Homie? Lover? Friend?

Sometimes I think I'm from another world (preach)
When I'm trynna tell a woman just exactly where I stand, that
I want a girl, when I want a girl
And when I don't want a girl, I want a girl who understands that
And that's some hard shit to explain
To a woman that's in love with you, it's a pitiful thing

-Slow it Down, Little Brother

Ladies have you ever heard this from a man: Girl, I wanna be with you but I’m tryna get myself together spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. And if you haven’t heard this, then you’ve heard some variation of this ish: I’m not really ready for a relationship right now…Girl, I wanna be with you but I’ve just got so much going on in my life, you know I got this new job, I’m trying to go back to school, I have to study for the bar exam, I’m going through a divorce, I haven’t traveled the world yet…The list is endless… And if you haven’t heard that, then you have a friend who has. And she’s spitted back these tired lines to you and you’ve wanted to smack her upside the head and be like “he said what?”

So many of us have been told by a man that they don’t wanna be with us. They have said it to our faces, texted us, sent us a postcard, rented a plane and had ‘I don’t wanna be with you’ sky written. And sometimes we still don’t get the message. And that’s mainly cause we fall for the "he might be saying he doesn’t want to be with me but he ain’t acting like it…” Ahhh yes…because men know that they have to do just enough to keep our asses hanging on.

They take us out just enough. They call us just enough. They remember just enough important things about us. Ooooh and then if they put it on us just right or sometimes just enough, we get all possessive, thinking, well if he didn’t want me, he wouldn’t be spending time with me. Oh how wrong we can be. Because when you strip back all the things y’all have "done" together, I think that it all comes down to these somewhat harsh, but oh so telling words by Andre 3000: “don’t wanna meet your daddy, just want you in my caddy. Don’t wanna meet your mama, just wanna make you cumma. I’m just being honest.” Oh yeah Andre also said, “y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.” Oh the nuggets of truth that can be found in Hey Ya…But I digress…

I always took the following lines: I want a girl, when I want a girl. And when I don't want a girl, I want a girl who understands that, to mean that even when he didn’t want an official girlfriend, he wanted to keep a girl around who would perform girlfriend like duties without the official title or respect it should command. You know keep someone in his back pocket, so he could pull her out when things get rough, or he needs someone to talk to, or he just needs him some…you know what I’m talkin bout…

And apparently the girl is just supposed to understand that. But in reality what girl really understands it? We may come off hard in the beginning like ok I’m down with this plan, we’re just kickin’ it, chillin’, “datin”, or what other ‘let’s just be free, we don’t need labels’ mess he comes up with…but then emotions get involved, and we start asking those questions: “where is this going?”, “what are we doing?”, to which he reminds us that he told us he didn’t want anything serious…

And this can lead us to feeling and acting a little crazy. And our actions and feelings go a little something like this: “You have managed to turn me from a woman of substance into a brick flying, calling too damn much...Crying and crying, spying way down down low with flats on from the opposite side of the bar... Easy-Off loaded on top of your car chick... I never intended to be this chick..."© Jill Scott. And even though we may get upset with ourselves, sometimes because we have invested so much time and energy into what has now become a mess, we start thinking, “well if I could just change his mind.” Yeah you can’t. I’m just being honest.

Where do I get this expertise from? Well, Rum Punch was once a student at the ‘I Can Change His Mind’ School, and then I studied abroad at the well renowned ‘Maybe If I Just Wait for Him to Come Around’ University, specializing in these thoughts: If I hang in there with him, do things for him, cook for him, be good to him, be nicer to him than he is nice to me, look good for him, rock those stilleto pumps for him, put it back on him, then he won’t go anywhere. He will want to be with me. Hmm…This didn’t really work for me. Anyone else?

Yeah I had to come to my senses. I mean who is really going to be financially, emotionally, spiritually and physically complete at the same time? You will always have to get some aspect of your life "together". And so as my friends and I get older, we have learned and recited this motto: people make time for who and what they want to make time for. And I finally realized that those “reasons” for not wanting a relationship were actually excuses. And that it wasn’t that he didn’t want a girlfriend, he just didn’t want me as a girlfriend. And while it hurt at the moment, in the end when it was all said and done, that, I could understand.

That's my time y'all! Happy Rum Punch Friday! Leaving you with a little something extra: