But if black women are going to defy the statistics, they need to start being more realistic. Holding out for the perfect man, someone who is intellectual but not nerdy—cool but not arrogant—impeccably dressed but not effeminate—not a player but with just the right amount of edge—is useless. Smart can go with a little nerdy. Artsy can be accompanied by off-beat. Ambitious and focused may mean less than a social butterfly. Yes, there was that one guy in law school who was easily 6’5’’, a Rhodes Scholar anda rapper, with a baby face to top things off. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but please!

And let’s be fair. We expect men to resist what society tells them about ideals when it comes to us—God, help the brother who admits a preference for skin or hair displayed on every magazine cover; or the arrogant fool who holds out for his own Clair Huxtable, not acknowledging that The Cosby Showwas fiction. We’re justifiably upset when unrealistic standards are imposed on us, but many of us don’t seem to give black men any breaks in return when it comes to the superficial.

I was lucky enough to meet my beautiful, hilarious and unfailingly confident boyfriend two weeks after arriving to D.C. to begin my legal career. (By lucky, I mean I tracked him down in a Giant parking lot, tooting my horn to get his attention and asking if he was new in the neighborhood or needed a ride.) Jason works for a nonprofit. He drives a rattling, rimless Mazda. He has a particular pair of pants that were cuffed too ambitiously by his tailor, and he still wears them to work with determination because he paid for them. He has long dreads that see neither a twist nor a drop of beeswax in between the days I style them. If a tuft of hair escapes a lock in the middle of his forehead and I don’t see him for two days, it sits front and center for meetings and happy hours and pictures.

That half an inch of sock peeking out between his pants and shoes when he takes a long stride and that rebellious tuft of hair might have led many of my cohorts to let him walk out of the grocery store without a second look.

The point is simple. Given the numeric and historical facts, those of us who do seek to have relationships with black men of similar circumstances might need to open up a little. That doesn’t mean giving up on attraction. Attraction cannot be faked or forced. But we must start to question our assumptions about what our ideal really is. If a guy with a tentative smile and an awkward two-step could still get a dance (before he made the cover of every magazine in the country), more black women might just find a relationship they could believe in.

Jeneé Desmond-Harris is a graduate of Howard University and Harvard Law School and lives in Washington, D.C. Her previous work includes an analysis of the career choices of black Harvard Law graduates. She can be reached at jdesmondharris@gmail.com .

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