Act like a lady, think like a man (19 page)

You’ll be happy you did.

Mostly out of weakness and a need to control something in their lives. But I have found that men who hit women have no tales or stories of hitting men.

They’re
that
weak.

We don’t mind them. I mean, your man can’t tell you not to have girlfriends any more than you can say he can’t go play golf with the boys. Girlfriends are fine.

We hate gossiping. But we know we can’t stop it.

It’s an invasion of privacy, and a man is pretty confident that if you and your friends are willing to talk about other

people together, then your friends are

probably talking about you and him, too. Keep that in mind the next time you start getting all into other people’s business.

Not if she’s The One. Wives and significant others are off-limits in conversations between men, because no man wants you thinking about his woman any kind of way, much less in a romantic or sexual way. Every man is clear on this. However, if you’re not The One—you’re just someone that we’re “doing” while we look for The One—then you will be talked about, rest assured.

Look, if you don’t have a good relationship with his mother, and she doesn’t care for you, it is going to be stressful. Any woman who has been in a relationship with a man for ninety days should have met the family already, and if he hasn’t introduced you, then you either need to ask why, or you should pretty much accept that he’s not interested in forging a long-term relationship with you. If you’re good enough for him to make it to his bed, you should be good enough to meet his mother.

Hell, no. No man is breaking up with his girl because she doesn’t get along with family members (other than his mother). A sister doesn’t have to come around to the house and be a part of family functions if she can’t get along with the woman a man loves. The same holds true for cousins, aunties, and uncles.

If you put your family before him, he’s out of there.

It’s cool—men know the child has a father, and if he’s in his kid’s life, we understand we’ll have to have some type of interaction with him. But your new man needs to be able to come to your house and be himself. If he’s in a committed relationship with you and he sees the kids doing something wrong and he can’t say anything to them about it, then you’re not letting him be the provider and protector he wants to be, and that’s going to be a problem for him. You can’t allow a man to buy school clothes, help put a roof over your head, put groceries in the refrigerator and buy gas for the car, and then tell him he doesn’t have the right to be a father figure—if not a father—to the kids. If that’s the case, then what is his point of being there? You’ll have to figure out some kind of balance—one that allows your child’s father to do his job, but also allows your new man to do his job, too. And if he can’t participate in raising the child, that could explain why the baby’s daddy left in the first place.

Look, there are only a few Will and Jada Pinkett Smiths in this world. If you’re one of them, congratu-lations. But really, he’s not betting that you two will hit it off too well, and so he won’t force the issue.

If you’re calling to say, “I have a special surprise for you when you get home,” that’s a good interruption.

But if it’s a phone call to talk about petty problems?

Not a good interruption. Just because you feel like saying something right now this minute doesn’t mean it should be said.

Once a man gives his answer to whatever question you’re asking (or he thinks he heard, even if you never asked one), he’s probably not listening to you anymore. Your cue is when he gives an answer. As far as he’s concerned, his solution will fix whatever it is you’re talking about, and if you’re still talking after that, he’s not listening anymore.

That “I don’t cook thing” is really big, now. If you’re gorgeous and you don’t cook, we can kind of overlook it. But if we’re married and you’re not hooking yourself up like you used to and you don’t cook?

You’re asking too much—you’re taking us for granted.

Men appreciate a woman who can put together a meal.

Here’s good news for you women who can’t cook: all of the cooking issues you have in the kitchen can be balanced out if you can really cook in the bedroom.

Absolutely. When we’re considering whether to get into a committed relationship with you, we’re thinking about what our house will be like, whether you’ll be a good mother, if you’ll be able to handle the finances and make sound decisions. You should be evaluating us in the same fashion.

Men cannot stand women who are not clean.

When our boys come over, do you really think we want to show them a junky house? Are we really going to invite our mothers over to sit on a couch in a nasty living room? I don’t think so. How the house looks is a reflection of you; people aren’t going to walk in and say, “He sure keeps a dirty house”; they’re going to say, “She sure keeps a dirty house.” No matter how society changes or how many responsibilities men take on in the household, the bottom line is that everyone still expects the woman to turn a house into a home—a clean home.

We men are no different. We like it when you put out the candles and the floral arrangements and the china and the silver, and we like to walk into a clean house. Now if we’re both working and you don’t have time to keep it up, and I don’t want to keep it up, then we need to carve out some cash to get a housekeeper! But the house simply cannot be dirty.

Yes. It determines how much we’re going to have to work, and how much fixing we’re going to have to do to provide for you. Now, it may not be a deal breaker.

But it could certainly be a factor that men weigh.

We’ll follow you to a new job if we’re secure in our manhood and confident we can still provide for you the way we want and need to. But if we have to lose everything we’ve worked to build to do it, and there’s not evidence that we’ll be able to pick up the pieces while you’re working your new job, then it’s going to be a tough fight.

We’re only interested in it if it’s going to save our ass. If we think we’re going to lose you and counseling will keep us together, then we’ll go. But if it won’t save our ass, we can’t see any good reason why we should sit on a couch and talk to a person with a tablet, getting judged for every move we’ve ever made.

We like them. But please don’t expect the same reaction you would have. We’re not going to go to pieces and cry because you brought home a gift or planned a special trip or put together a nice, romantic surprise dinner for us. That’s, well, not very manly.

For the most part, we don’t worry about it to the extent that women do, because we know your makeup is different from ours. You’re more careful about the mates you choose, and you have higher standards when it comes to deciding who you will sleep with. In our minds, this drastically cuts down the likelihood of our women cheating.

I would like to acknowledge the fabulous listeners of the
Steve Harvey Morning Show
who have inspired me with their questions concerning relationships.

I would like to thank Denene Millner, who had the daunting task of taking my words and my sometimes unique phrases, putting them on paper, and making them readable by people in the human race. In other words I used her as a translator and she has managed in a wonderful way to make my thoughts quite enjoyable and insightful to read.

To Shirley Strawberry, my cohost of the morning show, and to Elvira Guzman, my publicist: The two of them sat through every single writing session and every single editing session and bombarded me with questions, scenarios, and things from the female’s perspective that we as men could never possibly know. These two very different viewpoints, one from a single female with no kids and the other from a woman who has a child and has been divorced, allowed me to get a wide spectrum of questions, and without them this book would not have been as thorough.

To my wife, Marjorie, who has made my life so full, so complete, and, most important, so peacefully happy that it has allowed me to sit down and think beyond my current circumstance. Her cheerful spirit has made me a more cheerful person and that has allowed me to be far more sharing than I’ve ever been.

And to my heavenly Father who has created every blessing I have ever known in my lifetime, I give him all the glory the honor and the praise.

About the Author

STEVE HARVEY  began doing stand-up comedy in the mid-1980s. His success as a stand-up comedian led to a WB network show,
The Steve Harvey Show,
which ran from 1996 to 2002. It was a huge hit and won multiple NAACP Image Awards. In 1997, Harvey continued his work in stand-up comedy, touring as one of the “Kings of Comedy,” along with Cedric the Entertainer, D. L.

Hughley, and Bernie Mac. The comedy team would later be reunited in a film by Spike Lee called
The Original
Kings of Comedy
. Steve Harvey is now widely known as the host of the nationally syndicated
Steve Harvey
Morning Show,
which has more than seven million listeners
.
Harvey continues his unending pursuit and commitment to furthering opportunities in high schools throughout the country with generous contributions from the Steve Harvey Foundation.

WWW.STEVEHARVEY.COM

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Credits

Designed by Janet M. Evans

Photography by Quantrell Colbert

Copyright

ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A MAN. Copyright © 2009 by Steve Harvey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader December 2008

ISBN 978-0-06-179655-5

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