Category Archives: Real Talk

Make Loved Ones Feel Important

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We live in a world that is chaotic. Things are not simple like they used to be. Terrorist threats are a no longer uncommon. School shootings are the norm. Cyber-attacks and identity theft happen almost daily. These situations are more of a reason to truly be connected with your loved ones.

What are some things that you are doing now to spend time together? Sitting in the same room, with either one or both of you on electronic devices is not enough. I am talking about “quality” time together. Cuddling, laughing, talking, touching, play fighting, eating a meal together, taking a walk, working out, volunteering, making love, or even working on a project together. Being fully present and engaged with your partner.

The holiday season brings a great deal of stress on everyone; financially, emotionally and physically. Ask yourself what you can do to minimize the impact of holiday stress. Discuss plans to be more involved with one another and not allow the hype of everything to get in the way of your quality time. Make a new tradition.

The concept of family has been destroyed through the years by making sex easy, marriage the new dating and divorce the first option to end a disagreement. Decide what is most important and take steps to set aside time to actually appreciate those important things in your life. Slipping a love note into a briefcase or lunch bag, ironing clothes for the next day for your loved one or even cooking a meal together are some ideas for getting that quality time in. At the end of the day, it’s better to reflect on those things that made you happy than the stresses of life and sadness. The world has enough of that as it is.

What are your plans with your loved ones?

Love

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When you’re in love, real real love, you sometimes have to push yourself to like them when you would otherwise like to push them off a building.

We are all flawed. No one is perfect. But sometimes being in love makes you feel perfect. That’s a wonderful feeling. However, it’s not always.

On the days when love is cumbersome, dig deep and salvage the good in the person. They won’t always live up to your expectations, but the times they do might be worth the patience during the trying times.

Love Where You Never Expect: In The Friend Zone

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We laugh when we hear about a guy being friend zoned. It happens all too often. He tries his best to be nice and friendly, tries to be the shoulder she cries on – he tries to be everything women ‘say’ they want and need.

And then they are labelled “too nice” and find themselves in the dreaded friend zone.

I’ve friend zoned quite a few guys in my life. Some should be lucky they just got friended; I’d much rather hide under a rock from them. But sometimes it’s just bad timing. Sometimes, I don’t know what’s best for me by passing them by.

In particular, I had a friend who’s been friend zoned for like 10 years. Yet I’ve cried to him over heart ache and breakup after breakup. He tried to crawl out of the zone after each one but I shot him down.

In my recent drought of dating, when he proposed the idea, rather than chew his head off I figured why not? In my head I figured I could kill two birds with one stone; give him a chance and thereby shut him up and let him spoil me but let him down gently when our trip was over.

He was attractive but I wasn’t attracted to him. He was cool but I didn’t think he was on my level. He was skinny; I’m a big girl. I’m not trying to look like the zero to our 10. I don’t have children, but his son is like half my age because he had him early. I was totally focused on the why nots rather than why we might actually work out.

When we met under these new conditions, at first I wasn’t ready. Secondly, he wasn’t ready. After my arrival, we hugged and he went in immediately for the kiss. It caught me off guard, but I was pleasantly surprised. I called him my cocaine because I simply could not get enough of him and I was his heroine – the addiction was highly intoxicating.

It was the best of both world; an amazing guy who hadn’t let chivalry die and a best friend that I could be completely myself with. I wasn’t self conscious about my weight because he’d already accepted me for who I was and was more than willing to pass the cupcakes. I didn’t have to worry about always dressing nice; a pair of sweats and no bra was just as good as my sexy dresses because he already knew how I was.

And then there was the sex. Bombdotcom. I didn’t know he would put it down like that, but he surely underestimated me, too. However, because I’d loved this man for years, even if just as a friend, we fell into a perfect sync that I can’t put into words. He awakened a passion inside of me that I didn’t think existed. It wasn’t friends with benefits either, I actually don’t want to let this one go.

Everything I once felt for him began to change. And there was never an awkward moment. That’s how I knew it was for real.

So for my men in the friend zone, don’t lose heart. There is hope. It may be timing, it may be some hard lessons that have yet to be learned. But don’t give up. All that foot work will be worth it one day.

For my ladies, ask yourself this: of all the guys you gave a chance who CLEARLY weren’t worth your time, why not give that one guy friend a chance? But make some rules that you won’t let it ruin your friendship and always always respect the friendship over the relationship. You never know. You might be sitting on a diamond disguised as mere coal.

Loving the Wrong Person

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Have you ever found yourself head over heels for someone who doesn’t give you a second of their time? It may sound trivial to even think that you would be dumb enough to care about someone who ignores you but it happens more often than you think – maybe not as blatantly obvious as that, but to some similar degree.

You enjoy being around them. Maybe when it’s just the two of you they act different; they open up more. You share meaningful conversations and there is an inherent reason you feel the way you feel. By chance, in public per se, they act ‘different’. Less social, less open, more ambivalent to you. Do you make excuses for them, saying maybe they are busy or shy or just don’t want everyone in their personal business so they keep things very low key when you are around. It sounds plausible; key word is sounds.

Maybe you’ve been the person who kind of ignores someone in public but changes when in a group setting. Do you know why? Does it make the person act more clingy, to which you pull further and further away? There is a cycle there, kind of like cat and mouse.

The place where we get caught up is when we make excuses for the person’s behavior as if to say it is okay to treat us this way. It’s not. They wouldn’t like it if they were being treated this way, or maybe the person they are really interested in is treating them the same way. We’ve all heard the saying, “The person you want doesn’t want you and you don’t want the person who wants you.”

It’s a vicious cycle. The key to breaking the cycle is to start with yourself. We have all heard the saying “You cannot love another or accept another’s love for you until you learn to love yourself.”
That statement is very true. When you learn to love yourself, you realize what you are worth and don’t allow others to treat you less than you deserve. When you love yourself, you can begin to open up to love others. You are less inhibited to treat others badly because you are aware of their feelings and know that it’s not right.

When you love yourself, you attract the right attention. Others who value you and respect you. Others who will love you for who you are and not what you can do for them. When you find love like that, trust me, it is amazing. It makes all of the bad relationships worth it because every bad experience helps make us who we are. Hopefully it doesn’t make you bitter though.

Just think; if you could love the wrong person with as much passion and energy as you did, think of how much more you can love the right person?

Why Do Women Fake It?

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The answer is yes. I have faked it on numerous occasions. You may ask why, what benefit do I get out of it? It ends quickly. I have been a one woman cheerleader during sex just to get him to release so I can go to bed. Or get up and shower. Or just relax because I caught a cramp and I’m no longer in the mood to keep going. Or I’ve gotten mine and he is taking an unnecessary amount of time getting there.
I should probably get paid for how realistic I sound.

Truth is, even if you are not a talker during the act, hearing the other person enjoy themselves adds heightened intensity to it; it helps ‘get you there’ because sex has some mental aspect to it.

I do not fake it all the time; that would just give the other person a false sense of accomplishment in thinking they really are doing something in bed. But occasionally, yes, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Women fake it for you. To just lay there when you are not in the mood but don’t want to say no is like saying no. So we play the part and help the leading role reach the finale.

This technique can backfire, however, by giving the other person a false sense of achievement. Meaning, they think they did a phenomenal job beating the brakes off you in bed, when really their actions didn’t even start the engine. That’s the risk we take in faking it.

When it comes to sex, men and women differ in how they express themselves, say, to their friends. When a guy thinks the sex was great he will talk about it like he was a porn star. “Yeah, man, I had her hitting high notes like an Opera singer! She couldn’t get enough of me!”

When women talk about great sex, they talk about how good the guy was. “Girl, he was so good he had me up making him a full course meal!”

If a woman talks about how good ‘she’ was during the act, chances are you sucked and she is simply complimenting herself on her acting abilities and theatrics in the bedroom.
I don’t think faking it is selfish; it’s actually a very selfless act for the other person’s ego. You may be wondering, how can I tell if she is faking it? Sex isn’t pretty. If she’s overly concerned with her hair, or being cute, then you ain’t hitting the spot. When a woman is completely absorbed into the act, she doesn’t care how she looks as long as you keep giving it to her the way you are. Kind of like how you are with us. I know your girl may have teased you about your ‘sex face’ once or twice. It’s not pretty; but it’s so good you don’t even care!

Answering The ‘Shoulder Tap’

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Who has found themselves in this situation before? Somebody wants some, but the other person is far from interested? Not even willing to help you out in a time of need! Reasons can be similar for both men and women; busy lives, children, not feeling well, long and/or bad day at work, etc. The person being rejected may not understand or feel that you are being unreasonable, especially if “No” has been heard far more than “Yes.”

For the ones saying no, have you really given it enough thought? Have you put yourself in your partner’s, errr – pants? Have you opted for middle ground – heavy petting, making out, possibly oral, before disregarding their request? Do you really think if you got started that you wouldn’t find yourself enjoying it, too?

For those who are doing the ‘tapping’ have you thought about how your partner feels? How was their day? Did you argue at all? When they say no, is the reason the same or something different?

If any of you have ever heard of Dr. Chapman’s “The Five Love Languages” it is a very thorough guide in understanding the person you are with. It actually speaks beyond romantic relationships to that of coworkers, children, teenagers, family, etc. But I digress. It discusses ways to get the person you love to understand your love for them. Most men are physical; so sex being a physical act is one way they like to show they love their significant other. There are other ways, but I am just focusing on one for the sake of this post.

When a person who has a love language of physical attention and they want to have sex but get rejected it is more than saying, “No”. In their mind it’s like saying you don’t love them, too. So over time, they begin to withdraw from the relationship and eventually may seek their needs to be met somewhere else. If you’re thinking, ‘well if they would help around the house, or if they would just pay me a compliment once in awhile instead of wanting to jump me all the time’ then you are speaking your love language. They need to learn how to speak it.

Relationships require give and take. Granted, you may not always be in the mood. You may be so angry with something they have done or didn’t do that you can’t fathom being in the same bed, but I will say this. Life is short and we do not know when we will take our last breath. Try not to go to bed angry. Try to resolve to either agree to disagree or really get to the heart of the matter – sans emotional outbursts, etc. Fight fair. Listen. Sacrifice.

The answer to the shoulder tap might be ‘no’ but just be sure you add a ‘yes’ in there, too. Or make the rain check worthwhile…

Back To Love

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Is there someone who lingers on the end of every thought, fills your dreams and hope of better days? Have you told them? Does something hold you back?

Why is it we have courage to do some of the most dangerous activities in life but find pause when it comes to opening ourselves to another?

Maybe the memories of painful experiences run deeper than actualizing our hearts desire.