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“In Love with a Boss Lady” (February 4, 2025)

By Omar Tyree

Ambitions, expectations, and discontent mixed with a loss of trust and faith has killed the relationship tolerance of many African American women, enough to place their stress-worked Black men on ice. Seemingly forever. Because she can do bad or good by herself now. So… where does that leave us Black men and the kids?

It’s a new day now, where everyone wants what they want and will separate in a heartbeat if they can’t have it. As the saying goes, “Too many Indians wanna be the chief.” Or something like that. The perspective always changes depending on the speaker. But now every speaker wants to speak. Every driver wants to drive. Every creator wants to create. And every leader wants to lead.

That’s exactly where the problem lies. Everyone can’t do everything at the same time. Four different people can’t drive the same car unless they take turns. But who will drive first, and who will be expected to drive the longest? Who will pay for the gas? And who will fix the flat tires? That’s how complicated the simplest decisions can become in a challenged relationship.

So, if my lady wants to be a boss, and she already shows the characteristics of it, then what’s my role to be?

Can we both be bosses? Does that work? Or will I be forced to tone down my manhood to become more agreeable and negotiable for my boss woman? Does that work? Are all men built with the same level of sociability, or are some men gifted with the right temperament to “get along” where other are not?

Furthermore, will every woman respect a man who is willing to submit to her ideas of equality, particularly if she has never really seen a man do it? Maybe that equilibrium of power in the relationship is a goal of hers, to see if she can actually mold a man into the character who fits her dreams. You know, the vision of the perfect man that she’s always wanted. Or close enough.

But what’s a man to say about that? Does he want to be molded? Would he resist? What would his resistance look like? Random meanness? Physical intimidation? Degradement? Infidelity? Anything to prove that he’s still a man. Whatever that means to him. Because men weren’t all built in the same fire. They have different temperaments, thresholds of pain, and dos and don’ts that were learned in their upbringings.

For instance, young men who were raised by fathers tend to emulate many characteristics of their old man. So, if the old man would only trust and submit to a submissive woman who respected him unconditionally in the 1970s, 60s and 50s, then how is junior planning to deal with a boss lady who can’t even say the word submit in year 2025?

Will that attitude work? Or will adaptations be necessary for both the man and the woman to survive this new era? And I repeat, these adaptations are needed for both the man and the woman. Because a goal-oriented woman who is denied her dreams—for whatever reason—can serve to wreck an entire household with her discontent.

There’s another saying that goes, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” where a first-generation boss lady could unwittingly ruin herself and everyone around her by pushing and shoving into a space of heightened failures and frustrations. Well, failure and frustrations are the realities of life that men deal with every day. You’re not always gong to be successful at what you want to do in life. So, you deal with it and keep it moving as guys like to say.

But as these young boss ladies become more obsessed with winning the gender / power battle against the world, her Black man has now become more of an adversary than a partner. That’s when she no longer feels like submitting to him, while fighting the whole institution and establishment of dominant manhood.

She is now sick of it! Tired of it! Done with it! And can’t stand bowing down to these simple-minded men. So… in that situation, what is her man supposed to do? Does he think he’s going to change the institution of men for his wife or girlfriend, and everyone is going to line right up for her rule? Hell, he’s still a man himself who wants a woman and not a She-Hulk. (If you don’t know the comic book character look it up.) So, now he’s conflicted with how to deal with her.

And what we end up with is a challenged union where both the man and woman need to communicate what they are doing, and how they both feel about it. Every relationship needs to do that, but a relationship with a boss lady needs it even more. Why? Because that role of the woman has not served well for dominant men, unless he has a secured comfort in exactly what they are they doing. And that communication needs to be respectful, where the woman shows that appreciates that man for allowing her an opportunity to be the woman she wants to be without her belittling him with her elevated money, power and status.

Does he often feel like he’s her servant when he opens a door for her? Does he feel like a five-year-old child when she gets upsets and unleashes on him verbally? Does he feel like he’s constantly waiting for her standalone decisions that he has little or no impact on? What woman believes this behavior is desirable to a man?

Then, as your boss lady uses up her energy and focus to fight the gender battle power in corporate America or wherever, she may come home worn out, four out of five days a week, and may not feel up to allowing her man to express himself intimately. You know, she’s tired.

“Don’t you see me going to work every day to make these big bucks? What’s wrong with you, man? Open your eyes! You ain’t getting none tonight. I got a a big project due tomorrow that I’ve been working on all week. You know that.”

No disrespect to a hard-working boss lady, but not allowing your man to express himself until you want to, will become another problem for a man who has a high libido, which dominant men tend to have. Hell, a less dominant man may rub her feet, cook her dinner, and wait for her to let him know when she’s ready. And if she finds that man and likes him, she better hold on tight and love him hard.

However, far too many young women have not learned or been taught how to respect that man, who is willing to submit to her, because she’s never seen it, and her mother never had it. So, she doesn’t know what it’s supposed to flow like, she just knows that she wants it, and will break up with him if she doesn’t get it. Breaking up has become the norm now from young women who are tired of everything. Yet… they still seek out men to date and be with because they are women who are biologically driven to procreate just like men are.

And yes, just like we have dominant men, who born and raised that way, we have dominant women who were born and raised to take charge as well. I know that fact very personally because I had a dominant mother. Born and raised in West Philadelphia as the oldest of eight children with four younger brothers, my mother Renee didn’t have a choice. She was born into a boss position in the family as the oldest of the brood, and she hung around her two male cousins, Billy and Sammie, who were oldest children in their house. And both of these cousins were rough, dominant men, who hung out with another West Philadelphia man named Robert “Bobby” Tyree, who was the oldest in his house.

Attracted to his handsome masculinity, my moms got pregnant by my pops, who had dropped out of Overbrook High and ended up with a heroin problem after his younger brother Gary died in a military experiment. So, moms never married my pops. Instead, after graduating third in her class from West Philadelphia High School, dropped the baby boy off with grandmom, grandpop, and the sisters, brothers and cousins at the big house, and she attended Temple University, graduating from the School of Pharmacy in 1974, with her proud family and her hardheaded, 5-year-old boy right there to celebrate with her as the first college grad in the family. My mother.

But here’s the significance facts of Renee’s story and mine. My mother was born in 1950, which made her a teenager in the 1960s, where most girls knew better than to challenge the wildness of men, especially in a tough territorial city like Philadelphia in the 1960s. Not only that, my mother was used to being around hardcore men and preferred them, while not attracted to anyone who couldn’t pass the tough guy test with her younger brothers or cousins. And my pops,  Robert Tyree, passed that test with flying colors and left my mother with a hard rock son to raise.

With the warrior blood and genetic temperament of “Bobby”—as everyone called him—I was not an easy boy to deal with. So, when my mother brought her own house at age 26 as a single Black mom in the 1970s, instead of her saying, “I can do bad or good by myself,” my mother still wanted to be married to a man and raise a family. She still wanted and needed a strong man for herself and a father figure for her very masculine son. So, she went out and found that man.

Melvin Alston Sr. was another dominant West Philly man who had graduated from the same Overbrook High School that my father Robert had dropped out of. Melvin was also 6’4’ and two-hundred and thirty pounds to my father’s 6’1” and two hundred. And neither one of these brothers would back down from a challenge. However, my mother made more money than both of them.

Nevertheless, Melvin told my mother from Day 1, “I’m not living in a woman’s house.” So, he bought his own house in the fabulous Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods of Mt. Airy, where Black folks had moved on up like The Jefferson show for better living and peace of mind in the 1960s and 70s, during a period called “integration” followed by “white flight” to the suburbs. And we rented out my mother’s house to collect more income.

I moved to Mt. Airy with my moms and step pops in 1978 and was placed in Catholic School in the fourth grade to strategically calm down my rugged West Philadelphia attitude with the help of a serious-minded man who could intimidate physically, mentally, and verbally when he needed to help raise me right. And I am continuously thankful for it.

Now we’re in a new era where a boss lady like my mother may not have the same respect, upbringing or logic to understand what is needed more than her personal feelings or desires in order to create a situation of stability for herself and her children. My mother then had two more boys with my stepfather, who all became attracted to dominant women, because we were used to it. Yet, our mother never dominated our father, who has NOT HAVING IT! Therefore, all three of her sons did what they were supposed to do. All three of them graduated from high school and college with no criminal records or jail time.

But here we are in a new era now where young Black women want what they want over EVERYTHING, to the point of breaking up their young families. So, as I now look at my two grown sons, who are both childless, I’m scared to death at what situation they may land in with the wrong young woman who doesn’t know HOW to allow a young man to be a man, while these women try their best to be bosses.

I don’t have all of the answers, and I am not a relationship guru. I’m just a brother who understands how to explain complicated things with words that make sense. And what I see right now is humans moving closer and closer to the animal kingdom, where men and women procreate and move on to allow the mother to raise the offspring with her own power, her own decisions, and her own logic, because she don’t want to be controlled by no man, and he doesn’t want to be controlled by no woman.

So, God help the next generation. Even when men have money now, you have young boss women lining up, not to be his wife or his mate forever, but just long enough to have a child or two, where she can be a boss with his money and not his presence because she don’t want to be under no man. Just listen to how young Black women talk about relationships today, and it will blow your mind.

I’ll finish this long and important blog article with a new saying, “God Bless the child who can find a mate who understands all of their wants and needs and are able to successfully negotiate them all to create a civil and satisfying union that can last a lifetime.”

Amen!

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991. 

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