Blue Collar Men Love Me

I have concluded that I’m not exactly a white-collar man’s ideal woman. I am too much of a free-spirit with my thoughts. I don’t have the mind of a Stepford Wife. Smiling every moment of every day at everything a man does isn’t exactly my personality. I’m not cold as ice nor even lukewarm, but I’m not a robot woman.

I have concluded that blue-collar men can tell that I’m not robotic Betty and somehow want to be very friendly with me. A man is a man, right? Well, I don’t know about that. There’s something very unattractive to me when I see a guy in a tshirt that looks like it’s the “work” tshirt, pants a little shaggy and it’s not because he’s a 20something hip-hop poser, dirty fingernails, and “work” boots giving me a long glance while smiling with just a touch of dirt on his face. I’m thinking if I would want to see someone dressed like that every day. I know that there are some who can change faster than Superman with their appearances, but there’s something very irritating to me about the dirty look.

What I Learned About Men, Love, and Facebook

Since I joined Facebook last year, I have learned so much about men that I know from my real life and from men that I only know from my Facebook life. If you’ve ever gotten hooked on Facebook games, then you know how half your friend list can be composed of people you’ve never met and will probably never met outside of the world fo Facebook. With that being said, I have discovered that men can hurt emotionally just as much as women. Now, I know that there are some will may not agree with my opinion of men actually having emotions when it comes to love, but I have read my share of whining from men lately about love.

Recently, a Facebook friend posted that he was tired of his mother getting on his case about finding a woman.  He stated that he had lost count of the number of times his mother asked him about when was he going to get marriage and have kids? He did not understand why she bringing up that topic since he wasn’t even 30 years old yet. I commented that it’s better to wait until he feel that he has found the right person in his life for him. Rushing to find a life partner will only result in a temporary partner who will eventually make you miserable and it will take a lot of money and years to make that nightmare some call spouse go away if love did not bring the two of you together in the first place. It is best to be single and happy instead of settling with any woman just to please others even if others is your mother. The woman a man chooses to be his wife will also be a woman that will be brought into his mother’s life so men need to choose like a wise man when deciding to look for a spouse. No one should pressure or be pressured to find a mate unless they are only wanting a short-term beginner marriage. 

Another Facebook friend of mine has been struggling with a relationship trouble that he felt could alter the idea of making his mate his wife. He asked a very good question which was why do the ones you love most hurt you the most? After I thought about the question for a little while I decided to respond when I felt that I had a reply for him during his time of grieving about his relationship with this woman. I told him that the reason why it hurts so bad is that he was “in love” and the person he was dating probably only “liked” him. There is a different of being madly in love with someone and liking someone. There are relationships all the time between people with one being “in love” and the other “in like.” It’s easier to hurt someone you like versus someone you’re in love with.

One of my other Facebook friends have been going on for over a month about how he can’t find a good woman in his geographical area. He had been praying online for a woman. Yes, he’s posted along the lines of asking God for a mate. My response was that you can pray to God for a mate but if the timing is not right, it’s not right.  Why rush the search for finding a wife when rushing leaves room for making quick decisions. Choosing a significant other shouldn’t be rushed unless you really don’t care who you bring into your life just as long as you have a spouse.

I’ve only listed three examples here, but over the last two months I’ve read my share of men sobbing on Facebook about not being able to find a woman or how some woman has hurt them. I know that there is always another side to every story, but for once I have to say that I have not been hearing only women going on and on about dealt a bad hand in love. Some men can love, some men have confessed their love for all of their friends to see, and some men’s words can just let you know how much they are secretly crying about what they have loved and lost or what who they are still waiting for to enter into their lives.

Why is it Alicia Versus Fantasia?

I just don’t get it. Today, I clicked onto my favorite websites to see what’s happening online. Up pops Alicia Keys versus Fantasia Barrino article from The Root website.

Are these two women really that different? Both women were involved with married men. Alicia Keys just happened to had gotten  pregnant by the married man she was dating and ended up being married to this man after his divorce finalized. Time will tell about how Alicia’s marriage turns out, but the odds are not favorable. I’m hoping I will be wrong so that I can use her marriage as an example one day for when someone ask if I’ve ever heard of a situation like hers surviving past five years. Fantasia has been rumored to be involved with a married man who is now in family court regarding a divorce hearing. No one truly knows the story behind that outside of God, Fantasia, the married man, and his wife. Neither situation is better than the other. Both of these singers met their men before the men were legally divorced. These are both two very talented women, they both are both successful, and they both went after what they wanted which were men who happened to have been married. If the tables were turned and it was two successful men who began dating married women, then there wouldn’t even be a story to tell. Somehow, it seems to be alright in the media’s eyes for men to date married women and if a story does develop, it is the married women that are made out to be some type of wayward vixens who preyed on the men.

If anything, I question why is it that the media is going after these two women? Women in the public eye have been linked to married men for years. Even one of my heroes, Barbara Walters, admitted to an affair with a married man. Did the black media think that money, power, and fame would keep successful black women from doing what so many of their white counterparts already do which is to look past the marital status of their love interest?

Does Cheating Mean You Don’t Love Your Significant Other?

A friend once told me that because he cheats on his girlfriend doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love her. I didn’t understand what he meant by that, because all I was hearing was him coming up with an excuse for cheating on a woman. The more I have thought about it over the years, I realized that he was with a woman who he was not truly in love with from the beginning. He had chosen to settle with a woman out of fear of being alone and finding a woman who will love him for the true person he was seemed almost impossible. There are a lot of people just like my friend and his new wife.

The reason for partnering varies among couples, but the need to feel that they are not alone is the same.  Some people date just to not be sitting home alone every day. Some people date, because they don’t want to sleep alone. Some people date, because they want to make an ex jealous. Some people date just so they can find someone to share their bills. Some people date to use the other person for networking. Some people get married because it’s the next thing that you do after dating for a while and everyone was expecting them to marry. Some people marry for status. Some people get married to cover up the feelings they still have for a past lover. Some people get married because a baby is on the way. Some  people get married for financial gains. Some people get married because everyone else is doing it. Some people get married because they feel that if they don’t do it now, then they will not have another opportunity come their way. Some people get married because they want children. Some people get married to anger other people. Some people get married so that it can help how they are perceived in other business and personal relationships. In the mix of all of these scenarios, they are not with each other for love. One person may be in love while the other person has an alternative motive for the relationship which results in that person being unable to be faithful and completely committed to the relationship. Now what do you do when you have ended up with someone who is not committed to you? You have to learn to get over it and come to terms with who you are mated with or you have to decided if you can do better alone or by finding someone who will be a better match for you. Do not let a significant other dictate your happiness and emotional state.

June Cleaver Was a Character

I have had a growing desire to tell women that June Cleaver was really a character and not a real woman of the modern world. Every single day I’m finding myself listening to some woman go on and on about how men just don’t get it, how unappreciated they are by their male companions, and how much they have sacrificed for their man. It’s as if every woman in this country just discovered that men are not perfect and at least half, if not more, cheat on their girlfriends and wives. I guess no one learned from the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings. 

Just the other day, I was at my neighborhood pool with my child when I could hear a conversation in coming from behind me. There was a woman reading a letter she had written to her husband. She was reading the letter to another woman for approval, I guess. This woman went on about how her husband’s cheating hurt her and she couldn’t believe he did that to their kids. I wanted to turn around and tell her that while she was so worried about how her husband’s cheating was hurting their kids, she didn’t realize that her letter reading could possibly be hurting the mind of my three year old, and the only reason I may not be explaining why her husband’s cheating hurt her kids to my three year was because my kid decided to take a run for the water. Seriously, have the neighborhood pools become the vocal outlet of household dirty laundry? 

When will the modern day woman learn that we are not living in the times of “Leave It to Beaver?” In a lot of homes today, both the man and woman work to pay for overpriced junk that will be used by their kids. The kids are watched by the television and meals are prepared by food delivery services and the microwave. Kids gets homework help from Google and chat rooms. Kids don’t go out and play with friends anymore. Kids meet online to socialize. The average wife’s job today do not include getting up cooking breakfast, shopping for what she’s going to fix for dinner, cleaning all day, and fixing dinner for when her man gets home. The girls night out is not a Tupperware party. It’s a girls’ night out at a club, bar, or learning how to do the moves of “Dancing With the Stars.”  Men do not congregate at each other’s homes weekly to play poker. They congregate on web sites pretending to be single and recently separated when their wives and girlfriends are asleep or while she’s sitting in front of her laptop trying to learn how to pole dance or glued to Facebook.  .   

It is as if every woman thinks that her man could never turn out to be a cheater, liar, codependent, selfish, egotistical, and the list could go on.  Every man has the capability to cheat on his woman. Jesus Christ may be the only man who had the mighty will to refuse temptation of a woman, or at least to say he was the only possibly straight man who refused the temptation a woman.  At some point in most men’s lives, they have succumbed to at least one woman while dating or during marriage. Men are very simple beings. As women we know their weaknesses, what they are capable of, and we still seemed to be shocked and surprised when we find out that our man has succumbed to temptation. Some of the greatest men of our time have had a history of being less than faithful. Some of the greatest leaders of all time have fallen prey to women and I don’t mean just Bill Clinton, Spitzer, and Sanford. Some of the greatest religious leaders had lovers outside of their wives such as Jim Haggert, Jimmy Swaggert, and Jesse Jackson. Some of the greatest athletes had trouble keeping it in the pants such as Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, and Wilt Chamberlain. Some of the best singers were known as a “ladies’ man” such as Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, and Usher Raymond.  

The world tuned in to watch the Tiger Woods saga unfold as if it was a story that had never been told before. The news stations and magazines flooded Tiger Woods stories in our faces for months. I’m sure Elin Woods was quite surprised to find out about her husband’s extra activities, but should she had really been all that surprised by him being an athlete? Would she had been less surprised if he had been a football or basketball player? Athletes have had notorious reputations for being cheaters and buying women material things just to keep them quiet from spilling all the goods to a tabloid for years. Was Tiger really suppose to be that different from any other man who has women flocking to him everywhere he went and stroking his ego? 

I once had a male friend tell me why he cheated on his live-in girlfriend. He explained that having sex with another woman had nothing to do with his feelings for his girlfriend. He stated that sex is physical like exercising is physical. It’s not that one treadmill is better than the other when he wanted to use one for getting his heart pumping and to help him relax for the rest of his day. He stated that what makes the difference is the fact that he can share his every thought and everyday life with one woman and that he could not do with every woman he encountered, because it can only be one woman that knows everything that a person could possibly know about him. It was the emotional bond of the relationship that he considered scared versus the physical bond. I never thought about it like that. It made sense in a way, but that’s because he’s a man looking at things from a man’s perspective. 

I had a good female friend tell me once how much her husband cheated on her. She went on about how she confronted her husband and they went to counseling. Next thing I knew, she went out of town for a little while and came back home to find out her husband had done the same thing again. The only thing that changed was the other woman’s name.  Each time she has cried and listened to the “never again” story. I call it a story, because that’s all it is. It is the story of “I wish.” The man’s line is “I wish I will not have done it” and the woman’s line is “I wish you didn’t do it.” In reality, the man is really thinking “I wish I wouldn’t had been so stupid and gotten caught.” While the woman is really thinking “I wish I could believe him and know that this will not happen again.” 

Women look at things differently which is the reason why women do not accept the fact that men are different and view sex differently from men. Men see sex as something that can be intimate with someone they deeply love and they can enjoy sex as something just as recreational as having a beer with a complete stranger.  Women have lived an illusion from reading too many romance novels and watching too many shows from the 1950s. The more women come to terms with reality, the less anger and depression women will endure over a man.  

Life is way too short to spend each day wondering what you did wrong or how could it possibly happen to you. It’s not you. It’s him. It’s nothing personal that you have done and even if you put it on him like a porn star, he may still go out and try to find the next new triple x just because he actually thinks that he will be able to get away with it without anyone knowing. If women like Halle Berry, Elin Woods, Sandra Bullock, and Elizabeth Edwards have had a hard road with men, it could happen to any woman. As you can tell none of these women’s men got away with their cheating which comes to my point. Men cheat and because they cheat, it decreases their mental awareness that they will always eventually get caught. It’s up to the woman to decide will she accept that her man is one who falls short of being a perfect man or will decide that she will not be made a fool of for the sake of a man’s career or an image to portray for other people. In today’s world even June Cleaver would had been cheated on at least once during her first, second, or third marriage.