue, and she’s subconsciously still trying to please him. In a relationship I was in after my divorce, I found myself always washing the dishes right after I ate, because the man I’d been with previously wanted that. I was still under his influence. I wasn’t ready to date again because I wasn’t healed.

>Burford: Take me back to the time right after your marriage ended. What were you feeling? >Bynum: I felt like a failure as a woman. When you put together a home With your own hands, and then it comes apart, you ask yourself, What didn’t I do to make it work? Then you start feeling like you weren’t attractive or sexy enough. You think, maybe I didn’t have a good enough body. You go through all these head trips. But I’ve learned that after you’ve been hurt, you can’t just focus on your hurt you have to look at the lesson in it. When you baby-sit the hurt, you never learn the lesson. You have to say, "Okay, God, what is the message here?"

Burford: When did you do that? >Bynum: After my divorce. That’s when I started my relationship binge.Because I was hurting so badly, I was out to prove there wasn’t anything wrong with me. So instead of keeping my focus on the lesson, I detoured to one man after another. Burford: But exactly when did you sit with yourself and think about the lesson in your hurt? Bynum: After this so-called binge. Sometimes I would look back at some of the men I was with and say, "What in the world was I thinking?" It was crazy! What I finally realized was that an aura surrounds every woman who has been damaged. I had actually been attracting certain men. I had always wanted an executive, a businessman and a man of God to want me, and he wouldn’t. The only kind of brother who could bond with me was someone with a soul like mine: troubled, messed up and full of insecurities. As much as my heart wanted Mr. Got-It-Together, my spirit could only attract somebody who was where I was. I knew I had to work on myself. Now I don’t get play from hoodlums. And I no longer need a man who will buy me a new dress or furniture. I’ve got lamps. I’ve got a couch. I’ve got a stove. I don’t have to subject myself to a man’s disrespect simply because he bought me a living-room set.

Burford: A woman’s posture is completely different when she enters a relationship not needing money from a man. Bynum: And once you get past material things, you can go directly into a relationship saying, "I need a friend." We marry for a couch and we call sex love, but when the sex gets low and the couch gets old, we don’t have a friend. That’s why I don’t have the same criteria for a mate that I once had. I used to think a man had to throw a big rock on my finger. >Burford: That mentality hinders so many widows.

Bynum: It causes us to miss out on fulfilling relationships. What About the guy who works for Amtrak? He may not make much money, but he pays his bills on time and has excellent credit. He has integrity, he’s kind, and he knows how to be a friend. But sisters walk past that kind of man, because he isn’t a CEO. When you do that, it’s a sign that you’re not healed. A man is not less because he has worked at the steel mill for 20 years. Ain’t he still a good man? >Burford: But if you’re a wounded woman, you can’t even see that kind of man. You attract a man who’s willing to exploit your vulnerabilities.

Bynum: Yes. And a wounded woman also attracts a man who has not gotten himself together enough to be the best choice for anybody, but he knows that she can’t do any better. And because she has been hurt, she wants to be validated by a man. From the start, she sees things about him that she knows she doesn’t like, but she’s too needy to move on. His credit is shot, and he has no integrity, but in the eyes of a depressed and slapped-up woman, he’s a hero until the woman begins to heal and make better choices. That’s what happened to me.

Burford: You say that the amount of time it takes a woman to heal is connected with the length and depth of the relationship she has been in. During your series of relationships, how long did each usually last? >Bynum: From six months to a year. And at the time, many of my friends constantly told me, "You’ve got to forget your last relationship. You’ve got to move on and find the right one." That was such a wrong concept. What do you do with your emotions while you’re going from one person to the next? My friends treated my divorce like it was a car accident: After an accident, you have to get in the car and drive so you won’t fear driving. But that doesn’t work in relationships.

Burford: Racing into another relationship never solves anything. Bynum: It only camouflages the pain. At a glance, you look like you have a wonderful relationship, and you’re back in the swing of life. But if somebody looked at you on the inside, they’d say, "That girl is hurting."

Burford: So how do you know when you’re completely over a man? Bynum: Once nothing inside you aches when you think of him. You can even see him in the store and say, "How you doin’?" without feeling pain. Burford: Deep down, did you know you weren’t ready to date again after your divorce? Bynum: I knew. But I was afraid to be alone. If you took a poll across the nation, you might be surprised at how many women are afraid to be in a room by themselves or just sit alone.Burford: That’s because when you turn off the TV and send the children into another room, you have to face yourself and when you’ve never done that, it’s scary.

Bynum: We’re afraid of truth. And when sisters see brothers marrying White women, some of us feel an extra pressure to seek Black men’s acceptance. So if a brother comes along who doesn’t have his act together, we put up with him. Yet we don’t enter these relationships totally unaware of what we’re getting into. We’re just willing to keep the less desirable things in our blind spot. Then when the newness of a relationship wears off, what’s in our blind spot comes to the forefront. But it has always been there. And deep in our subconscious, we knew it from the beginning. Burford: But we choose to ignore it? Bynum: We do. We’re driven more by what we want than by what we need. Burford: And sometimes, we just feel desperate.

Bynum: Exactly. And I had to ask myself this question in one of my moments alone: What if it’s not meant for me to marry again? What would I do? And I’ve decided that staying single would be okay. I am already fulfilled. Burford: During your man binge, did you think you’d be unfulfilled if you weren’t in a relationship? Bynum: I didn’t know who I was. And when you don’t know who you are, you will join up with anybody.

Burford: Many sisters will read this story and say, "Stop the madness, Juanita sex with a lot of men is not a bad thing." What would you say to these women? Bynum: I’d ask each one of them this: Do you know who you are without a man? Sisters are seeking ecstasy through sex, which is why they have so many partners. They want an out-of-this-world experience. But they’re getting nothing but a fleshly experience.

Burford: And in relationships, two halves do not make a whole. To make things work, you have to come into a partnership knowing that the other person can never completely fulfill you. Bynum: That’s it! And sex with a lot of men is just a bad idea. You’re taking your emotions through unnecessary swings: You can’t have sex with someone without drawing your emotions into it. Physically, men are built as sexual projectors, where as women’s bodies are designed to receive. A man ejaculates; a woman carries that ejaculation.

Burford: So when you have sex with a man, what does he leave with you? Bynum: His world. His experience. His scars. And many men take advantage of the moment to have an ejaculation with no regard for what they’re leaving inside women. It’s rape of the soul. Burford: What does that mean for the sister who has slept with 30 men in the last five years? Bynum: Her soul is a highway, just a place for traffic. The walls of her spirit no longer have the strength to house a real relationship. I always tell myself, you can go ahead and have some sex but is it really worth the ten minutes Of ‘Ah, ah, ah? is the man really your destiny? When I break it down like that, the whole thing sounds weak. >Burford: And in these times, you also have to ask yourself whether the brother has AIDS.

Bynum: And will it be worth it to see him two years from now with his wife and kids, while you’re still with nobody? Uh, uh. Burford: You’ve said that part of the power in your message comes from living with integrity when you’re not in the pulpit. When it comes to men and sex, how do you maintain that integrity? Bynum: When I meet a guy who my spirit tells me isn’t right, I don’t date him. I say, "Honey, don’t waste your money on me. Bread and chicken are too expensive these days."

Burford: And do you tune out TV shows and movies that are filled with sex? Bynum: Oh, yes. Everything we do is a delayed result of what we’ve already done. If I watch a sexual movie, the images plant a seed in my mind that has a chance to stay there and grow.

Burford: What’s the end result of living outside of integrity for years? Bynum: Disaster. When you lack integrity, you are never in line with yourself. I believe I can come across with power as a preacher because I work to maintain my character when I’m not preaching. If you use your rent money to get your weave done, if you steal from the company you work for or if you always make excuses for being late, then you don’t have the strength to project when it’s time for your message to be heard. Burford: One last question: What are you passionate about? Bynum: I have a passion for compassion and it’s driven by where I’ve been. If I close my eyes right now, I can see myself in the snow, wearing a black $2 coat and tennis shoes with no socks, waiting to get my $76 in food stamps. I can see myself in the hospital after my nervous breakdown, crying and throwing myself against the walls of the padded cell they put me in. When I remember the process it took to get myself from there to where I am today and then I see a sister with no hope I’m driven to get to that sister. I believe that the pain in each of our pasts gives us an opportunity to help others. If I honestly tell somebody what has happened to me, then maybe that person will be transformed."If a man does his best, what else is there?" Peace & Love