Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Back to the Basics

When I posed the idea of discussing the fact that women and men need to get back to the basics and that women need to train their men I received an e-mail from a male subscriber saying that the problem is that women think they can train a man and change them. I wrote back to him that he had the wrong idea of what I was trying to say. I didn’t say “training” our men to say that we should focus on changing them. I said “training” as to say that we need to train them to know what our expectations and needs are out of a relationship with them. Sometimes the reason that a relationship isn’t going right isn’t always directly the man’s fault. Women tend to get mad because their not doing something that we want them to do or their doing something that we don’t want them to do but if we never told them that “hey, I don’t like it when you do this…” or “I feel I should be treated like this…” then how are they supposed to know that’s what we expect from them. We deserve, at the very least, the basic expectations in a relationship like a man who’s going to open our car door, and a man who’s going to call us at least once a day (if that’s how often we like to hear from them) but we can’t expect our men to know that’s what we want when we don’t tell them.

We are never going to find the “perfect” mate who is going to do everything just right and just the way that we like it. Nothing and no one is perfect but yet I still see people constantly talking about they want it all. They want the perfect ideal life and the perfect “do nothing wrong” man or woman to go along with it. I only wish that that was a possibility because then I would want first dibs but I have come to terms with the fact that men have flaws as do women and I have learned to live with the men and all of their flaws. If we spend so much time trying to correct every single little problem that we see in them and trying to change them into something that they are not then we might never truly be happy with what and who we have. Now if we just sit down with one another and tell each other what it is that we expect and what type of relationship it is that we want then a lot of time and heartache could be saved. That way we know that if this man isn’t the type to open car doors, or check in with us once a day or however often we want them to, or the type of man to buy you a card on your birthday, and we know that that’s what we want then why waste the time trying to change them and mold them. If they are the type of man to do those things then we are telling them upfront and therefore training them, or instilling in them the knowledge of what it is that we expect from them.

Now ladies I am not saying that we should expect them to give us everything and work for nothing and men I am not saying that we should go back to the caveman days where men went to work and made all of the money and women stayed home tending to the children and the upkeep of the house. What I am saying is that there are minimum basic needs to be met in a relationship by both men and by women and I think somehow we’ve gotten caught up in other things and larger desires of perfection that we’ve forgotten that. We can’t forget to tend to those little things that we used to like to do for each other just because we’ve gotten deeper into the relationship where we seek more elaborate and extravagant needs. Without those little details and displays of affection we will only loose out in the end.

There’s a lot to be said for the little things in a relationship and when you’re not in a relationship you really get a clearer picture of just how important those little things are. You tend to miss those little displays of affection like someone opening the car door for you, or buying you a card just because they want to tell you how they feel, or a kiss for no special reason at all. In searching for the bigger picture like what you can get out of him or her later on down the line you very often will loose the tenderness of living in the right now and then you end up missing out. There’s a reason that everyone always says that the best part of a relationship is the beginning. It’s because that’s the time when we cherish what we have the most. Maybe we should strive to make every day of our relationships like the beginning. They might just last longer that way.

Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Release Date TBA)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
www.freefalllit.com
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://writetobe.wordpress.com/
http://freemynd.wordpress.com/
http://spokenlikeaqueen.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/jcladyluv
www.lulu.com/ladybugpress
www.authorsden.com/jimmettacarpenter

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Comfortable Enough For You

They say that there is someone out there for everyone. They say that a person doesn’t have to lower their standards or alter their type in order to find that someone. Well after many years of searching for what is within my standards of a mate I am starting to draw the very real conclusion that maybe everything isn’t exactly going to work out quite the way it had been expected to. Unfortunately like many things in life that somehow get off course so can the drama of finding the right man.

It seems like every guy out there just wants to be mistreated. It may seem like I’m exaggerating but in my case and a lot of women that I know it rings true. There are women out there who pride themselves on cheating on men and taking whatever money they can get out of them just for sport and for some reason, unknown to me or any of the other good women out there, men love these women. It’s funny because a lot the men that complain about the mistreatment that they get are the one’s that seek out those particular women and that’s what they choose to hold onto.

As far as love is concerned you can pretty much navigate people into four major types. There are the good girls, the good guys, the bad girls and the bad guys. This is where everything gets unevenly matched up because as it would turn out the good guys like the bad girls, the bad guys like the bad girls and of course that leaves the good girls isolated and off to the side watching as they are yet again the last picked for the team. It never fails and it isn’t fair. A woman who is honest and faithful, not to mention loving and kind is the one that’s likely to be left still looking for love at the age of thirty while the women who cheat lie and steal their way into someone’s bed are the one’s who would’ve been divorced twice and working on the third by the time they reach thirty. It makes me question whether a man really does know a good woman when he sees one.

I hear the word “comfortable” mentioned a lot when it comes to relationships. A woman cheats and their mate stays because they’re “comfortable” staying with them. He may realize that he and his woman are not compatible with each other for whatever reason but he stays because he’s “comfortable”. He finds another woman that he’s more suitable with and he stays with the one he doesn’t want to be with anymore because he’s “comfortable”. A lot of men seem to get accustomed to a certain way of life, whether it’s the life they want or not, and stick with it but I’m beginning to be concerned with the fact that men don’t seem to know when to bow out until far too many people are hurt.

Men seem to have just as bad a judgment with women as women obviously do with men. Now I’m not saying that women don’t have the problem of always being attracted to problematic men and that they don’t fall into a pattern as well. However the difference between the two is that sooner or later women usually know when to say enough is enough. Men get comfortable with being comfortable, even if it is in a bad relationship, and they stay in a situation for years and years making for an ending that is bound to be hurtful and full of drama.

I guess it sounds like I’m being a little one sided here but I am a woman in search of a decent man. It just seems that the men I’m attracted to are all attracted to the women that treat them like, dare I say it, SHIT. I get the brush off’s like you’re a nice girl but you’re not my type or the ever so popular, you’re just too nice for me. Or I just get stuck loving a man who wants to stay in a bad relationship that just keeps getting worse. It just seems like no matter what, everyone is just going to be unevenly matched up. While a lot of women are out there looking for their ideal mate, their ideal mate will still be in a “comfortable relationship” until he decides “comfortable” just isn’t going to be enough.

Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Release Date TBA)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
www.freefalllit.com
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://writetobe.wordpress.com/
http://freemynd.wordpress.com/
http://spokenlikeaqueen.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/jcladyluv
www.lulu.com/ladybugpress
www.authorsden.com/jimmettacarpenter