Attention all single brides, I had the pleasure of speaking with the founder of the Single Wives Club, Koereyelle DuBose about what this organization is all about. I was very eager to know what a single wife was, and to find out exactly what this club represents and how they help and mentor single women into 'wifey-material.' DuBose had a lot to say about making this society of women exclusive, and how her members are growing and achieving the necessary skills of being good women and future wives.
S: Okay, well first and foremost can you tell me what is the Mission of the Single Wives Club?
K: The mission of the Single Wives Club is to prepare women to become wives, nurture femininity, and protect family. With that, we are an education and empowerment organization that inspires single ladies to become better women before becoming wives. So we are all about self-development, self-awareness, and self-improvement and really becoming who you want to be with. So it’s not just “Get married” there are skills you need to have to be a good wife. And it’s definitely not matchmaking, or a dating agency type of thing. It’s about becoming better so you can start attracting better.
S: Wow, that’s very powerful and interesting. What kind of woman is the ideal Single Wife member: Is she married, dating or engaged?
K: Well my definition of single is unmarried. So you can be at whatever stage of your singleness that you are in. You are welcome to become a member if you are fresh out of a relationship, dating someone serious, picking out your ring or got your ring—whatever stage you are in, if you are not married then you are eligible for membership to become a member of the single wives club. If you are a married woman we have another organization called the Wives Society, and it is basically a big sister organization to the Single Wives Society, which is full of happily married women so they mentor us each month. So that’s a great organization for married women to be apart of because they’re mentoring us, but they’re also learning a lot from each other too. So we definitely have something for all women.
S: Can you explain the intake process for becoming a member and why you've decided to make it so exclusive?
K: Well the first part is, we do membership intake every month for 10 days. So from the 10th through the 20th of every month, that’s when applications are available online. It’s not as exclusive because we just started last February, so this definitely didn’t start as a membership organization or even a movement or anything. It was really just me and my girlfriends trying to become better and figure out what we needed to do. In-home parties turned into workshops and workshops turned into events, and events turned into more events, then membership and that’s how we got where we are today. I have members all over, I mean L.A., Chicago, almost every state and then I have one in Canada. So I’m excited about my international connection. We’re having fun but we’re actually doing work. It’s open to all women who are interested, as long as they meet the criteria of our applications, which is really a social media review—you know that tells us a lot about their character and the type of woman that you are. What you’re putting out there and your images. And being single and not being married. Other than those two things that’s how we say yay or nay to membership.
S: Okay! Thank you for explaining that to us. So what is the success rate for your members? Have most of your members gotten married since they've joined? Or have most of your members found success in dating/finding themselves?
K: I would definitely say it’s a little bit of both, only because you can’t rate everyone the same way. I have a background in education so I know rating, as a whole is the worst thing that we can do, because we’re rating every single child no matter what they do and where they come from. So if I were to measure success strictly on who got married and who has a ring and whose in a relationship, then I would be doing a crazy disservice to all the other women who have grown so much and become such better people. And that is what I would say determines success.
If you come to me and you just got out of a relationship, an abusive relationship or a toxic relationship, I don’t expect for you to be married in 6 months or even a year. You might not be in a place where you are comfortable entertaining a relationship, and you might have some other stuff that you need to work on. So for me to judge your success, I would say “Well what type of people are you entertaining now as oppose to before you joined?’ ‘’How is your thinking? What are your thoughts and your goals? Are you organizing your life? Have you grown as a woman?” We are doing way more than talking about relationships, we are talking about finances, spirituality… We are meditating. We are doing everything, so it’s not just ‘whose in a relationship.’
But of course I do always ask that question so; we do have 3 members who have gotten married and 3 who are currently engaged. One just got engaged 2 weeks ago so our membership is pretty good, we just started membership last year so within less than 2 years to have 3 married and 3 engaged—I think is awesome.
S: No, yes that is great
K: We have a lot of other women who are not there yet but have still come such a long way, so I hate to only talk about the ones who are married and engaged. Because so many of our members are awesome in other areas too.
S: So to wrap things up, can you share the top 3 things you think every woman should consider before getting married?
K: Okay top 3! I would say Number #1 is ‘Fall in love with yourself first.’ By that I mean, not the cliché “I like the way I look.” Have something about you that you are so confident about that is your wow-factor, your it-factor, and your thing that is like “I got this I’m unstoppable and can’t nobody do what I can do!” So just have that one thing that you completely love about yourself. We are so hard on ourselves and we have these strict timelines of “At this point I’m supposed to do this, and this point I’m supposed to do this.” Just finding that “one thing” to be comfortable and confident in, to be your guiding light, because there are so many obstacles, not just in love but also in life that will come along. But if you have that something that you can hold on to—you know that could probably get you through sometimes.
Number #2: 'Be Real.’ Get to the point where you are able to critically look at yourself and not just others. It’s very easy for us to tell our girlfriends or our enemies and celebrities about what they should be doing, but we don’t very often do that for ourselves. We don’t ever really take a step back and say, “Let me look at myself. What can I improve on? What things can I learn? What can I do to better myself?” So definitely being real with yourself and agreeing to be real with yourself. I believe in a relationship you expect for your partner to be real with you, so it is going to be a rude awakening if they are telling you all these things that you need to work on and your like ‘No.’ You save yourself some trouble if you can just learn to be real with yourself beforehand.
Number #3: ‘Don’t settle.’ Don’t settle for anything. Figure out what it is you want out of life, not just out of love. But figure out what it is that you want before you meet him. Because I think the biggest mistake that any woman could make is to loose themselves as soon as they find somebody. If you figure out what your passion is and purpose is, before then, even if you haven’t made all your dreams come true. If you know what it is in your life that you’re supposed to do, then I think that you are less likely to loose yourself when you enter a relationship. Because you already have that ‘something’ that is anchoring you down and that is something to look forward too, and that you’re building aside from just feeding your life into this relationship.
S: I think that’s a great top 3. I think #3 should be #1. (Laughs)
K: (Laughs) that was in no order! They are all important.
S: Can women of all ages be apart of this group?
K: Surprisingly enough, my members are between 34-42. You wouldn’t guess that, and I wouldn’t! All of this is not what I would have expected. When I started—I am 29 now, I was 26 and my girlfriends and I who are also around the same age, were the original single wives. So I would expect those would be the type of women we were thinking. But so many of my members are divorced women. They feel like their clock is just running out and they want to know ‘What can we do?’ and ‘How can we learn from these mistakes?’ They’re the ones who are like, “I thought I had it figured out, but now I’m at the point where I need some outside help.” And it takes us a lot of time to get to that point, so when you think of it in that way, it’s not surprising that a lot of women are older. But like I said we are talking about everything from fitness to finance, getting your credit together, and even meal planning. Everything. So no matter how old you are you can learn something. No matter if you want to be in a relationship tomorrow, or next year, or never—if you are still in denial about it you can still become better you can still always afford to learn something new. So we definitely have something for everybody!
Are you a Single Wife? Let us know your thoughts about how you plan to face or are facing this transition from Ms. to Mrs. To know more about the Single Wives Club and how to register to become a member Click here.
Curated by our Editorial Intern, Starr Davis, who currently studies Creative Writing at City College of New York. Keep up with Starr’s work by following her on Twitter here: @Metaphorqueen_
