Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man

sex is not going to make him stay around-not for the right reasons, anyway.

And here’s the incredible thing about women I don’t quite understand: you know when a man is not feeling you yet you still give your all, you continue to try to make it work. Why play that game? Why not just weed out, up front, all the men you know are going to do nothing but cause you heartache and disappointment, and wait for the one who is going to do right by you? Please understand, he’s out there. There isn’t a man living who can do without a good woman. Most men are going to get married. One of them will marry you. A real man won’t be able to fulfill his destiny as a man without you. How else is he going to have kids? How will he continue his lineage? He wants that legacy; if a man can’t do anything else, he wants his name to live on. Even if his father wasn’t around, deep down he knows he can be the one to fix that-to break the cycle and start the tradition and be thought of as someone special to somebody. That’s why our parents were so giving and hardworking-so that we could have a better life than they had. I’m sure my mother and father are somewhere looking at me and saying, “That’s our son. We done good.”

I remember when they were living and we were sitting around the Thanksgiving table and I saw my father lean over and tap my mother on the shoulder and say, “Did you ever think one of our children would be on TV?”

“Not in a million years,” my mother said. “Ain’t God good?”

And my father said, “I guess He is.”

That’s all a man wants-to have someone be proud of him and to be proud of somebody. It’s critically important to a man. And women help bring that about. We can’t have babies without you, we can’t build families without you, we don’t get to be the man of the house without you, we don’t enjoy dreaming without you.

We cannot exist without you.

Granted, we are not taught this. No man sits his son down and says, “Son, you can’t truly live without a woman.” But a good man will profess to anyone listening that he can’t live without his woman. For sure, when my mother died, my father told me one day, “Boy, I figure I’ll just go on and get out of here now, because life without your mother-ain’t nothing here anymore. I always knew that life wasn’t nothing without her.”

Seeing how depressed he was, I’d tell him things to try to cheer him up even though he’d lost the love of his life-the woman he stayed married to for sixty-two years. I’d say, “Wynton just got here-he needs a grandfather,” and I’d take him up to see my son. He’d say, “I guess I can hang around for old shotgun a little while longer.” But as soon as he’d have a moment of quiet-some time to reflect-he’d go there again: “I wonder if the Lord will let me see her just one more time. I’m ready to see your mama, even if it’s just for one more time.”

Three years after my mother died, my father passed on. He didn’t die from any specific illness-cancer, a stroke, or a heart attack. He just coolly went to sleep one night, tired. His heart was broken, because he couldn’t go on without the woman who completed him.

The principles I’ve laid out here are the same ones I share with my daughters and my sons. My sons are not being encouraged to go out and “conquer” the opposite sex; instead, I’m talking to them about respecting the young women they date the same way they would expect another man to respect their sisters. I also talk to them about the effects sex can have on their lives and the lives of the girls they may decide to be with sexually-to understand that being thoughtless and careless about intercourse can have devastating consequences for everyone involved. Emotional, mental, and physical consequences. And, if she ends up pregnant, there will be lifelong consequences on their ability to live their best lives.

My girls are taught that they need to be very clear about what their standards and requirements are and hold the men they date to them. I tell them constantly, too, that they’ve got to be willing to lose in order to win-to be willing to walk away from the bad situation to get to the good one. I add that this is a very simple matter of mathematics: plug in the facts and see if this guy is living up to what you expect. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be treated like a queen. You deserve to be talked to with respect. You deserve to be taken around and presented with respect. You deserve to know what it feels like to feel special. “Don’t let anybody come along and treat you any other way,” I tell my daughters, “because you can always come over here and get special treatment from your father until you can find the man who can treat you the way I do.” And I seal that with the declaration that they absolutely will not find out any of that about a man if they sleep with him too soon. I’ve said elsewhere I’m not a relationship expert-that I’m an expert on how men think and I know this much to be true. When I and the men I know have been confronted by a woman who respected herself and held her future in such high regard that she made it clear that she deserved only the best and would settle for nothing less, we’ve had no choice but to take stock and treat her with due regard. She might not have been the one for us, in which case we moved on. But what we didn’t do after she made her demands clear is try to run our games on her, just kick it until Ms. Right did come along. How could we? She wouldn’t let us. Which means that ultimately, she had the power. And you do too.

For Ladies Only…

Five Steps to Turning Up the Heat with Your Man

1. Invite him somewhere tranquil to have a one-on-one talk-preferably where there is water. I find that I have the best conversations with my wife at the beach, where, if you look out as far as you can see, there is nothing but sand, which is the earth; ocean, which is water; and sky, which is the heavens. When those three things are present, you’re dealing only with God’s creations-and that’s got to be peaceful. Nobody is fighting at the beach or, say, at a tranquil place like Niagara Falls. Not near the beach? Go to a water fountain in a public park, or do something as quick and simple as inviting your man to a candlelit bath. All of these things will put him at ease, rather than announcing, “We need to talk!” or worse, trying to have a conversation about what you need sexually from him in the heat of a battle.

2. Pay a compliment before you offer up criticism. If you start by telling him what’s wrong, he’ll get too disappointed, angry, or embarrassed to hear you when you tell him what he’s doing right. So choose your words carefully; let him know what he is doing that brings you immense pleasure. He’ll appreciate the compliment and make the mental note to keep more of that coming.

3. Be specific. Tell him what you’d like to see more of in your relationship physically, mentally, and emotionally in order to reconnect in meaningful ways. Be sure to ask him what he would like more of, too, so that the conversation doesn’t end up being one-sided. After all, neither of you are perfect. Acknowledging that there are things you could be doing better, too, will help open him up to receiving your list of (gentle) demands.

4. Get confirmation from each other. This is a very valuable tool that helps you both be crystal clear on what it is each of you requires from the other. You might even start off the confirmations by saying, “Okay, I’m willing to wear lingerie to bed at least three nights a week; would you be willing to light candles and find some mood music before we touch?” or “I promise to be more attentive and spontaneous, and in exchange, you can leave the lights on when we get it on.”

5. Immediately put your promises into action. I mean head right into the bedroom/the backseat of the car/your mother’s laundry room and do what the two of you said you were going to do. Nothing solidifies the conversation better than that-and you’re guaranteed to get exactly what you were looking for.

9

The “N” Word

How to Get What You Want Without Nagging

As much as we love the cookie, as much as we need the cookie, there is one thing that, when we see it, makes us want to run the other way, no matter what flavor the cookie. NAGGING. You can be part Miss America, part Ms. Tollhouse but once you start nagging, we’re simply not interested.

Oh, trust me on this: we can see it coming. You walk through the house and start circling around, looking here, there, and everywhere, getting more and more upset with every step you take. Maybe the garbage can is full and there is a little odor to it. Or your man just happened to put his dirty clothes next to the hamper, instead of in it. Or there’s a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Next thing we know, you’re standing in the kitchen with your top lip curled and that look in your eye, attitude so big it practically blocks the television from the next room over. We’re trying