Until I Get Married

There are things men do that often get misconstrued.

For instance, I have dated a lot of women who are obsessive about the gym. They not only are disciplined about their gym time, they actually savor it and enjoy it. Every once in a while, if I notice this gym rat I’m dating hasn’t been on top of it like she usually is, I might inquire and ask, “Hey, you good? I noticed you haven’t been to the gym in like four days.”

Now, some women I have dated understand I am only asking because I notice this break in their routine and that could mean something is bothering her. But some women interpret the question as a statement on their weight or how they look. “Why?” they retort. “Am I starting to look like I haven’t been to the gym in like four days?”

From there, I have to give the question some context, which doesn’t help because since we’re on the subject of looks (one that she brought up herself, not me) now we are going to talk about it.

This, my friends, is what we like to call a misunderstanding. These things are common in relationships and dating. Sometimes, even the best communicators often get misunderstood by whoever their dating not because of a lack of clarity, but because the other person is doing some serious overthinking or underthinking.

Below, five things that are misunderstood by some women and what the man actually means by them.

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This week’s installment of “The Eldrick Woods Relationship Blog” over at VIBE.

“Interracial Love At The Movies”

A few words on Lil Wayne and Eminem’s new video for “Drop The World” over at The Wall Street Journal.

‘Drop the World,’ Lil Wayne and Eminem: The New Video

Most men will never have to come face to face with a life or death situation to prove their feelings for a woman, and yet, anytime I am with a woman I am very aware it can happen at a moment’s notice. In the back of my mind I know I’m only half boyfriend, the other half of me is bodyguard or protector. Jump in front of a bullet aimed at her? I better do it. Push her out of the way of an oncoming car even if it means I’ll get hit by said car? I better do it.  Change the tire if it goes flat? I better do it.

But what if we’re not tested like that? What if we never get confronted with a life or death circumstance to prove our love. What does a man do?

Well, it’s simple. He does the little things.

These little things are sometimes nothing to write home about. Maybe we pick up her favorite snack while we make a quick store run. Maybe we rub her back without her asking. Or maybe we send her a quick text to say that we’re thinking about her.

All of this sounds sweet and easy enough because they basically are both of those things. But sometimes, the little things are the hardest things in the world to do. Sometimes the little things break our pockets because the “little thing” is a diamond ring. Sometimes, in a man’s mind, the little thing he did for his woman is something he has never done for any woman prior to her and since her.

In my years of dating, I have done my fair share of little things and I’m not talking about flowers. I’m talking about the type of little things that from the outside looking in, don’t look like much, but trust me, they are. There have been some little things I have done that have stayed with me longer than some big things I’ve done.

I regret none of them. Every time I look back on some little thing I did I laugh and  say to myself, Damn, Jozen, you must’ve loved that woman or maybe liked her a lot. Who knows? What I do know is there have been some girls I really liked (or loved), who asked me to do this little thing, and I did it even though in my mind, it was the biggest thing in the world.

Here’s one of them.

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Sophomore year. Howard Homecoming. I met her at Yardfest.

For those who don’t know, Yardfest is where all the alumni, current students, and friends from out of town gather to size everyone up. There’s also a concert, and food, but no one really cares about that. What everyone really cares about is what people are doing that night, and who they are doing it with.

Or maybe that’s all I cared about.

The girl was from some Southern state, I don’t remember which one. She didn’t go to Howard, her friend did though, and that’s how we met. When we were introduced, she smiled at me like we could do it now, but I didn’t want to do it now. Later, I thought. Let me get her number first.

I got her number, and back then, I didn’t have a cell phone, so it stayed in my pocket on this sheet of paper. As a precautionary measure,, I also made my friend who did have a cell phone put the number in his phone book.

Since we were all under the age of 21, the nightlife at Howard Homecoming came with limited options, and I lived in one of the dorms, where the visitation rules are much like a prison. The best my friends and I could hope for was some girls wanted to just hang out at a house party or maybe, if they had one, a hotel room.

So I called the girl whose number I got on the Yard. The conversation was short, and smooth. Her and her girls were staying at this hotel room in downtown D.C. They didn’t have anything to do. My boys and I didn’t have anything to do. Thus, it was agreed upon that we link up and doing nothing together at their hotel room.

When we got to the hotel we saw the ambiance was set to do nothing. There were bottles, music that was too loud, and a TV on mute.

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People often ask me why I never go into my own Comments section and respond or partake in the banter going on. Especially when there are folks who go in on me. But the reason I don’t ever get involved in the Comments is because I would much prefer all of you get the last word in, and not me. Trust me, there are a lot of things I see that I want to respond to, but I know it’s a slippery slope, and once I respond to one, I have to respond to another, and then another, and then another. So, I learn to step back and let people speak their piece.

This is just one way my blog is like a relationship. Here’s another way.

You  know when you’re with someone for a long time, you just start repeating the same things you said over and over again, whether on purpose or by accident? Well, because it’s late in the day and most of my energy has been given to other assignments, I’m about to do that myself.

In honor of the beautiful spring weather my adopted home has been experiencing the last couple of days, and the ladies who are wearing less clothes as a result, I am re-running a post I wrote back in September, when this blog was barely a month old.

To those dedicated readers who have been with me since way back then and remember this one, apologies for the oldie. Here’s hoping you think it’s a goodie. And to the readers who are new, enjoy.

Here it is: “Why I Look At Her”

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Well, I did it.

I made the phone call yesterday to Pop. We talked, we cried, and we came to a resolution of sorts, though I don’t know if that was the objective. Come to think about it, I don’t know what the objective was at all, if it was to vent, to get closure, or a combination of both. What I do know is I feel like life is anew, and yesterday, after we got off the phone, those who saw me walking down the street, may have noticed my feet were a couple of inches off the ground.

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There was a man who raised me and my sister. We called him Pop. He and my mother were together for 11 years, from the time I was in Kindergarten up until I started high school. To say he was a huge part of our lives would be an understatement. For 11 years, he was our life. It was my mom, my sister, me, and Pop. We were a family, all living under one roof and doing the things family do.

He coached my little league teams, as my Mom prevailed over the PTA as President. My mom would help me with my papers, Pop would help me with my math. My sister worked inside the house with my mom, I worked outside with Pop. He took me on construction sites with him, made me read everything from Calvin and Hobbes to Invisible Man. He would make fun of my fictional girlfriends (“Jozen’s girlfriend is so ugly band-aids won’t stick to her.”) I would make fun of his “old girlfriend” (couldn’t make fun of his current woman, that was my mom).

This is how it was for 11 years, but by the time those 11 years were coming to a close, I wanted nothing more than for him to just leave and never come back.

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The summer between my sophomore and junior year of college, I lived in Detroit, a city filled to the brim with pretty women who also happen to have a good attitude about pretty much anything. They’re tough, don’t get me wrong, but through the hard shell, they’re game for pretty much anything, and they’re not timid. They see what they want, they get it.

A perfect example of this is a girl a colleague at my internship set me up with. The girl, (whose name I still remember but won’t mention for the sake of privacy) had a child, was two years older than me, and did hair. (It should be noted here, if you live in Detroit for any time longer than a month, and you date in Detroit, you will date a woman who does hair. That’s just how it goes.) We went out on probably five dates, nothing terribly exciting, but there is one thing I remember about her, one thing that sticks out to me even after all these years, and I only think this is the case because since her I haven’t met many women who do this at all.  Here it is:

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We live in a sped-up society. Nowadays, everything is fast and the order of the day is instant gratification. And in no arena does this way of life hold more true than dating.

Dating is what we do before we decide to sleep with someone. Then, after that, it could still be dating, but we can also say we’re sleeping with someone. And for some of us, there is no such formality, we’re just sleeping with someone, not even dating them.

This  is why women must rethink their own rules on waiting. I’m not saying there should be no such thing as making a man wait. I respect any woman who wants to take her time, but, I also respect any woman who doesn’t want to take her time. I respect them both, equally. As a matter of fact, no respect is earned or lost by the simple act of sleeping with me, period, so let’s just get that out of the way right now.

Whether a woman does it now or chooses to do it later, there is no judgment being made based on the time she makes me wait before we sleep together. True judgment lies not in the time frame, but in the bed frame. Allow me to explain.

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I’ve spoken about compliments before. Receiving them, giving them out, the ultimate compliment, and so on and so forth. Compliments are important, not because they help raise self-esteem, but because when we receive just the right one, they make our day. I know how good it feels to receive a compliment, but I know the greater joy is in giving one to a woman who upon hearing it, smiles so deeply I can tell her face is going to stay like that for the rest of the day.

But the question remains, how do we give them out? There is an art in compliment giving, as I’ve said before, as Esquire once wrote an entire article about. One specific rule of thumb I apply is to be specific when giving out a compliment. I don’t like the umbrella types of compliments where I’m acknowledging everything about a woman. I mean, she could be fine with ashy elbows. Who knows? So, instead, if I see she’s wearing some flashy accessory, I acknowledge that accessory. If I like the way she’s walking, I might say something about her walk. Fly hat? “Fly hat.”

But as a lady friend of mine recently pointed out, sometimes specifics can do more harm than good. If a woman just got her hair done, and I’m complimenting her shirt, what’s that say?

With this logic applied, sometimes the umbrella compliments, ones like “Hey beautiful,” or “You’re pretty,” are our best bet. What’s left to figure out is what umbrella compliment do I apply? I’ve thought about this for a couple of weeks, and I finally have what I like to call  the compliment translator.

Below, a break down of the most general compliments men give and what they might mean.

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