Act like a lady, think like a man (14 page)

Real men extend themselves to women they care about. If you have a problem and your man does not extend himself—he doesn’t try to make it better—this is not a good candidate for benefits.

Now that other man, the one who’ll scoot on the ground on his back with the toolbox, and come back out hours later with car grease all over his shirt and hands and face from trying to fix your raggedy car? That’s the one who might deserve a cold beer and later on, some benefits.

Let’s say an ex of yours is starting to call again, and it’s making you uncomfortable because the breakup was particularly nasty and you just don’t want to go down that road with him again.

You tell the new guy you’re bothered by this and are not sure how to make the ex just go away. A benefits-worthy man will immediately launch into “fix-it” mode—he will see what he can do to (a) stop the guy from calling, and (b) get you to feel safe again. He might tell you something like, “Next time he calls, let me talk to him.” That’s a little extreme, but there are some men who will get on the line and let the last ex know to mind his place. Or your new man may give you suggestions for how to deal with the unwanted phone calls; he might tell you to block his number or put a special ring on the phone so you know who it is when the phone rings, maybe even give you a few words to say to this guy to make him stop calling. This is a pressure situation; it doesn’t require an action, but a reaction. If the new guy says something like, “I just can’t get into all of this,” then he’s not a good candidate for benefits. You’re going to be in pressure situations in your relationship time and time again, and you should know up front, right now, if this guy is ready to handle it. If he goes into protect or fix-it mode, then he envisions you as his woman. And he just might be worth the benefits.

Say you lose a loved one—someone really close to you. A man who has plans for you will immediately offer some form of comfort and help so that you can take the time to grieve. He might ask you if he can take your kids out for a couple of hours so you can have some time to yourself, or he might ask you if he can go with you to the funeral home to be with you while you see about the funeral arrangements, and so that he can express his condolences to your family. Note, ladies, he’s probably not going to want to sit there and let you retrace your child-hood and reminisce about the first time your deceased loved one pushed you on the swing; that’s not about to happen—it’s not what men do. But a real man will respond with some kind of solution—he will do what he can to help you stop crying, because no man wants to see his woman crying. If this man is not comforting—if he’s not coming up with some solutions to help you feel better, then he needs to be fired. He has no rights to the benefits.

A man who is worthy of the benefits will be there for you no matter what bad circumstance comes along. If you lose your job or fall behind on some payments because you had a huge and unexpected financial situation to deal with, he’ll recognize your need for help and rise to the occasion, whether it’s giving you a little extra cash to make the minimum payment on your bills, stopping by with a few bags of groceries, or filling your gas tank.

Let’s just get right to the crux of this whole chapter: when a man asks for sex, and he is told no, his reaction to that no will tell you everything you need to know about him. If the phone calls cease or become infrequent, the flowers stop coming, the dating slows down, please understand that this man was just in it for the sex. If he says something stupid, such as, “I don’t need to wait for sex—I can get it from anybody,” you tell him right back, “Please do.” This cuts the riffraff away right away. But if your saying no doesn’t deter him, and he continues to try to get to know you better and prove to you that he’s worthy of your benefits, then he’s really, truly interested in you. Don’t get me wrong: he’s still interested in the sex. But he’s also interested in knowing how you feel and what time frame you’re working on.

Then the relationship becomes about what you want—what your needs are. And that’s what you’re after, right?

It’s that simple.

Now, I realize that ninety days sounds like a lot of time and you kinda need to be real creative to keep his attention on you and your new relationship. So I came up with a list of things you can do with your man to help you—and him—stay focused on the relationship.

Go on dates that help you find out each other’s interests: if he’s into photography, hit up a photography exhibit at the local museum; if you’re into cooking, take a cooking class together.

Host a barbecue at your house and invite him to meet your friends and family; a good guy should be comfortable meeting the people you love.

Go to church together; know that he’s interested.

Sign up for a sexy Latin dance class so you can learn some new moves—it’ll show you if he’s into trying new things, and you can tell if the man has, um, rhythm.

Go out for a picnic in the park with the kids; see if he’s comfortable with them.

Find out each other’s favorite artists and attend a concert together.

Release your inner kid and spend an evening playing games at an arcade.

Have a few “firsts” together—go horseback riding together, or hit up a batting cage, or fall all over each other at the ice skating rink.

Volunteer together—help out at a local soup kitchen or read books to kids at a local foster home; you can tell a lot about a man who’s willing to help others.

Rent a convertible and get lost cruising in your city; you’ll have plenty of time to talk on a long drive.

Find a quiet place where you can watch the sunset together.

Play a board game.

Go for a long walk under a starlit sky.

Send each other naughty e-mails, so he can be sure that when he does get it, it’s going to be good. (And you can make sure he’s literate while you’re at it.) Read a passage out of each other’s favorite books. 

Have a movie night in which you both bring your favorite DVDs.

Go to a record store and listen to each other’s favorite artists.

Challenge each other to do something silly, like build a sandcastle at the beach or a game of jacks or marbles.

Hit up a comedy show; you can learn a lot about a person by what they find funny and what they think is offensive.

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I f  H e ’ s  M e e t i n g  t h e  K i d s
  
A f t e r  Y o u  D e c i d e  H e ’ s “ t h e  O n e , ”

I t ’ s T o o L a t e

Let’s get one thing straight. When a man approaches you, he doesn’t see anything except what’s in front of him—how you’re fitting into your jeans, what the shape of your leg looks like in those heels, how your lips look with that lip gloss shining, how beautiful your eyes are with all those colors around them. We don’t care if you use M.A.C or Bobbi Brown, Maybelline or L’Oréal. We don’t care anything about where you live, who you used to be with, what kind of car you’re driving, how much money you’re making and spending, or even who you’re spending it on. And we especially don’t consider whether you have kids and what that would mean if we were in a relationship with you. In fact, if we’re about game and our game goes right, we never make it to the kids; we figure we’re going to have dinner a couple of times, maybe catch a movie or go bowling, and be in a room with a bed frame and a mattress in it in a matter of days if our game is proper, or a few weeks if you’re playing hard to get. Kids? Please. Some men don’t care any which way about your kids. The guy you’re trying to hook up with won’t be any more interested in your life as a mother than what color toenail polish you’ll ask for at your next pedicure appointment. In fact, if a guy is in it for one thing—if he’s a game runner looking for nothing more than your cookie—then the plan is to
never meet the kids
. And once he gets what he was looking for, oh, you can believe he’ll be plotting how to move on.

What’s most likely to happen is you’ll follow the time-honored single mom tradition of dating a guy, all the while keeping him as far away from your home life as possible—partly because you want to get clarity on the relationship and the direction in which it’s moving, partly because you don’t want to introduce your kids to any man unless you’re absolutely, 100

percent sure that he’s in it for the long haul. Once you’ve convinced yourself there’s long-term potential with the guy in question,
then
you invite him home to meet the kids.

Stop right there.

I’m here to tell you that you’re going about this all the way wrong. You can’t become emotionally attached to this man and make some kind of verbal or, especially, physical commitment to him, and then finally drag him to the house only to find out he doesn’t like your kids, and your kids don’t like him. You’ve gone and got this guy all hot and bothered thinking you’re some sexy vixen who’s fun and interesting and wild and willing and able to swing from chandeliers, and once you walk into your living room, he’s tripping over Tonka trucks and mashing crayons into the carpet while your kids are begging for potato chips, crying loudly, and telling you the baby’s diaper needs changing? This is not a good situation, ladies. Not a good situation at all. In fact, the introduction is late—much too late.

See, a man needs to be able to see what all he’s going to be responsible for up front; if he sees you in the role as a mother, he’s going to immediately try to figure out if he sees himself in the role as a father. He’s going to evaluate if he can afford those children, if he wants to be bothered with the drama that comes when a baby’s daddy is likely lurking in the background, whether he can handle any animosity that might come his way when the kids get wind of him, and, finally, if he wants to play second fiddle to the children, whose needs you surely will meet many moons before his—all of these things and then some will be taken into account. And if you hold back key information he needs to assess his potential life together with you, and pop it on him when he’s not expecting it, he’s not going to receive the information well—plain and simple. In fact, he’s likely to think he was duped—duped into thinking he had one woman, when clearly he’s involved with someone who comes with a whole different set of obligations, responsibilities, and potential requirements. (Note: Telling him you have kids is
not
good enough.)

Besides that, the longer you hold off introducing him to the kids, the more he’s going to think there’s something wrong with them—that you’re hiding the kids for a reason. And that will only make him more apprehensive about that initial meeting; in his mind, you will have elevated the get-together to the level of a G8 summit, giving the introduction way more power than it needs or deserves. He’s meeting the kids, for goodness’ sake—they’re not sitting down to a state dinner at the White House.

So, to avoid all of this, you need to get the kids in the game early; a natural, casual introduction early in the relationship will set all of you up for a much healthier connection. He should be sitting across the room or at the park or at the ice cream parlor with those kids right around the time you start developing emotional feelings for this guy beyond “I’m attracted to him.” If you’re starting to wonder whether this guy is right for you, then you might as well see if he’s right for the kids. Let him see you and them in your natural setting—in a mother-child capacity. He should see you feeding oatmeal and fruits to the toddler, and braiding the seven-year-old’s hair, and folding the ten-year-old’s laundry, and cheering the fifteen-year-old on during football practice. He’ll be looking at all of these things to determine what kind of mother you are, and whether he’d like to have you be the mother of his children. This is hugely important, ladies, because we men recognize that some women aren’t cut out to be mothers—that there’s no automatic mothering gene that kicks in for women just because she has the equipment to carry and birth babies. Just as some women can’t drive, just as some women can’t do math, just as some women can’t cook, some women aren’t good at mothering. And a guy wants to see that the potential mother of his children is at least decent at it, that she can be kind, compassionate, creative, and stern.

He wants to see that you can handle matters without unraveling—that the stress that comes with marriage and family is something you can handle with decent skill—because the one thing we men do know is that marriage and family equals stress.

So we’re looking—looking to see if you can handle having to make dinner for the kids, while helping one with the homework, tending to the other who’s had the flu for a week, helping one get on the Internet, and kicking the other off the Internet’s inappropriate sites, all at the same time, without strangling anybody.

More important, you should introduce the kids to the man you’re dating so that you can see him in a fatherly capacity.

Walk him into your house, introduce him to little Taylor and Brianna, and then sit back and observe; you will get the purest and truest reaction from him when you do this. If he actually knows something about kids and likes them, he’ll be able to start and hold a conversation with a six-year-old; the biggest test of someone’s children skills is whether they can talk to kids in a way that will keep them engaged and elicit a response. If he freezes up and acts like he’s on the witness stand—he just can’t think of anything to say or ask—then chances are his intense reaction is a sign he’s just not all that good with children. Similarly, if he’s completely defenseless against the powers of the wicked little kids who are liked by no one but their mother, then that’s a potential problem, too. The guy who can’t hold his own in those situations—who can’t use humor or compassion or square his shoulders in a take-charge way to deflect any attempts by the kids to do damage or harm to him—may have some issues, too. After all, you want your potential man to be able to be, well, a man around your kids—someone who can take charge when the kids act like fools and they need a man to set them straight. Kids, after all, respect authority.

All of this, of course, will tell you a lot about this guy—about the kind of father he’d be. If he’s comfortable with the kids, can entertain as well as give them advice, and give you solid advice on how to troubleshoot, too, then he’s showing you the traits of a potentially good father figure for your child. Likewise, when he sees you with your children—nurturing them, feeding them, and keeping all of their needs satisfied, you’re showing him not only that you’re a good mother to your own children, but that you’re potential mother material for any children he already has, and any babies you two might make together.