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)
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