"Never!"
That's how Iyanla Vanzant interrupted Tyrese Gibson during her appearance on It's Not You, It's Men when he began to ask her if she would ever get married again.
"I would never, ever, ever," she said again, just in case Tyrese or his co-host, Rev. Run, didn't hear her right the first time. Vanzant, a life coach who guides other people through life's most pressing crises, said that she realized she's not willing to do things required of wives.
She'd much rather be someone's partner.
“You know what? I would not be a great wife based on the definitions and the standards of today. I'm a great partner because I see my partner as my equal," she said.
It sounds as if she's suggesting that in order to be someone's wife, you have to be submissive in some way. There's the idea that men like to have dominion over their wives, and it's a role that Vanzant is not interested in or supports. If so, it's nice that she realizes that's not an arrangement she wants to partake of.
She explained her views on how and why people pick the spouses they do.
"One of things that happens in our relationships is we either pick up somebody who needs our help or pick up somebody that can help us," she said. "Love and pure relationship and commitment can only exist among equals. 'Cause if I see you as less than, I can't commit. If I see you as more than, I can't commit. So today I'm looking for an equal. And I don't want to be a wife. I want to be a partner. Because wives have to do stuff that I'm not doing."
Here's what she says is the real purpose of the relationships in our lives: "Relationships are not where we go to have fun. Relationships are where we go to heal and where we go to learn. And who you're going to attract is the person that's going to bring to the forefront the thing you need to learn or heal."
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Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.