let's talk about it

had a few conversations about relationships these last two days, two with men and one with a woman. the two men are single. let's hope they didn't just tell me that to get into my self-indulged panties. and the woman is happily committed and has been for some time. each conversation led me to the same conclusion - that absolutely nothing is conclusive when the main ingredient is emotion.

conversation 1. monogamy!! my ears are already burning. we spoke about the probability of monogamy at this age and at this stage.  age meaning early - mid 20s and the stage meaning TRANSITION. first job, last year of undergrad or no job, sh.t is always changing at this time.  we've all heard of the double standard right? if a woman cheats on a man - that shouldn't f.cking happen. but a man is likely to cheat on you - so get that pint of haagen daz ready.  why should we have to prepare for a man to f.ck up? why can't we expect that he's going to remain faithful to one woman? well, maybe the reason isn't as coldhearted as we think.  growing up, men and women have been conditioned to do very different things and play very different roles.  there's an age old saying that mothers raise their daughters but take care of their sons. from day 1, i've been taking care of other people. by the time i was 12, i was in the kitchen, i was babysitting a newborn, braiding my cousins' hair, learning how to do laundry, manage a checkbook and somehow manage the social life we desperately want as teenyboppers. my brother on the other hand? it still has not been determined if he knows how to wash a dish or separate delicates from bedding, mind you i'm sure he has at least two degrees by now. education and intelligence aren't related like we are. anyway, men have been conditioned to acquire all the panties they can in a lifetime. from their fathers, to their uncles, to the men in the barbershop, they are trained to lust until love is the only option.  before they go to college, their given condoms and bad advice. 'don't get a girlfriend, wrap it up, and don't, don't, don't eat p.ssy.' complete morons. but when women go to college as bright eyed girls, we're told to keep up our reputation and our panties, no creeping, and find your husband. complete morons. how the hell am i gonna find my husband if he's busy snatching panties? but nonetheless, we listen to these rules and it sucks because there's no meeting in the middle.  the power of the mind rules everything we do. get in someone's head and they'll do the work for you, no matter how dumb the work is.  so when it comes to monogamy, women are competing with years of conditioning in the male mind that tells him monogamy doesn't matter. i don't care how good your sex is, a lifetime of foolish advice is gonna win, at least for now.  and if he cheats, it may not mean that he loves you any less. he probably wasn't even thinking about you when the infidelity went down.  and i know it doesn't ease the pain. but his appetite for new goodies has absolutely nothing to do with you and it never has. so stop beating yourself up. blame the guys in the barbershop.

i believe that if i love someone, i have to be willing to work around the mentality that he's been raised with. not saying, i have to put up with his lies or his betrayal [because i haven't] but i have to understand where he's coming from. why? because there are things that i do that he feels are completely unnecessary, even borderline foolish, but he just chalks it up to me being me and he doesn't try to rationalize it.  now granted the things we are conditioned to do, do not violate the terms of agreement in our relationship. maybe i do take two hours in the bathroom and maybe i scrapbook when i'm bored and maybe i cook cupcakes for my friends' birthdays but i never said i wouldn't do those things when we got together. but you, my man agreed to remain monogamous but now i hear you're f.cking so and so from up the street.  so what's the remedy? maybe i shouldn't take you seriously until you can teach yourself that what you've been taught is not conducive to a healthy, monogamous relationship that can and should lead to marriage, if that's what you're looking for.  so that's what i mean about working around the mentality, taking it slow until he catches up. because i've been conditioned to love one man, at least at a time, for my entire life.  now he has to realize that everything he's learned doesn't have to be the only thing he's learned.  monogamy is a habit that can be practiced once's he ready.  but for now, he's simply not ready.

conversation 2. broken hearts and what we do to avoid them. i'm the girl that will delete your number if i don't feel like we're making good use of it.  so that when you eventually do hit me up, i will be pleasantly surprised but also reminded that you are too inconsistent to be taken seriously. it's a proven method to maintain the balance between heart and mind. so, in talking with mr. anonymous, he told me that women are so guarded that we will only 'match' a man.  we will give him what he gives us.  so if he texts me, then i'll text him back but if he doesn't, i'll pass on being vulnerable.  i don't know if this is the majority of women or the minority but he got me there because i'm definitely guilty of it.  i will meet you halfway, to at least be polite but if i like you, which is rare, i might step it up. but let's not get too crazy if i don't know you like that. but then i asked him, aren't guys guarded? prior to this conversation, i thought that guys had their walls up ALL the time, like fort knox.  but mr. anonymous informed me that i had it all f.cked up.  guys PUT up their guard once they recognize they like you. which makes sense, why put the guard up if you don't give a f.ck about 99% of girls that come your way? ok mr. anonymous won that round.  but what he so clearly lost was the war with betrayal. somebody broke his heart and my guess is it didn't end so well.  not to say that i haven't had my heart broken, but the pain no longer resonates on my face. i can't say the same for mr. anonymous.  because men have been conditioned to do whatever they want, they never really grasped the point that women can do the same things. hence why when a man is cheated on, he thinks his grief is somehow deeper than ours. absolutely egotistical.  since women are designed to expect fault in our male counterparts, our betrayal is not usually laced with shock. one up for the women.

conversation 3. be vulnerable. ex-squeeze-me? i have the habit of dating friends. we're not going to discuss if that's a good or a bad thing but it's my thing. or it was my thing.  shacking up in that comfort zone means that i don't know how to date.  liking someone off of few interactions is like a foreign language to me - i don't get it and i'm certainly not going to learn overnight.  the pros to dating a friend is that you already invest in one another on a consistent level. he'll call or text, and y'all will hang out so when you start taking things to an intimate level, that's consistency will still be there because that's what he's been doing. there are no surprises. he called me when i wasn't giving it up, so he'll probably call even more now that he's had a taste.  there's no second guessing, there's no sitting by the phone. there's no wondering if he likes me and how much because he already does. i like the safety net. it allows me to fall in a controlled environment and if the relationship doesn't work out, there is a comfort in knowing that he loved you.  it doesn't make the pain easier, but it does increase its worth.  now creating a habit with a completely new guy, hoping that it takes off and that you become consistent pillars in each others lives? that already sounds suspect. will it really happen? will you see enough in me and vice versa to inspire this idea that i want you in my life a little bit more than the day before? who knows?  and that fear of the unknown can be crippling. so anonymous homegirl thinks i'm a punk. she's probably right. she told me that building a relationship from the ground up is the same as building a friendship. which i completely agree with. the only thing different between friendships and relationships is the lack of orgasms. however, when you're making a friend, there should be no ulterior motive. when trying to build a relationship [using that term very loosely] there is an ulterior motive, sh.t there's plenty of ulterior motives, i want to get in your pants! with all those motives lingering in the air, every moment is calculated and the sincerity of the conversation will be compromised at one point. so how do you know that the emotions you two are trying to sort out are genuine? you don't. anonymous homegirl says, 'take the risk.' i say, 'that's a big risk to take.'

all in all, no one has this relationship thing figured out. all we do know is how we feel. the question is if we're going to act on those feelings and potentially find something great or find something we wish we didn't.  how will you know from a few text messages if you've met your potential husband or wife? you won't. so if i had to give advice, which i usually don't, i would say, kiss him/her, hold him/her, touch him/her, do whatever it is that you have to do to find out if you can stand to live with him/her or if you can't stand to live without him/her. good luck?