Many things have changed for The Ellises since they filmed Season 2 of “Black Love Doc.” When they appeared on “Black Love Doc,” they were a family of four living in an apartment in Brooklyn, and now they’re a family of six living in Atlanta in a big, beautiful home still loving each other, still sharing their lives with each other and their followers that have grown by the millions. Devale is now an actor on the hit Tyler Perry shows “Sistas” and “Zatima,” and Khadeen is in her fitness era shutting down New York Fashion Week with Actively Black. They’re also now the hosts of the Webby Award-winning podcast “Dead Ass with K&D” and authors of the New York Times Best-Selling authors of their book, “We Over Me: The Counterintuitive Approach to Getting Everything You Want From Your Relationship.” After a five-year hiatus from Black Love Summit, Khadeen and Devale are back and sharing their growth and lessons in life and love with Black Love!
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Yasmine Jameelah: How does it feel to return to Black Love Summit all these years later?
Khadeen Ellis: Listen, Black Love has such a special place in our hearts. I know I can speak for Devale as well that anytime Codie and Tommy call, we’re going to be here. This is literally a space where I feel like we’re able to love on each other in real-time, see familiar faces, and see people who are about the same things that you’re about. You hear so many times married couples feel like they don’t have support when they have single friends or people who are not on the same path as them. So to be in an arena with people who are willing to learn, who are willing to share, it’s really an amazing space just to get that energy that you sometimes need, that recharge to want to love on your person a little more.
Devale Ellis: For me, it’s a space that goes against what’s going on in social media and society today, it’s all women and men.Women versus men, men versus women. But when you look at Black Love, here are people working together to dispel those myths right? Because if you just look at social media, they’ll have you believing that Black men and Black women don’t love each other. But Black men and Black women are getting married at a higher rate than ever before, even higher than it was in the 70’s. So this whole idea that Black men and Black women don’t get along is just fake. So I love Black Love because it just dispels those rumors. So, I love being a part of it. I love sharing my life, and I just love doing it in real-time.
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YJ: You two just spoke on designing the life that you want on stage at Black Love Summit 2023. Your family is a great part of your village and today there are so many couples who talk about how they don’t have support, how have you managed to design a life that includes the support of your family?
DE: I was very deliberate about making sure that we had a village because a lot of it falls on the Mom. And we discussed at 18 what our goals were. We both had professional goals, and I didn’t want her professional goals to go by the wayside. So I was deliberate about building a relationship with my mother in law, my father-in-law because I knew they would be the ones to help us the most. They’re both retired. Allow people to be around to help because you need help. If you want to have a family, you can’t do everything by yourself. Use discernment, get to know people, and build those relationships if you aren’t able to have family there, and don’t be afraid to say, hey, do you mind helping us out here?
KE: And we’ve even been deliberate about the extension of family, right? So very close friends, people who we’ve adopted like family to help with the boys or to just help with anything that we may need on a day-to-day basis. So building that level of trust and having that circle really close-knit on people who just love us and love our boys the same way as if they were their own is such a blessing that we don’t take for granted. Because we literally would not be able to do any of this without the help and support of a village. So we’re continuing to just love on those people, show appreciation, letting them know how much of an asset they are to us and our family. That’s also super important.
YJ: Your book “We Over Me” is filled with advice from your experiences of trial and error in marriage. Is there any advice that you would have given yourselves ten-fifteen years ago that you wish you had now as you’re learning and growing more about yourself?
DE: My biggest thing would be to don’t shame myself for having emotions or feeling ways about things. Being a man in society you’re taught your whole life, suck it up; you feel away, you feel disappointed, you feel scared you’re wrong for that. And I think a lot of my life has been driven with trying to avoid that feeling of emotion. And it actually makes you more emotional because now what you’re trying to do is avoid how you feel, and you shame yourself, and that becomes self-deprecating. And now you don’t feel confident. I feel like I would have had a lot more confidence in certain parts of my life if I didn’t care so much about what other people thoughts and how those thoughts affected my emotions.
KE: And I love how much you’ve opened up since then.
DE: I think it helps both of us. It helps our boys.
KE: Yeah, it sure does. I think the kids definitely attributed to that like, forcing us to do things that we didn’t even see before. For me. If I can think back to 10 or 15 years ago, I would tell myself not to subscribe to this timeline of life that I had in my mind of when certain things should take place. Because then it was kind of like a mind warp for me when things didn’t happen in those time frames, and I felt like I was just not successful. Or I would self-sabotage and say, well, maybe this is not for me because it hasn’t happened in this time frame. And then it just then drove me into a place of being inconsistent and kind of having one toe in and one toe out, where I feel like if I had just given myself a little bit more grace to say, Khadeen, this is going to happen when it’s supposed to happen, just keep working at it. There’s certain things in my life that I would have been farther along with at this point. So that’s advice I would give to myself, and that’s something I try to instill in my boys as well, too, is to do things at your own pace, learn at your own pace. All four boys are so different. So just meeting them where they are and then challenging them, but also nurturing them through the challenge to be their best selves and letting them know that greatness takes time. It takes work. Building work ethic is more important now than just whatever the goal is in the moment. It’s the consistency; it’s the habit. And since I kind of missed out on that step a little bit through.
DE: Life, we all did. It’s part of life.
KE: It’s something now we’re so deliberate about doing with our boys, instilling routine and structure and habits and discipline.
DE: Having children will really put the mirror up to you, because a lot of times you say to yourself, I don’t want my son to do that, so let me not do it. Or I see this attribute that he could potentially have. And then you check yourself, like, why have I been doing this my whole life? If I won’t accept this from my child, why am I accepting this from myself?
YJ: You two have been together since college, and not many people are able to navigate staying together past such a transitional time in their lives, and here you are still together, growing, and navigating life together. What advice do you have for couples that are trying to figure out, how can we do that? How can we stay together, get married, have kids, and accomplish huge goals?
KE: I think we have several pieces, but if I had to pick one, it would keep the conversations going the minute you stop talking or one stops talking. I think that’s a sure way to just never be in alignment with what your goals are. Devale and I, from the very beginning, spoke vocally about individual goals that we had. And then, as we dated and then we got together, we had goals for each other and for a family. And it’s amazing to see here we are — 21 years together, 13 married. And so many of those goals, dreams, and hopes, we’re living them today. Keep talking about it. Keep talking about what’s next? What’s your plan for tomorrow or next week or next month or next year or for the next five years? That’s super, super important to always be on the same page. And it only happens if you’re communicating.
DE: And I’ll say to piggyback off of that. Keep everybody else out your business. Don’t try to tailor make your relationship to anyone else’s expectations because you will fail 100% of the time. So find that partner, curate the life you want, and have fun doing it.
KE: And allow latitude for change because you would hope that someone at 17 is not the same person at 27 or 37.
DE: Facts.
KE: You change with the times, you change with the needs, and be receptive to your partner. Changing and growing because that’s what you want, as long as it’s in a healthy way that’s conducive to them and your marriage.
DE: And not just change, but evolution, because some change is not all good change.
Give each other latitude for evolution.
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