He is your proud, black, urban man with all those subversive traits that are irresistible to many women and deeply threatening to white men. Last winter he brought another baby father, Victor, to talk to me about his children for a book I am writing. There was, said a weary Victor, the problem of the new black woman who no longer indulges men like him: "They're changing, man. Three strikes and you're out. They want their BMW man who will come home bringing flowers, a happy-ever-after life. Most black men can't provide this.

I had been with my partner for six years when she announced, abruptly, that it was over. I remember she was crying. I was not: I was too stunned. It was as if, in the rulebook of how to end a relationship, she had torn out the last chapter. Disagreements, rows, eating meals in silence, sleeping in separate rooms: these things were all missing from our end sequence. So, at 52, I found myself unexpectedly single. As well as the pain of the breakup, I was also scared about single life.

Qualitative interviews were conducted in as part of the Pathways to Marriage study. The authors analyzed the data in a collaborative fashion and utilized content analyses to explore the relationships in the data which were derived from qualitative interviews with the men. Recommendations for future research are discussed. Furthermore, 7 out of 10 Black women are unmarried and 3 out of 10 may never marry Banks, Thus, the disproportionate number of Black women who are single has been well-documented.

In its upper stories, the Flex bathhouse in Cleveland feels like a squash club for backslapping businessmen. There's a large gym with free weights and exercise machines on the third floor. In the common area, on the main floor, men in towels lounge on couches and watch CNN on big-screen TV's. In the basement, the mood is different: the TV's are tuned to porn, and the dimly lighted hallways buzz with sexual energy.