Category Archives: breaking up

Ask A Very Smart Brotha: 180 Day Rule, Brownie Points & Stringing You Along

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***The Champ’s latest at Madame Noire takes questions about V-Day, the 90 day rule, and, well, that’s about it***

Nina: If a man tells a woman he only wants to be friends… Why does he still show interest?

DY: Because saying “I don’t want a relationship and I want to be friends” is usually manspeak for “I want to continue to hit it as long as I can without you hating me. And, if you catch feelings, I want to always be able to come back and say “But…I said I didn’t want a relationship”

Shaleith: Ok I have a question….why can’t someone see that squandering away their money on unnecessary things when they have bills to pay is madness?

DY: “Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why did Judas rat to Romans while Jesus slept?”

Candis: Why is it guys talk about doing something nice, like cook you dinner, or take you out. Then in the same breath say “and then screw your brains out” like that’s suppose to make me feel like a woman? Why do they mess up the vibe like that?

DY: Some guys suck at communication. And, when you suck at communication, you’re not very good at seduction. One thing you have to realize, though, is that for some women, hearing “I’m going to screw your brains out” turns them on even more. Perhaps that’s want he’s used to dealing with. Basically, it’s up to you to express to him that hearing things like that take you out of the mood. If you don’t tell him, how will he know?

Norca: I need a Valentine’s Day gift idea for my BF. He has everything already! Please help! Thanks!

DY: Experiences—tickets to a game, a personalized lap dance video, a weekend getaway, etc—never hurt. Neither does a steak and BJ.

Wanda: Steve Harvey suggests we make a man wait 6 months before giving him ‘the cookie’. Is a man going to wait that long, or is he just getting his cookies somewhere else while you make him wait? And is a woman who doesn’t make a man wait a keeper?

DY: I thought it was 90 days, not 180? Oh well. Anyway, if a guy really wants to be with you, it’s not going to matter how long he has to wait (or how quick it happens). Obviously, if you make someone wait 20 years (or give it up in 20 seconds), that’s probably not going to end well, but aside from staying away from extremes, there’s really no arbitrary set time on how long you should wait to sleep with a man.

The only clock you should be on is your own. Basically, ask yourself if you’re ready, and don’t do it unless you’re 100% sure your answer is yes.

Erica: Why do men want brownie points for what they as a MAN in the relationship are suppose to be doing in the first place? I understand appreciation but doing the bare minimum isn’t really doing anything at all.

DY: Doesn’t everyone strive for brownie points, though? Couldn’t you say the same thing about women who want praise for being independent? I agree that it’s annoying, but this isn’t a gender specific trait.

Read more at Madame Noire

Ask A Very Smart Brotha: We Just Found Out He Has Newborn Twins, Should I Try To Work It Out?

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Jazmine: I just found out that the person that I’ve been wanting to start a relationship with has NEWBORN TWINS! He claims that he didn’t even know and that the female lied and said she was pregnant by someone else. He wants to have a sit down and air it all out but my past relationships leave me hard to trust/believe him. Should I give him the opportunity to plead his case? He claims he loves me just as much as I love him but I’m guarding my heart with an iron fist. Suggestions???

DY: Your man’s name isn’t Tom Brady, is it? Anyway, it is possible that he was unaware of this situation until recently. In fact, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Still, you both need to take a big step back from this relationship—him because he needs to figure out how to feed two mouths, and you because nothing about “my new man has twin newborns by a different woman” is hot in the streets.

I mean, if the roles were reversed and you were knocked up with twins and didn’t know who the dad was, do you think he would stay?

Erica: I just got into a discussion about what marriage is suppose to mean and I want a guy’s take on it. I say: Love is not unconditional and that everyone has dealbreakers in which they will leave a relationship or marriage. Including weight gain. Others say: If you’re married, then the only dealbreaker should be don’t cheat and don’t abuse me.
What say you?

DY: I say the best relationships/marriages are when you find someone whose dealbreakers match yours.

Denise: At what age do men grow up ?

DY: The age we realize “continuing not to grow up” means “dammit, the pool of women available to me will continue to shrink until I grow up.” Some of us make that transition, and some don’t because their pool never shrinks and there’s no incentive to make the change.

Nicole: I am in school for my PhD., should settle for someone that does have the same education level that I have or do you think I should keep my options open. Last guy I was with worked in a grocery store and that didn’t work.

DY: Keep your options open, and date whoever makes you happy. Just because someone might not have been the ideal in your head doesn’t mean you’re “settling.” The only way you can settle is if you choose someone who doesn’t make you happy. Also, just because you don’t find someone else with a Ph.D doesn’t mean you have to date supermarket stockboys. There are in betweens, you know?

Read more at Madame Noire

ASK A VERY SMART BROTHA: HE PROPOSED BUT I NEVER GOT A RING

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Ok, I REALLY need help.

Rundown:

–BF and I have been dating for 7 years
–He proposed a year ago but never gave me a ring, so I’ve been waiting
–His car recently got repo’d for not paying tickets, so he had to pay $5k to get it all out. (Money was borrowed from aunt.)
–In April, I told him that he had until the end of the year to give me my ring and officially propose or I would leave. The other day, he told me he would miss that deadline since he paid so much to get his car out.

What should I do??? Help please!

Dear What Should I Do,

There are two separate things I want to address in your question. Neither of them directly answer your question, but you can find the answer to your question in both responses. (Trust me, it’ll make more sense once you read.)
1. Your situation is a perfect example of why age considerations are so important when asking and answering a question. While it may not seem “right” or “fair” to think about an adult’s age when giving them advice about dating and relationships—especially when much of the feelings and emotions that go along with this subject transcend age—it is practical.

Anyway, I’m bringing this up because my response to your question depends on your age. If you’re in your late 20s or above, I’d advise you to move on. Why? Well, if you are that age, then you were at least 21 when you two started dating. Basically, your relationship began while you were both adults, and it usually doesn’t take adults seven years to finally realize they want to marry someone. In fact, I’d argue that, for people in their late 20s to early 30s, after two years of dating, the likelihood of you actually getting married decrease with each year. A “engagement” after seven years seems more like a pressured response to an ultimatum (more on this later) more than a man who actually wants to be with a woman for the rest of his life.

If you two are young (25 or below), though—and the tone and content of this letter leads me to believe that you are—I’d be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in regards to his plans. Perhaps he does want to marry you, but doesn’t have the money or resources to do things the way he wants to. (Btw, if a car is repossessed, it’s because he wasn’t making car payments, not because of unpaid tickets.)

That being said, my spidey senses still tell me that regardless of your age, he just doesn’t seem to be all that into marrying you. Is that just cause to break up? I don’t know. But, I do know that if you want to be married, you’re going to have to find someone else

2. I want you—and everyone reading this—to repeat after me: Heart-related ultimatums are always terrible ideas.

ALWAYS!

Why? Well, while the heart-related ultimatum—what happens when one person threatens to leave someone unless they make a commitment to them—might get what the person wants (a commitment), it gets it for the wrong reason. Basically, if you want someone to commit to you, you should want them to want to commit. The heart-related ultimatum, though, forces someone to commit out of guilt or fear. So, even if you get the desired answer, you’re left with someone who only said they wanted to be with so you’d shut up and stop asking.

In summary, if you have to ask someone to commit to you, you have your answer even before they give theirs.

Read more at Madame Noire

Why You Shouldn’t Live Together Before Marriage

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Although I’m aware calling my knowledge “expertise” may not be applicable, the advice I give is derived from a combination of experience, education, and observation that helps me determine probabilities. For instance, if a woman asks whether she should stay with a man who has been cheating on her but swears he’s going to be faithful now, while it is possible that he may be telling the truth, experience, education, and observation has shown me that in most situations like this, the guy eventually reverts to his old ways. My advice just mirrors what I think is the most likely outcome.

I’m bringing this all up because there are dozens of different dating/relationship questions, theories, and concerns where there are no real right answers. While one side may seem more likely to occur, you can easily make the argument that the other side is in fact the right answer. Today’s topic—Why I believe people should wait until marriage before living together—is a perfect example.

You can just as easily craft a convincing pro pre-marriage cohabitation argument. If in a committed, monogamous, adult relationship, it may make more practical sense to live together. First is the obvious. Both parties will have the opportunity to save money. And, with your combined incomes, you may be able to afford a larger place and nicer things. Also, if you do plan on eventually getting married to each other, the pre-marriage cohabitation period can be a bit of a test run to see how things might be in the future. Plus, there are certain things you just won’t know about someone unless you live with them, and it’s better to learn “secrets” like “This bastard brushes his teeth like three times a week!” and “Damn, ever since she moved in, my bathroom smells like whiting.”

But, the convincing co-habitation argument fails to consider one of the die hard truths about relationships: most relationships end. When you’re not living together and the relationship ends, aside from deleting your own boo from your Facebook page, there’s really nothing else you have to do. But, cohabitation just makes things messier, more drawn out. Who stays and who moves out? Who keeps what furniture? Since you were splitting bills before, how is that going to be handled now? Also, as I learned, a post-cohabitation break-up ensures that you will have to continue seeing and interacting with each other for at least a few weeks while you figure everything out. When this happens, you’re not able to make the type of clean break necessary in order for a relationship to truly end, and this has a tendency to put you in a “are we or aren’t we?” limbo that ends up making things even worse.

Most importantly, with pre-marriage cohabitation, you’re committing yourself to husbandly and wifely duties without any type of husbandly and wifely commitment. Yes, this can happen even without living together, but when you are sharing the same space, that dynamic basically just creates itself. And, while doing this may seem cool in theory, ultimately one party (or both parties) will feel taken advantage of, and/or tire of “playing” married couple without actually being a married couple, and this can put another level of unnecessary strain on the relationship.

Read more at Madame Noire

The Past Is The Best Predictor of The Future. No Pluto.

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I was having a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who is struggling in her relationship. She was telling me that whole “potential” yada yada yada yada that so many women run when thinking about the men in their lives.

“If he’d just do better then we’d be good. But he flat out refuses to do the little things I ask him to do…I don’t know what to do. I love him and only want to be with him…but it’s just frustrating….MEN SUCK…”

After assuring her that men do not (all) indeed suck, I hit her with a bit of reality and a bit of indirect advice regarding her relationship and her man that I think is pretty doggone poignant:

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. You have to take folks as they are and be proud of them for making changes in the positive direction. Or roll out.

Now of course, she agreed with me in principle but didn’t get why it had to be so difficult. This man she’s been dating has been doing the same stuff for the entire seven months that they’d been dating and she’s still waiting on him to have one of those light-bulb moments where he realizes that if he doesn’t change he’ll lose her.

Except he has no incentive. Nothing that he’s doing or has done has indicated to her that anything would be any different. She just wants it to be and thinks that for her, he should make those changes. Put a pin in that, we’ll come back to that.

But the same goes for him. Nothing that has happened has indicated to him that she’s going to leave him or make him suffer any consequences. So they’re both relying on past behaviors to predict the future. For her, she just refuses to accept that he is who he is, and for him, he doesn’t believe that who he is will cause him any longterm suffering.

Impasse.

I do realize at this point that many women, and men for that matter, may think, why won’t he just “do right”? “Do right” is such a nebulous phrase and largely only involves actions men should be making in order to grow as people (?) and keep our women happy. I’ve got a whole theory and blog post about the concept of “do right” differences between men and women and the stakes involved. It’s coming.

I’m always amazed at how many women tell me that they can’t believe a man won’t just do better so that he doesn’t lose her. This isn’t intended to sound too trivializing, but I truly think that a lot of women overstate their own value to the men in their lives that the point these realizations arise. This man spent his entire life being who he is until she showed up and he’s supposed to see this particular woman and make every change she wants him to make? Come on. That’s unrealistic AND assumes that the changes she wants him to make are for him and not just to make her happy. Real change is personal, not just to keep a woman. I realize that, in general, women do a lot more compromising than men do. It’s true. Oh yeah, it’s true. However, you rarely hear women talking about needing to change. Just something to think about.

(Though the self-help industry is being kept afloat by somebody so I’m guessing maybe women are constantly going through “improvement”? That’s a question by the way.)

Anyway, once you realize that what somebody has always done is likely to be what they will always do short of some life-altering realizations, you learn that the ball is in your own court. Which is what I told my friend. He is who he is, either shut up about it or vote with your feet and leave him. I have no idea what she’s going to do, but she did walk away from that convo with some sort of resolve.

Of course, she could just resolve to continue to be upset. Her prerogative, but at least she realized the ball was in her court.

Bobby Brown.

Granted, as grown ups we all learn that compromise is the name of the game and some of us take longer to get to that point than others do – and I’m mostly talking about men – but compromise is an outcome, I do think that you have to take folks as they are if you chose to enter into cahoots with them. Of course, that’s not for the large scale problems like infidelity or pathological lying, but if you stay with folks at that point, then while it isn’t your fault if they cheat, it is your fault for staying with them knowing that they might.

Chuuch.

-VSB P aka PJANGO JACKSON aka MR. I DONT KNOW WHAT HE’S SAYING EITHER aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3

(A version of this post appeared on Guyspeak.com on January 5, 2013)