From an "intimidating woman": Pet peeves about "lazy" men.

Please, please, please do not be lazy!
The following are scenarios where I would find a describe a man's actions as lazy.

The top scenario is the guy who puts the onus on the girl to call him.  At the end of a date, one guy said to me, "so you have my number, so call me if you want to hang out". Uh, no thank you.  I may be a  member of a dying breed of women who actually desires to have a guy be the initiator and propagator of a relationship.  I call my guy friends that are JUST friends, or I call my boyfriend; I do not call guys to start up a relationship. The 21st century woman has a lot of the blame when it comes to this type of laziness. We women call men, give out our numbers without being asked for it, plan dates and all kinds of pursuits.  This allows lazy men to be lazier and also to feel like it is acceptable.  But please, lazy man, own up to your laziness and do not try to convert me. I am not ever going to value being a woman who chases after a man. Why? You may ask. Well, because I have three good looking brothers that demonstrated over and over again, the difference between how they treated the women that they had to pursue versus the women that pursued them.  One guy friend recently said, in regards to women,  "when you want something, you go for it".  For the record, he said it, not me.

Another scenario is that you say you want to get to know a girl, yet you do not call her or invite her out.  Please do not pretend that you are really interested if your actions are half-hearted. I heard a sermon where the speaker said that others cannot see our intentions (or our "heart", as has become so common to say); people only see our actions. If your actions are to Not call or text or invite her out, then I find it hard to believe that you really are interested. We all are willing to prioritize and sacrifice for something that is important to us.  So if I do not feel like a priority to a man, then I assume that I am not a priority.  If you wait until the last minute to invite me to hang out, or ask me on a saturday when I am going to be done with my plans, to see when we can meet up, then you are either lazy and or I am not a priority. If I was a priority, you would make sure that my weekend plans included you, with several days advance notice. Many of us start thinking about the weekend from wednesday, if not earlier. So waiting to make plans until saturday evening is a big, No.

One of the things I have noticed about many men is that they do not like to hurt a woman's feelings. In theory this is a good thing. However, in actuality, it can be really awful and a lazy man is involved it can play out into him keeping a girl in his back pocket.  The following is example [maybe extreme] of how this "back pocket" dynamic.  A girl pursues the interest of a guy.  The guy really isn't interested, but is afraid to tell the girl and hurt her feelings. Since he didn't invest any of his ego into pursuing her, he may not tell her that he is not interested. Instead he will allow her to text him, and he will causally text back. And one day, if he is lonely and she invites him to hang out, he will take her up on it. If he's really lonely, he may even sleep with her. All the while knowing that he is not really into her.  Yet on her side of the equation, she may perceive that he is into her because he responds to her texts and took her invitation to hang out, or because they had sex. Why would he do those things if he wasn't interested? Right?  You may think this is extreme, but don't forget I grew up around three good looking brothers, in a house where the phone rang off the hook, from ladies who were trying to get the attention of one of my brothers. That said, I have seen the "back pocket" dynamic in action.

Last item I will throw in for free. One guy tried to reason that some men are very casual and nervous initiate interest or expose their true feelings because they do not know what the woman is going to do. This was to defend actions that I was perceiving as laziness.  When this guy said this, I realized that there was a certain thing about women that he did not know.  Here it is gentlemen: women are won over by a guy that makes her the apple of his eye. If a guy shows interest and prioritizes a woman, she often will fall for him.  Now there are exceptions to this, but generally it is the rule.  Many women will disregard a lot of things that initially would have made someone not attractive or undesirable, IF the guy treats her like a queen or makes her feel special. She will even defend him to her friends and family, who looking from the outside, may not understand why she is with that guy.   There are a lot of homely, balding, dorky, low-wage earning men who have learned this insight about men.  These are the guys walking around with women, where you find yourself scratching your head trying to figure out how he did it.

All in all, I can't stand laziness. Mostly because men do not own up to it and try to pretend like they are making more effort than they really are. That said, there are plenty of 21st century women who don't mind pursuing a guy and putting in all the effort. And great relationships can result from that too. But that doesn't mean that he wasn't lazy. And for some women, like this writer, laziness is a deal breaker.

From an "intimidating woman" to a brotha: what he may not know.

these are personal insights, and may not apply Generally to all women classified as "intimidating"

1) I don't understand realistically why a man would be intimidated by me.  I cannot bench press anything significant, I don't have a john or cojones, we aren't competing for facial hair, and I can't shoot hoops. What of my femininity should intimidate? I have dated shorter men, those who didn't go to college, had a blue collar job, were balding, were skinny, dorky, foreign, and the list goes on. At the end of the day, if a guy is intimidated by me, that may say more about him than it does about me. I just saw a post on Instagram that read that a guy is only intimidated by a woman when he knows that she deserves better. Food for thought.


2) Sometimes people are surprised by the people I date or go on dates with. I have a similar style when I dance as to when I date. I am more likely to give someone a chance, rather than outright say no. All the men I have gone out with, had at least one thing in common: they approached me or asked me out. For me to even consider talking to someone, they have to at least make it obvious to me, that they are interested in getting to know me. I have heard rumors of guys that wanted to get to know me. Those men never will know anything more about me, than what they can see with the eye, if they don't have the guts to approach me. There are guys that have very little going on for themselves, who approach me. Then there are guys who have a lot going for them, who stare silently from across the room.  I don't get it.


3) Just because I don't need you to pay my bills doesn't mean that I don't want a man to share my life with. Some men are intimidated by an independent woman, who can support herself. When my friends can take care of themselves, I'm glad. Who wants a friend that you have to pay all their bills? So why is it that some men are intimidated by a woman who lives under her means? I know one doctor who finds it liberating that his wife makes more money than he does. Wouldn't it be better for a woman to want you because she loves your company and not because she needs your money ?

response to elliptical facebook questions

{questions] 
I'm tired of getting tripled teamed by the devil......he aint got to worry about you cause you only good for religious quotations.......yeah I'm the Christian MVP and I wear da number 7 on my chest......but am I the only Christian all-star not afraid to tackle tuff Christian issues......like why there so many homosexuals in the black church, but everyone acts like they don't see it........and other issues.......like if Eve really came from Adam, doesn't that mean that men have feminine sides.....or that there was a woman trapped in the inside of them.......and if I'm the Bride of Christ.....what does that make me.....an ugly man in a bridal gown......or a woman trapped in a man's body........?
[response}
About Eve coming out of Adam. One thought may be that we were originally beings that were neither male nor female, like we are now. God is not really male, but rather above and greater than what we think of as a man or masculine. In human beings being created in the image of God, their are attributes of God that mostly only women seem to have. God begot Jesus like women beget children. The bible talks about God bringing us to his bosom (aka breasts) [Isaiah 40:11]. Then there are sides of God that mostly men mirror. We call God Father and revere God for the might & power and kingship that God has.
So what happened in the garden? God separated the soul of the human being and gave half to Adam, now the first male, and half to Eve, the first woman. Then later the bible talks about a husband and wife becoming one flesh (or one soul) when they marry [Genesis 2:24]. This is possibly because what was divided becomes reunited when husband and wife come together with a singular mind and unity of spirit. This is probably why God is so supportive of marriage, because the spiritual power of a married couple moving together with one mind may be greater by multiples compared with either a single man or woman working independently. It may also be that we are most closely in the image of God as husband and wife, because we are then neither male nor female, but rather a united new entity, as God is neither male nor female. The potential spiritual power of a married couple is probably intimidating to those who would rather keep people powerless, which may be why there is so much external attack against marriage.
Maybe Jesus calls the church the bride because Jesus want us to become one new entity and to enter into a singular mind--taking on the mind of Christ, and a singular spirit and into the spiritual power of Jesus. Jesus wants us to be one with Him. And when spiritual beings are one, like that, we are neither male or female, we are above those natural terms, making us SuperNatural. So, I would not attribute the bride in this analogy as being a female idea, that should make masculine men feel nervous to be a part of. Instead, I would think of the bride as being the partner of the groom in a great spiritual marriage or union.

conversation with a zealot

boy: I don't usually write random emails like this to strangers, but there are no words in the English language to describe how beautiful and enticing I think you are. I would love to communicate with you if given the chance and find out whether you are more than just looks and whether your intellect and personality are as breathtaking as your exterior. My name is *dude and I will patiently wait for your response. I hope that there is one. Take care.
girl [checks out FB profile and notices that he is of agnostic belief and she follows Jesus]:Thank you for the flattery. Unfortunately I am really wanting to become more of a follower of Jesus at this time in my life and would not entertain getting into a relationship with someone who did not also want the same thing. Have a great new year. Wishing you only the best.

boy: Interesting...And that in and of itself is so contradictory to Jesus' teachings and also closed-minded.

girl:My perspective is actually not contradictory to Jesus' teachings; and most people would not find Jesus "open-minded" by today's standards since he says in very clear terms that he is the ONLY way to God. Jesus clearly portrays himself as being an heir of God sent to do several things on the earth, namely being redeeming mankind from the off-course trajectory that humanity was on. Jesus also then makes it clear that God now expects us, the recipients of redemption, to believe that Jesus was sent for that purpose and to be like Jesus in the world. I am sorry to be blunt but agnosticism does not follow after Jesus. It seems that you wrote to me because you would be interested in us having a relationship based on attraction. For me to have that kind of relationship with someone we have to share the same God. I have no problem being friends with people of all kinds of belief but the same does not hold true for who i will date and i do not apologize for that.

boy: If you says so...Trust me, you don't want to get in a theological debate with me.

girl:You should read Jesus's teachings. You are likely to find that modern culture portrays him as being more tame and not as radical and extreme as he really was.

boy:Actually you should read Jesus' teachings. I have actually read the Bible from cover to cover on 4 separate occasions. It is my quest for spirituality and also knowledge that brought me to feeling the way I do now. I am certain that you would not be able to have a truly fact-filled theological debate with me. There is no portrayal. You actually need to find facts instead of believing in a made-believe invisible being, that pulls strings.

girl: i do read my bible. i have read apologetic arguments and agnostic/ atheistic arguments. i have had experiences that no one can take away from me and based on all of that I choose to believe. and you are right, i have no desire to get in a debate with you.

boy:I know, religious radicals almost never have the ability to view beyond their superstition.

girl:Firstly, I am not religious. Secondly, I do not believe in superstition. Third, your earlier comment about being hypocritical is evidence that you do not know who Jesus was as a political figure in his day, which is why I suggested that you read about him. Either way you are entitled to your Opinions.

boy:LOL. Definition of RELIGIOUS: 1: relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity (a religious person), (religious attitudes); 2: of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances (joined a religious order); 3a : scrupulously and conscientiously faithful

b : fervent, zealous.
What's funny is that you can't prove anything you claim to hold as a fact. You step out in so-called faith. I call that stepping out on ignorance. Christ's story is not even original, it has been told over and over again in other cultures and thousands of years before Christ's birth. LOL. Funny!!

girl:Actually, by your demonstrated definition of religious, any "zealous" person would be religious, that includes your zealousness for this discussion, any die-hard football follower or member of a coveted group. Therefore your definition has no specificity to identify only a selected group. 

In regards to Jesus not being original, that is not based on fact. Jesus is the only of all those having stories similar to his, to have actually been proven to have lived on the earth. Those other stories are folklore and do not have evidence to support that the protagonists actually ever existed. There are many records of Jesus life and exploits, beyond the bible. Check your facts.

boy:HAHAHAHAHAHA! Ignorance is bliss!

girl: EXACTLY ! Well said. Merry Christmas homie. Maybe one day you will see something that was always in front of your eyes.

boy:LOL Okay...Merry Christmas to you too...

Response to a facebook post

Opinion: “A woman's responsibility is to prepare to be found. She was not made to initiate! The man must actively pursue her. In fact, he will enjoy the chase as much as she enjoys being chased! I would argue that there isn't a shortage of good men. Rather, there is an abundance of unprepared, overly eager women!”

1st response: While I agree that women are to be prepared to be found and many of us are not preparing ourselves properly, I think the reality that women outnumber men several times over at most places of worship-- with the exception of sporting arenas-- supports the perception that there are not enough good men out there. Please do not completely excuse men from the equation.

2nd opinion:Kia, I understand what you're saying. I didn't intend to leave the men out. I just wanted to paint a different picture seeing that men are typically bashed all the time by women who are unemotionally prepared to handle them. Also, the mentioning of the outnumbering of women to men is irrelevant and fearful. God is sufficient, and those statistics are wordly.

2nd response

Imagine a college football player in his junior season. He has so much potential but has yet to really get featured. Some pesky injuries have kept him from fully bringing his best playing to this year’s games. At the end of the spring season, with his heart set on hopefully going pro after a successful senior year, would you blame him for being anxious and strategizing for how to achieve success in the upcoming last year. He knows that this dream really only comes once in a lifetime--there is no going back to this stage of his youth, when he is older, to get a second chance. Would you be surprised if he was anxious about the very finite nature of his dream? Let us change scenarios. Now imagine a woman, who dreams longingly of having a family.  She is not married & has no boyfriend.  She has gone to college to be able to work and support herself and is coming up to her 33rd birthday.  She knows that her fertility level will change in 2 short years, and even more so in 5 years. She hears that “advanced maternal age” clock ticking. Is she anxious and probably overly eager? Probably just as much as that football player is about making it pro. Will making her feel like she is just plain wrong, for being eager, solve her anxiety? Likely not.  What does this woman need from others?

    She needs positive affirmation from people in her life to trust in God and to start to call in the blessings of God that she is desiring. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick”. She needs to be encouraged to put her hope in God. And it’s not enough to tell her these things, she has to walk through the process and transform her whole paradigm. 

    She also needs friendboys in her life to not lead her on deceivingly, but to give her clear signals. Sir if you are not interested do not string her along. She will misread your ambiguity because she is half distracted by that dang clock ticking in her head.  

    She also needs to be affirmed to be true to her self. I would imagine that all kinds of people would be offering that football player advice on how to make it to the pros. Just like all kinds of people give advice to single women. Some men say, “don’t be afraid to make the first move; guys like it when women ask them out sometimes”. Other men say, “men should be the hunters and women the hunted”. Some women tell testimonies of their successful marriage to a man that they pursued; even Ruth in the bible basically initiated her relationship with Boaz. So when a woman gets confused about the course to take to exit out of singledom, cut her some slack. Is there only one way to get into a successful relationship? Probably not. A woman needs to be true to herself and not lose her identity en route to just finding any man to raise a family with. But who is to say how she and that Boaz will be united. 

To end i will touch on the idea of preparedness. I don’t think either men or women are ever fully prepared for marriage. In general men do not really understand women and women do not really understand men. Yes, there are steps you can take to help transition more easily into a marriage, but it is still going to be hard work with a lot of learning and deciphering of the other person. 

Women get picked on all the time for being hormonal and wanting babies and being under the pressure of “the clock”; not to mention being the overall subjects of aggravated violence and being often reduced to the sum of their ass-ets. Just because a gentleman feels like men get bashed too much does not, in my opinion, warrant another finger-pointing at women who get the brunt of too much negativity in the universe. Single women need affirmation, protection, understanding, patience, guidance and they need to feel loved.

Over-confident Brotha (or Sista)

My friend and once I coined the term Over-confident Brotha, during a storytelling of a gent who thought so highly of himself that he could not perceive the characteristics he possessed that lowered his appeal (or as I like to say, his market value).  My mother says that many Caribbean mothers instill in their sons and idea that they are prized cock and that any woman they have eyes for, should recognize that they are a prized cock--even if they do not have jobs, or are much older than she, or are not in shape, or are sickly, or have kids, when she does not, and the list goes on. When talking with my mother about some of my suitors who, in our shared opinion, had an inflated sense of market value, she would often respond, “he has some nerve, what makes him think that you would even like him? He is too...[insert one of the dequalifiers mentioned previously].” Interestingly, I was once chastised for talking about someone being out of their league, when they tried to talk to me.  The commenting gent thought it was arrogant of me to have had a perception that some men are not worth me getting to know, let alone, date. So now I wonder, have I been raised to have an over-inflated sense of self and my own marketability? What is the difference between knowing your worth as a match and being arrogrant & overtly conceited? How does a woman set a standard for who would be compatible for herself without coming off as exclusionary & narrow minded?

One of the riotously funny cartoons about black dating (on youtube) has a dialogue where the lady says she won’t settle for less than she deserves, which is a rapper-type, who is taller than 6’3”, who will buy her diamonds and expensive clothes & cars, and has a body like some other rapper, and a host of other ridiculous things. In response to deserving the material things, the gent in the cartoon replies, “why do you deserve those things when you cannot buy them for yourself?” I remember my brother commenting that “big-boned” women always liked him for his height and frame, but he wondered why they thought he was a match for them when he thought they were out of shape. Insight seems to be the key issue here. When one looks in the mirror, does one have an accurate perception of how attractive they are, as a package of characteristics, to the outside world? But what about when you have a modest view of yourself, but those you trust sing your praises and encourage you to not think less of yourself--I feel like this is my case.  I have been rebuked by family members when I dated people they did not think were “on my level”. So have I been trained to be over-confident? 

Compatability.  Standards. Expectations. Lists. Compatability seems to be in the eye of the beholder. For some it is okay to have characteristics that their partner does not have. This appears in movies all the time: In Daddy’s Little Girls, the highly-educated and financially successful, never had kids woman, falls for the less educated, not so financially successful father of two (with a crazy baby momma); and in Why did I get Married?, the obese divorcee snags the hot bodied very handsome brother; In Something’s Gotta Give, both the main protagonists have relationships with people nearly half their age.  So, sometimes (at least in the movies) opposites not only attract but also have a happy ending. Was it really arrogant of me, as a young, decent-looking, physically fit, university-educated, never been married or prego-ed, career-driven, Jesus- following woman to have thought that the cat-calling, looks like he’s as old as my dad, homely, very likely only high-school educated, probably more than one baby-mama having brotha on the street was out of his league? Probably, but truth be told, maybe my biggest fault was in voicing that he was out of his league instead of just thinking it. So should i fault a brother for taking a chance with me, when it is obvious to me that he will not float my boat? I guess not, if i am to accept the point of some movie script writers; maybe instead, I should start thanking these such brothas for daring to make it known to me that they found me attractive--because truth be told, there are many men who are more compatible who will not voice their attraction.  So at the least I can affirm their courage.  

When talking about one over-confident brotha, my mom’s take home point was, “consider it a compliment that he tried to talk to you, because guys like that [who have been raised to think that they are the cream of the crop] only go after the best girls.”  And once again, the training to think highly of myself.  I wonder, which is worse for a well-rounded woman in this day and age, to be over-confident or under-confident.  An over confident woman may be a turn off to some, but who’s to say that her holding out for a person who meets her higher-than average expectations won’t materialize into her meeting just the kind of guy she dreams of.  Who is to say that some men will not be attracted to her high confidence level and consider it a huge compliment when she pays any attention to them at all.  And who is to say that the under-confident woman is better off? What if she were to review her life with regret that she married someone she should not have, because she did not think she should have held out for someone with more to offer, especially when she had so much to give, herself. Hmm. I will end with several proverbs that talk about good women: “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD” (18:22); “A wife of noble character is her husband's crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones” (12:4); “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies” (31:10). Interestingly, there is no parallel verse that I have seen in regards to a woman finding a good husband. My opinion: a good woman should know her worth & recognize that she should be regarded as a treasure and she should hold out for the man who floats her boat; and if some man that she would not talk to anyway, thinks that this is arrogant of her, then oh well--you can’t please everybody    ;-p 

stillborn

Today I helped deliver a stillborn baby.  He was a darling little thing, bigger than we expected, with hands & feet that would have made him a good ball handler.  He looked perfect.

It is very sobering to be a part of someone’s life during a time of disappointment and of death.  How do I support without magnifying the loss; is it insensitive or disrespectful to have a somber atmosphere fragmented by times of lighter spirits & even laughter?  

It gripped my heart to hear cries of sadness on the Labor & Delivery ward-- a place which, most of the time, is bustling with life.  It broke my heart to see grandma weep as the head was being delivered. Why did this happen to her daughter, her grandson?  And it broke my heart to hear the affections of grandpa as he went to embrace his daughter.  The loss on multiple levels was palpable: a mother losing her son, just a month before he should have been born; a father losing his first son; grandparents losing their grandson; parents grieving over the hurt felt by their daughter, now a women, but forever their little girl. 

Today, faced with the reality of death; the hustle falls away, and perspective seems to slow the rotation of the world about itself...[i breathe]...[i cry]...