When women find out I dated actor and advocate Lamman Rucker, they always ask why we aren’t together today. I think if we stayed in the relationship, we wouldn’t have chased our dreams. We would have chased each other. Lamman may not have moved to California to become a Hollywood heartthrob, and I would not have relocated overseas to host a television show. He wouldn’t have landed a television series, and I wouldn’t have given birth to a beautiful baby girl. Perhaps we ignited each other’s passions and pushed each other along the pathway to our divine destinies.
Our relationship wasn’t as glamorous as you might think. There wasn’t a paparazzi or limousine driver accompanying us on our first date. As a matter of fact, we both took a public bus to go to dinner at Max & Erma’s. He picked up the tab. I was a senior in high school, and he played basketball at a local university. Over the weeks and months, he hung out with my friends and met my family. One night, he dropped me off and then went out to a nightclub with my sister and her friends! I had a curfew and was underage. Sometimes I miss the innocence of my first relationships—no pressure to have sex and definitely no pressure to get married. We didn’t have a big blow up when we broke up. I went away to college, and he went away to California. Little did I know, years later we would meet again. I giggled a couple times through the interview. Although I had seen him over the years, I still pictured him as my high school sweetheart and prom date—not a grown man with a career and countless female fans.
Heather: This is so funny. I can’t take this interview seriously. I told my mom I saw you yesterday, and she was cracking up. OK, I’ll get it together. You know I write a singles column, so the first question everyone wants to know is, is Lamman Rucker single?
Lamman: (Smile) Uh, I’m not married.
Heather: Right.
Lamman: (Laughs)
Heather: Come on Lamman, don’t give me a hard time. Do you want to get married? Not to me. Just in general. (Smile)
Lamman: I think one of the components of ultimate fulfillment is partnership. Things aren’t nearly as fun without someone to share it with. I believe if you can have a great partner—a friend, someone you can have a mutual passion with, all the challenges that you might go through in the process of finding that love is worth it.
Heather: Do you find that you’re dating with a purpose versus just hanging out with someone?
Lamman: As you mature, you have new goals—grown ass man goals. Naturally, as your goals and aspirations change, the whole formula changes. It’s not necessarily that I’m looking for a wife, but I am open to finding an incredible woman and realizing that it’s not only that I care about her and that she cares about me, but we want to invest in each other. Is this a woman that I love having around, but hate not having her around?
Heather: That would be Mrs. Rucker. So, what type of woman do you love having around?
Lamman: I narrowed it down to four things—purity, passion, peace and power. So I want a woman with purity of spirit, passion for life, peace if mind and power within.
Heather: That’s pretty broad.
Lamman: I want a woman who has a pure spirit. She has a beauty within and does things from a pure place. That’s where you see what type of person she is. It’s a matter of attitude. Is she happy? My wife wants to be happy and live a joyous life, a joyous existence. That’s the kind of person I want to be around. That’s infectious. It affects every moment, from the moment you wake up to every moment in the day. No one wants to be around someone who is negative and pessimistic.
Heather: Agreed. What type of woman was I? What do you remember about our relationship?
Lamman: We had a great time. We were friends. I think one of the best things I remember about it was just the way we talked. We communicated effectively and enjoyed each other’s company. It wasn’t anything that was really weird. It wasn’t very long, but we had a great time. We had a lot of fun when we hung out. Those are things that are applicable today. Hopefully, it was something that moving forward you could say that was a good example of someone I spent some good times with and we were good to each other as opposed to people who go through life and damage each other.
Heather: Right. I tease you, but I have nothing but good things to say about you.
Lamman: Right, that’s what peace and power is about. We had peace of mind and self-confidence. It wasn’t about being insecure about a lot of different things. And power is God. God works through all of us. People that are in touch with God, people who have that light, are also very attractive to me.
Heather: So sweet. You set a high bar . Great seeing you and looking forward to that wedding invite (laugh).
Remembering our time together reminds me to never abandon the basics of dating. Lamman and I created a strong foundation of friendship, so when we went our separate ways, we weren’t left with feelings of bitterness and anger. Instead, we were still smiling.
Hey BMWK Fam–What do you think makes a strong relationship foundation?