On a sitcom with so many memorable episodes, this remains one of my all time favorite; right up there with the two part episode where the gang goes on Spring Break and the girls meet those drug dealers, but I’ll post about that one another time.

The first time I saw this episode was the first time I saw anything like this happen on screen. Two people in the middle of getting married, when out of nowhere comes the man the bride should’ve been marrying all along. I didn’t think what Dwayne did was romantic so much as I thought it gutsy. In front of a church full of people on what is supposed to be the happiest day of the bride and groom’s life, Dwayne stops the wedding. Not only does he stop it, he asks Whitley to marry him, right there. And to top it all of, to show he has absolutely no regard for other people’s lives and very little for his own, he does it all in a peach suit.

A peach suit!

I have watched this scene too many times to count, and over the years, my attention has shifted from Dwayne. Whether it’s fear of the unknown or me just wising up, when I watch now, I focus on some of the other key people in the scene. They are as follows:

Ron: There’s having your friend’s back and then there’s doing what Ron is doing. He is literally watching Dwayne’s back for him. Ron knows Dwayne is making a fool of himself and disrespecting damn near everyone in attendance, but no one is going to stop him, not on Ron’s watch. The matchup is 3-on-2, to be more specific, three much bigger guys against two guys who wear glasses, but does Ron care? Nope, not even a little bit. Ron’s running strictly off the adrenaline of what Cedric the Entertainer calls the “wish” factor, as in he wishes someone would try and stop Dwayne. Also, bonus points for encouraging Dwayne to say something in the first place (4:13). Let what Ron did be a lesson to all men. Having our friend’s back is more than protecting him, it’s also about making sure our friend follows what we know is in his heart.

The Security/Ushers: These guys who did a horrible job of stopping Dwayne from interrupting the wedding, who the hell are they? Are they ushers or security? If they’re ushers, their horrible job of keeping Dwayne back is understandable, but if they’re security, hired to make sure nothing happens, they are the worst security detail ever. Dwayne should’ve been on the floor the minute he coughed (4:16). Look how they hold him back (6:03)!? These guys aren’t even trying, it’s like their conspiring with him. How did Dwayne get in there? Better yet, there were no specific instructions given to make sure Dwayne doesn’t make it past the church doors? Why? I want answers.

Byron Douglas: Ah yes, the groom who got left. If you ask me, he had it coming. We’ve already discussed his inability to find adequate security, but there are so many other issues I have with this guy.

Ever notice how calm he is as Whitley hesitates to say, “I do”? It’s a simple question, and she’s stuttering. Do you even have to say “I do” in these situations? Can’t you just say “Yeah” or “Yep” or “Yes”? Let my wife-to-be even stutter those two words and watch what happens. I know one thing, I’m not going to be like Byron and ask her, “You alright?” (5:33). Instead I’m saying, “Do we have a problem?” Should she hesitate again, I’m throwing my arms up in the air and saying, “Obviously we have a problem!” Then, I’d say, “Gimme my ring back.” And that is where I have the biggest issue with our boy Byron.

Look at what happens at 6:44. Byron is walking out sans ring. I have one question about that: Why? Get the ring back, Byron! Then, to make it even more disrespectful, he allows Dwayne and Whitley to marry at the very altar where he was just about to marry her. The. Same. Altar. Also, the same preacher. I hope Byron switched churches. And he’s letting Dwayne do it in that peach suit!

If it was me getting stood up at the altar, this would have never gone down. I would have told security to let Dwayne go and dared him take another step closer. No way in the world a man who wears glasses and wears a peach suit is ruining my wedding.

And yet, according to this chart I dug up at StopStreetHarassment.com, men are still out here doing it like it’s a national pastime with no signs of stopping.

But I didn’t need to see a chart like this to be aware of the frequency of street harassment because as a man who has partaken in more than his fair share of approaching women on the street, I’ve developed a nose for such activity.

I can recall a time when I was walking down the street with my lady in San Jose, California, and seeing two young men walking in our direction. The men were loud, laughing amongst themselves, and walking down the sidewalk like they owned it. All signs pointed to them saying something to my lady if I didn’t make a move to show them she was with me, so I simply grabbed her hand. No sonner did our fingers clasp did one of the men yell in our direction, “Ah man, how’d you know?!” I laughed and said, “Because I know what I have and if I were you and I saw her, I would have said something too!” The two men and I got a good laugh out of the whole thing as we walked in separate directions, but the exchange had my girl confused. She asked, “How did you know they were going to say something?” I repeated what I said to the guys adding it was just something guys do.

Harassing women on the street is wrong, approaching women on the street is not. I’ve been doing the latter for as long as I’ve been walking down streets myself. Not to say it’s my preferred method, I’m just an opportunist with 20/20 vision, therefore I don’t begrudge any man who pays attention to his surroundings. The reason I think street harassment is wrong is because it’s ineffective.

If you were to show a group of young men who are guilty of street harassment the same statistics I displayed in this post, or point to the other numbers of how prevalent it is, they would all acknowledge there is z problem. But what if we flipped those statistics to tell a different story? Allow me to start with a couple I have compiled myself off based on research I have gathered simply through casual observation.

Over 100% of all men who have committed some form of street harassment have failed in accomplishing getting the attention they sought from the woman they harassed.

Under 1% of all women who fall victim to street harassment have given their phone number to the harasser.

If more men knew were given these numbers, there might be a higher likelihood they would change their approach. Frankly, it might be the best solution, in spite of how shallow it is for the following reasons: A) A lot of men have a warped idea of what harassment is and think as long as they’re not touching the woman they’re shouting at, they’re not harassing them. B) One time, whether it was just the other day or years ago, the cat calling actually worked, and who knows it can work again? C) They’re just paying a woman a compliment.

These are the most common excuses I’ve heard from men, and I’ll be the first to admit, back in my younger days, when I had little decorum, and absolutely no idea how to talk to women, I would use these excuses to explain my own actions. But as I’ve gotten older, I realized: A) Harassment can be verbal. B) The women who do respond to street harassment are attention-mongers. C) If I really wanted a woman walking down the street to feel special, I would give her the courtesy of paying her an original compliment.

The question is what’s an effective way to spin this message towards the men who don’t know any better? Women talk down to them and tell them they’re being disrespectful, and men who speak out against their actions do something similar. Both approaches are nice in principle, but horrible in execution. What we need to do is coach these young men up and show them while street harassment is wrong, it also doesn’t work and the reason they should stop is because if it’s positive attention from the opposite sex they seek, there’s a better way to get it.

We need to start showing men the magical ways of effective communication, because frankly, a lot of them aren’t around enough women to know better or they’re lazy.

Some people might accuse me of victim blaming when I say street harassment has worked for some men, but it’s true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, a man with absolutely no couth says something to a woman without so much as taking one step from the spot where he stands, and she comes right over. Now it gives him no right to approach the next woman the same way, but it does make him lazy, it does give him reason to continue with his unoriginal approach because, hey, it did work once upon a time. For some men, that’s the only incentive they need to keep going.

If it’s not laziness he suffers from, it’s the lack of social skills hindering his ability to approach a woman the proper way. I always joke, if a woman ever wants to go somewhere crawling with men, visit the most crime-ridden neighborhoods. There’s a lot of men there and most of the pretty women who live there have either left, are married and/or with child, or they work at the local strip club. What’s sad is how much truth their is in the last fact I shared.

Because there are rules and regulations, and in a weird, twisted way, they are getting what they want in exchange for $20, most men talk to women in the strip club with more respect than they talk to women on the street. (Next time a man says something out of line on the street, don’t ask him if he would talk to his mother that way, ask him if he would talk to a stripper that way; chances are he wouldn’t.) When they go into a non-strip club environment they don’t understand, all women don’t attention, and even if they do, sometimes it’s from someone else. That’s when men start acting like the guys Chris Rock is talking about in the video I’ve shared on the “Until I Get Married” Facebook page.

When I see these men get excited over every woman who walks by I find it sad because it’s a testament to how little they get to be around women who are not members of their family. I swear, sometimes my neighborhood in Harlem looks like Lord of the Flies. None of this is to excuse their behavior, but I am tired of people pointing the blam and simply saying, “You should know better.” We all agree, they should, but why don’t they know better? What gives with not only their lack of chivalry but originality?

What they’re doing needs to be stopped, but in order for them to be stopped, they have to be shown a better way to do things.

As I said, street harassment is wrong, full stop, but talking to women walking down the street is not and if we want to make even the slightest progress in getting more men to understand the difference and how to do more of the latter instead of the former, we need to learn how to better talk to men.

Where to start, I don’t know, but if I could teach a class, I would start with some wise words from this guy.

In any case, the post was for a brand new website dedicated to men’s health called TheCheckup.com. The site is a part of a brand new syndicated radio show, called The Dr. Harry Fisch show, which airs every Saturday night from 7 p.m. — 10 p.m.. The show is classic, call-in talk radio with Dr. Harry Fisch, a gregarious, easy-going personality who makes all his listeners feel more like they’re talking to a doctor in a bar rather than in his office. Dr. Fisch has some excellent and valuable information for men, but I encourage women to listen to because it’s something you can share with other men.

This past Saturday, Dr. Fisch invited me to be a guest on his show to talk at length about my post. I can’t say I was too shy to answer his questions and ask some of my own. The most surprising fact I learned was when Dr. Fisch said he doesn’t hesitate to prescribe Viagra or Cialis to men in their 20s.

Below is the stream for the segment on which I appeared. Please take a listen as soon as you get a chance. If you like what you hear, click here to listen to the show in its entirety.

Thank you for listening to the show. If you just so happen to not be tired of the sound of my voice, and are interested in what I have to say about other topics like the State of the Union, the movie “Red Tails,” and “Love and Hip-Hop,” my colleagues at The Root invited me on to their Confab podcast to discuss all these topics.

Here’s a link to hear the show on TheRoot.com, or if you prefer, a link to download the podcast for free (the one I’m in is at the top).

Today, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “Meet The Marriage Killer: It’s More Common Than Adultery and Potentially As Toxic, So Why Is It So Hard to Stop Nagging?”

The article’s writer, Elizabeth Bernstein, attempts to unpack the nagging problem amongst married couples, quoting both real couples who have gone through a nagging phase as well as psychologists who study these types of human behavior issues. As far as some numbers to support her theory of nagging being to marriage what a meteor was to the prehistoric era, Bernstein cites a study done by Dr. Howard Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Denver and co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies.

Research that Dr. Markman published in 2010 in the Journal of Family Psychology indicates that couples who became unhappy five years into their marriage had a roughly 20% increase in negative communication patterns consistent with nagging, and a 12% decrease in positive communication. “Nagging is an enemy of love, if allowed to persist,” Dr. Markman says.

As far as who is at fault for all the nagging in a relationship, no concrete numbers are given, but Bernstein does posit a theory, which I found most interesting.

Men are to blame, too, because they don’t always give a clear answer. Sure, a husband might tune his wife out because he is annoyed; nagging can make him feel like a little boy being scolded by his mother. But many times he doesn’t respond because he doesn’t know the answer yet, or he knows the answer will disappoint her.

In a nutshell: Women be nagging.

As a man, it warms my heart to read things like these. I thought, More women should have a friend like Bernstein advising them to quit pestering me over certain things.

Then, I read the article again (remember, Rhodes Scholar like focus), and I started to notice some holes. (To be fair, it’s just an article to provoke discussion on a particular issue. I have to say this because some people tend to think articles are supposed to solve the very problems being discussed within them.)

The article begins with an anecdote about a husband whose wife put a Post-It note in his ham and cheese sandwich with a request for him to meet her at the Home Depot after work. Please repeat this sentence out loud so you can understand how ridiculous that sounds.

A Post-It, in between two slices of bread of the world’s most boring sandwich.

He had to take the note out of his mouth because he bit into it. That was the moment the husband knew his wife had a nagging problem. Later in the article, we find the husband is 58, the wife 62. It’s an important tidbit when combined with the husband did not go straight to his lawyer’s office to file for divorce and went to the Home Depot instead. So what we saw is a grown woman resorting to the same tactics my mom had to resort to when she made lunches for me in elementary school and wanted to remind me she loved me, and it worked.

Now some might assume I would ask this man why he did not stand his ground if the note upset him so much, but I have a better question: How many f*cks does he not give to the things his wife tells him to do?

I’m sorry for the cursing, but there’s really no other way to emphasize how deep the issue has gotten once a person has taken to writing Post-It notes and putting them in a sandwich. I appreciate Bernstein’s overall sentiment in the article. Women nag, but the reason articles like her bother me is because they make men look bad. In the article the husband said, “”I don’t need a reminder in the middle of my sandwich.”

Well, sir, sometimes we do.

I won’t go so far as to say women love being told what to do by a man, but if there is one thing I have learned about women, rarely do they ever not do what I have asked them. Unless she is super busy with other more important matters or honestly forgot, there is a good chance, if I ask my woman to do something that has an open deadline, she will act like it was due yesterday.

Meanwhile, she has told me to schedule an appointment with my doctor for the past two weeks, and I have yet to do so. I plan to do it, but no sooner than I feel like. And that’s when she schedules the appointment for me, then calls me 30 minutes before the time she schedules, tells me there is an emergency involving her happening at some random adress and I need to get there in less than 30 minutes, I zip over to this address in a panic, and I pull up to where? The doctor’s office.

The funny thing is, most things women ask us to do are not nearly as involved as something like going to the doctor’s office. The task is something like taking the clothes to the cleaners, and we didn’t because we still have clean dress shirts to spare.

I recall my ex-girlfriend hounding me about a phone call I needed to make to our landlord about a matter I felt wasn’t going to get solved. Day after day she asked me and day after day I told her, I got too busy and I would do it the next day. A week went by and she stopped asking me. We moved on to other arguments about other issues, but as sure as water is wet, she would always bring up the phone call I never made. Even after we broke up, whenever the conversation would turn to what our issues were, she brought up the phone call I never made. Eventually I decided to stop making another phone call: The one to her.

In retrospect, this was no way to handle the issue.

This is not a call to action for men to start paying better attention to women. As am I writing this, there is a woman hitting me up on gchat and I am ignoring everything she’s writing.

But, when I get done with the article, I will see what she typed and if she asks me to do something, I will either do it or I will tell her when I can do it and be sure to do it at the appointed time I gave her. This is not because I want her to know I care, it’s because her voice is annoying, and there is only two ways to deal with a woman who has an annoying voice:

A) Break up with her and find a woman who makes every request sound like she’s saying, “Take off your clothes.”

B) Just do what she says and watch her go quiet.

Chances are option A is a little too drastic, so go with B then listen. Do you hear that? What’s that sound like? It sounds like peace.

But the other reason some of us men should do a better job at doing what our women ask of us is because we’re not boys, we’re men, and we know for a fact, nothing matters to us more than women treating us like the men we are.

The less political-correct, more sexist term for nagging is mothering. Remeber what Bernstein writes (emphasis mine) “Nagging can make him feel like a little boy being scolded by his mother.” Well, I always say, before a man accuses a woman of mothering, he should make sure he’s not boying — a term I just made up to describe how we as men can at times act like boys because we have to be asked repeatedly to do something.

If a woman is a nag, we might be part of her problem, but who knows? I could be wrong. The only way to find out is if I do what she asks or I communicate with her clearly when I plan on getting the task done and I do it not a moment after.

I don’t mean to get on a high horse like I’m above making the mistake I just mentioned. I count myself amongst the men who don’t do what their woman tells them to do after they ask the first time. I also count myself amongst the men who might lose their hearing prematurely as a result of the former act.

Men, please understand. There is a war going on out there between the sexes. Women and their mouths are crashing the beaches of our minds like it’s the Battle of Normandy. They are taking over our thoughts, stressing us out, invading our sandwiches with Post-It notes about the most menial tasks. We must defend ourselves against them, but we do not attack back, and fight their fire with our own fire. Instead, let us plant mines of doing exactly what they say, then hide and wait for them to step on it.

WOMEN: Baby, did you do what I asked you to do?

MEN: Sure did.

WOMEN: Okay, can you do one more thing?

MEN: What’s that?

WOMEN: Take off your clothes.

READ: The Marriage Killer via WSJ

Listen, enjoy, and comment as you wish.

This is hard for me to write about without giving some context, bare with me as I unpack a couple of things before moving forward.

I never write about my dad. My late biological father has been written about at length, so has my pop. The man my mother is married to, I refer to him as my step-dad. In my own head, these men are clearly separated and compartmentalized. To the reader, things are probably a little more jumbled, largely because I don’t write about my life in chronological order. I hop around, jumping from memory to memory.

So when I say my dad, understand I am not talking about the men I mentioned above. I am talking about the man whose last name was given to me after he adopted me as his own. He brought my sister into this world. He and my mom were married, but divorced when I was 5 or 6. From then on, he was more of a weekend dad, seeing us about twice a month.

I’ve had my issues with my dad. They’re not as deep as the issues I had with the absence of my biological father or the troubling and complicated relationship I had with my pop, but issues nonetheless. Most of these bore out of how little we saw him even though he never lived too far away. He never raised us so much as he visited us, and there were times my sister and I both resented him for it. The other issue is, how remarkably different he is from my sister and I.

Our dad is a white man from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who listens to The Doors, wears Wranglers, votes Repubican, loves Pittsburgh sports, the Steelers especially, and watches Nascar. We could not be more opposite if I was night and he, day, which made the physical distance between us feel much farther than it ever really was.

Thankfully, over the years, my issues with him have subsided. We talk most Sundays on the telephone, the conversations mostly brief check-ins, but I am proud to say, occasionally they run long.

I do not have an exact date to commemorate the moment it became easier to open up to my dad. But I clearly recall the chapter in my life when we began to talk about more than just the latest Steelers news and what the weather was like in New York City and Columbus, Ohio where he lives.

When I was preparing for my ex-girlfriend to move in with me, he was one of the first people I reached out to for counsel.

My dad has had a rough go at love. After he and my mom divorced, he married another woman, they too divorced. He is happily married now, has been for I think 15 or so years. He’s in a great place, but it wasn’t always that way, and if I was going to go through ups and downs in my own life, I wanted to prepare myself from someone who knew a thing or two about love had and love lost.

Through all my resentment, guilt, anguish, and frustration of seeing my last relationship fall apart, my dad at times proved to be the consumate confidant. He wasn’t the wisest with words. His most common phrase was, “It’s not easy, son.” But spoken through the filter of experience, he sometimes sounded like Yoda.

In November of last year, I went down to North Carolina where my dad and his side of the family vacation for two weeks every year. It was the first time I saw him since 2004, and though we talk regularly, seeing him face to face felt like a different animal.

There was a conversation I wanted to have with him, different from all the others. I turned 30 only four months prior, I was without a job, and questioning a lot of things in my own life. Once again I thought who better than my dad to discuss these things. My dad works as a carpet cleaning contractor, and most of my life, was a bartender and a restaurant manager. We talk about career stuff on occasion, but it wasn’t the topic I wanted to talk about.

I spent most of my years believing I would be married by the time I’m 30. The name of this site alone can tell you how that’s all worked out. My dad on the other hand, by the time he was my age, adopted me, married my mother, and together they had my sister.

Most of us don’t realize how young some of our parents are until we became the age they were when they brought us into the world. When I think about everything my dad went through when he was the age I am now, I’m in awe. People like to say times were different back then, but my dad and mom married in the 1980s and divorced in the 1980s. Times have changed, but there hasn’t been that much time that has gone by.

The urge to ask my dad questions about the period in his life when he met my mom, adopted me as his own, had my sister, and then moved all of us from Washington, D.C. to settle in California, came from a conversation I had with my mom.

When I was let go of my previous job, I felt like I hit rock bottom. Forget about picking myself back up, I had no idea where to go. My mom heard the hopelessness and the fear in my voice when I broke the news to her. That’s when she told me about the time my dad was fired from his job.

“I remember I was working at your grandmother’s restaurant. We were just getting by, with you, your sister, and a new house. And your dad came walked into the restaurant whiter than I ever saw him and he didn’t have to say anything to me. I knew because the fear in his eyes said everything. He was scared.”

I don’t remember seeing what my dad looked like when he walked into the restaurant. Hell, I probably wasn’t there, but, I knew when I looked in the mirror at my own reflection, I had the same look she described my dad having. Her little story was a way of telling me I should talk to my dad about what I was feeling.

From therapy I learned sometimes we just need to know someone’s story in order to understand ours better. So when I tried to have this talk with my dad, the plan was to let him talk.

Notice I said, “tried?”

We talked, but I can’t say he was enlightening in the way I imagined him to be.

Here’s the thing: As I said before, my mom and dad are divorced, but it was my mom who chose to divorce him (though to be clear, this had nothing to do with what happened at his job). I don’t recall anything about their divorce other than the night my mom told him because everyone remembers the first time they see a grown man cry, especially when that man is their dad.

When I finally had my dad alone so we could talk, I failed to account for whether or not he was ready to have what was a difficult conversation.

I peppered him with question after question. My dad tried at first to answer the questions, but he was being vague. I didn’t want to treat this like an interview for a story I was working on, but he was giving me no choice as he skirted around certain questions. Back and forth we went for about five minutes before his agitation spread from the sound of his voice to his entire body language. He was giving me one word answers, and looking in the complete opposite direction. It didn’t take long before I knew I was going too far.

People like to talk about how it’s not in man’s nature to open up and talk about feelings. The truth is, it is no one’s nature to share feelings too painful to discuss. Men don’t like to cry, but it’s not like women love shedding tears either. Some memories just hurt too much to relive. Not wanting to revisit them or share them is a sentiment men and women can understand.

When my dad married my mom, he probably thought, this was it, forever. When my mom filed for divorce, the life he planned blew up in his face. I don’t question or begrudge my mom for what she did. She is not the bad guy and seeing as my dad has been happily married for many years, I don’t think he can say mistakes were made.

But being at peace with the past doesn’t mean we forgot how the past felt when it was the present.

The idea of hearts breaking is a simple concept. They’re like any other breakable object in that even if we put the broken pieces back together, and they stay that way, we still see the cracks. When someone points to those cracks and asks, “What happened?” we most often wince before we say anything, if we say anything at all.

Some memories are facts we cannot deny and for as long as we live, they can never be erased from our personal archives. These are my dad’s facts:

He married my mom.

No one gets married and thinks it will not last forever.

I got the feeling the night I talked to my dad, he didn’t want to expound on those years with my mom because the memory of how it all ended is still too painful for him. We’re not talking about a simple matter of plans changing, we’re talking about lives changing.

Since my mother raised me, I never considered anyone else’s long, difficult road to happy until that night I talked to my dad. Men too, spend their lives trying to get it right, along the way they learn lessons and though the hardest ones are probably the most valuable, they are far too painful to pass on.

A couple of days later, while still in North Carolina, my dad and I found ourselves alone again. This time, we were on a balcony outside of the restaurant where the whole family just had a huge dinner. This time, when I stepped outside, I did so just because it felt right. I had no agenda, I had no questions.

My dad took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled, then turned to look at me. His eyes were wet.

“Son, I know I wasn’t much help when you tried to talk to me the other night,” he said. “But honestly, I don’t know what to say. I really don’t because I’ve gotten it wrong and now I think I’ve gotten it right, but who knows? All I know is what I learned from your grandfather who has been with your grandmother for 60 years. It’s about faith and it’s about family.”

He took another drag of his cigarette, put it out, and as he walked back inside he said to me one more time: “Faith and family.”

For years, baseball has been man’s sport of choice to use as metaphor when recapping what happened with a girl. The idea, predicated upon the bases on a baseball diamond, was simple: First base, second, base third, base, home plate all implied some sort of progress.

Over the years, the metaphor has understandably become flimsier, specifically the differences between what constitutes second and third base. People have written about this before; I’ve had many conversations with men and women, and none of us seem to agree what takes place on second base versus what takes place on third base. One person told me second base is oral sex, third base is traditional sex, and home plate is a particular kind of sex so inappropriate, I could not bear repeating it lest I want to throw up a little on my keyboard. And here I thought we unanimously agree home plate counted as traditional intercourse, but what do I know?

But last night, as I was watching more highlight’s from my brother’s favorite team the New York Giants win over the 40-whiners, I thought to myself, Why are we still using baseball as a metaphor for discussing what happened with a woman when football is obviously the better sport.

Gentlemen, presenting the glossary of American football terms as metaphor to describe what happened with the hot girl you went home with last night. Ladies, if any of this offends you, please refer to the sentence before this to remind yourself who exactly I am addressing here.

FIRST DOWN

ON THE FIELD: One of the things I love about football is the concept of the first down. First downs aren’t given any points, but there are times when the team’s chances of victory comes down to whether or not they can convert 10 yards and get a fresh set of downs. Few other sports have a non-scoring situation as important as the first down.

IN THE BEDROOM: The first down is quite simply, the make out session. Unless your game is like Devin Hester and you can score on special teams (more on this later), you’re probably going to need to get a couple of first downs before you score in any manner whatsoever. a first down in the bedroom is a make out session and a make out session only. You haven’t scored, yet, but the first down has put you in the best possible position to do so. Continue to convert the first downs, and watch your scoreboard light up.

FIELD GOAL

ON THE FIELD: A field goal is denoted by three points. These aren’t the maximum amount of points you can score, but much like the first down, the field goal may be all you need to win the game or stay in it. When it’s early in the game, and the score is still 0-0, many teams elect to kick a field goal instead of attempting to score a touchdown or get another first down. The logic is, put some points on the board now, worry less later. Whenever a team who has won by three points, the field goal was either the game winner at the end or the biggest factor in the beginning. Also, teams who score a lot of field goals usually do so for one of two reasons: Their offense sucks and can’t really score any touchdowns. The team they’re playing has a stoute defense that doesn’t allow offenses to put up points.

IN THE BEDROOM: Field goals are oral sex. Sometimes, they’re a form of foreplay, used to warm things up, but other times, they are the best you can do against her. This may be your fault. Whatever your game plan is, it’s not enough to score the maximum number of points for now, but she likes you enough, so you get some points on the board. There is also a chance, her defense that night was impenetrable. You weren’t going to score regardless of how hard you tried and we can get into why her defense was so tough, but do we really need to? I mean, honestly. Do we really need to? I’d rather not.

TOUCHDOWN

ON THE FIELD: Six points, the highest number of points a team can score. Whenever an offense is getting closer and closer to the end zone, analysts will say the offense is in the opposing team’s territory. Some offenses can score quickly, their game plan usually relies on deep passes. Other teams have more of a grind-it-out style, preferring to run the ball and bite off large chunks of yardage at a time. Either way, the best offenses usually find a way into the end zone.

IN THE BEDROOM: A touchdown is intercourse, full stop. You put together some first downs or you threw the deep pass, it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is, you have set out what exactly what you planned to do which is score. Touchdown! But do not celebrate just yet.

EXTRA POINT

ON THE FIELD: The customary field goal kick teams take after they score a touchdown. As implied by its name, this play is only worth one point. Success on this play is as certain as water being wet. According to The New York Times football blog, “The Fifth Down,” the accuracy rate for extra points has hovered around 99 percent for nearly over a decade. That being said, missing an extra point can happen and when it does, the shock, awe, and pain is akin to a gut punch.

IN THE BEDROOM: You arrived in the end zone, the hard part is done. All you have to do is get that extra point, or what scientists and doctors refer to as your orgasm. This shouldn’t be hard. Sure it’s not as automatic as an extra point but it’s pretty freaking automatic, right? You did all that work, only to not get that one extra point? Tough break. It happens. And when it does, you will probably end up having the same face as all the guys you see in the video from 0:42 — 0:51, and sounding like the guy at the end.

TWO POINT CONVERSION

ON THE FIELD: For years, the two point conversion was only allowed in college football, but eventually it made it’s way into the pros. A two point conversion is the alternative to the extra point after a team has scored a touchdown. The science behind when to go for two as opposed to just kicking the extra point, is still years from being figured out. Most times a team is only going for two if there’s absolutely no way they can win or tie. I didn’t feel like finding any stats to get the hard data on the success rate of two point conversions, but I’ve watched enough football to know the success rate is about the same as you correctly calling heads or tails on a coin toss. I also know when it works, it’s the second most exciting play in football.

IN THE BEDROOM: To say you’re going for two is to say you’re not only going to get your orgasm, you’re going to give her an orgasm as well, or, at least try to. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy either. If you go for two, you, my friend, are obviously trying to win the game or stay in it, she appreciates that and the ovation you get will probably look like this.

KICK-OFF/PUNT RETURN

ON THE FIELD: Teams kicking the ball and teams receiving the ball are known as special team units. The kickoff/punt return is known as the most dangerous play in football because the speed of it is so fast, the damage return men can sustain is potentially life changing. Blocking here is paramount. If the team who receives the ball is able to score, there’s few things more exciting to watch. They have also allowed the defensive and offensive units to chill out some more on the sideline.

IN THE BEDROOM: This is when you haven’t had to make one play on offense and she doesn’t feel like playing any defense. You want to score right away, and she’s not going to stop you. Just remember what I said about the kickoff-punt return being the most dangerous play in football because the metaphor still sticks in real life, so make sure you got all your blockers up front. Oh, and remember what I said about Devin Hester? If ever you should be so fortunate as to return a kick for a touchdown, tell all your friends Devin Hester is your new nickname.

As I was writing out this glossary, I found myself coming up with a bunch of football terms ladies can use. Look out for those tomorrow.

They did.

Throughout college, I wanted girls to sleep with me.

They did.

Throughout my 20s when I realized girls like me and girls would sleep with me, I wanted them not to hate me.

They did both hate and not hate me, equally.

Throughout my relationships, I wanted the women who were my girlfriends to love me.

They did. Some of them, others just liked me, but you get the point.

Over six months ago, I turned 30.

Now I want women to respect me.

To some, this may seem odd, the idea of wanting a woman’s respect. I felt the same way when I first started thinking about it myself. A woman’s respect, since when did that matter? If I wasn’t sleeping with her, or dealing with her on a level of deep interest, why did I care if she respected me or not?

I still don’t have an answer, but I don’t think I need one. Maybe it’s sad it has taken me this long to realize the value of a woman’s respect, but better late than never I guess. Now respect from women I know, regardless of my relationship to them, is all the rage in my head.

Figuring out what to say about this has been a difficult process because it is tough to put into words exactly what I mean by this concept of a woman’s respect for me. I don’t know the specific things I seek from a woman when I talk about wanting her respect, but I know it is way more complex than how I used to think of it.

Obedience. That, to me, was how I gauged a woman’s respect for me. Trust. that too.
So what this boiled down to was if a woman did as I asked, or something to my liking without me asking, all while trusting I would do the same, she respected me.

It took me a while, but I learned a woman who listens to me and does as I please, does not have to respect me in order to do so. I also learned, trust and respect are mutually exclusive. I should be earning and caring more about the respect from all women who are in my life, not just the ones I was dating or with in a relationship.

For a very long time, I did not care what a woman thought of me unless she was the woman I put on my arm. Anyone else, I only cared enough to not disrespect them. Trust me, there are women who dislike me right now all because I did not treat them the way they wanted. I could deal with that. But there was a sense I had that even if I did something wrong, the only thing for which I was guilty was not doing things the way they wanted me to do. What mattered more to me was being honest with myself, which meant I would not lead a woman on, I would not make a woman feel special if she was not special. I know it may sound harsh but, just don’t mistreat her, was my motto.

Needless to say, this attitude brought about a fair amount of drama, but I never lost sleep.

I did, however, oversleep on the value of a woman’s respect for me.

I never felt like I disrespected women, but I did not have any respect for what their standard of respect was. The things I did to some women were never meant to be taken as disrespect, but I began to understand how one might see it differently. If I valued their respect, I had to give those feelings the respect they deserved. Not doing so was causing them to lose respect for me, the last thing I wanted.

There are women who think I’m up to no good all the time. There are women who have told girls who like me, I’m not worth a three-second thought. There are women who have knowingly done things that hurt me, and never apologized, never even gave me the courtesy of an explanation.

All of these things are not so much a reflection of disrespect (something I believe is as blatant as respect), so much as they reflected a lack of respect and just like I earn all the respect given to me, I deserved the absence of it as well.

I have no idea if any man who reads this post will be motivated to look at their own relationships with women and question how much the women who know them respect them, but I encourage all of them to do so. I would go so far as to say, men should care about the respect they receive from women as much as the respect they give to women. If you think about it, maybe it’s because some of us have cared so little about what women think of us, it has caused us to care so little about what we think of them.

It is a sick cycle and perhaps the most important incentive I can give for doing whatever it takes to stopping it is to think about the people who actually respect you not because you’re a man, but for the man you are. Then think about the people who know the man you are and don’t respect you.

When I think about those two groups lining up, these days I care about there being less people on the side of folks who do not respect me versus the side of folks who do. Whatever I have done to deserve the respect I received, I want to do more of it to others.

Some people say I’m putting way too much thought into the respect I get from women who are not my girlfriend. I say, up until recently, I have not thought about such a thing enough.

I worked for women to like me, sleep with me, not hate me, and love me. Now it’s time for their respect, not as a man, but for the man I am.

“At Last” is one of those songs.

RIP Etta James. Your voice will live as long as love itself.

(And because I can’t help myself)