Act like a lady, think like a man (3 page)

But the minute he assigns a title—the moment he lays claim to you in front of people who mean something to him in his life, whether it’s his boy, his sister, or his boss—that’s the minute you know your man is making a statement. He is professing his intentions for you—and professing them to the people who need to know that information. A profession is key—you will know if a man is serious about you once he claims you.

Once we’ve claimed you, and you’ve returned the honor, we’re going to start bringing home the bacon. Simply put, a man who loves you will bring that money home to make sure that you and the kids have what you all need. That is our role—our purpose.

Society has told us men for millennium that our primary function is to make sure our families are set—whether we’re alive or dead, the people we love need want for nothing. This is the very core of manhood—to be the provider. That’s what it’s all about. (Okay, there are a few other things; for example, how well you’re en-dowed—and I’m not talking financially—and how well can you provide—now, I am talking financially.) If a man is in a position of being questioned about whether he’s able to provide, financially and otherwise, for the ones he loves, you might as well drop-kick his ego into an early grave. The more he can provide for his woman and his kids, the bigger and more alive he feels. Sounds simplistic, but that is the reality.

As a provider, a man pays the bills that have to be paid—the rent, the heat and light bill, the car note; he buys groceries; he pays school tuition; and he takes care of other household ex-penditures. He will not spend his money on trifling things and come to you with what’s left, and he will not selfishly give you a little cut and take the rest for himself. And a man who truly loves you would never make you ask for money for necessities—he would make sure that you need and mostly want for nothing, because every pat on the back he gets for bringing more money into the house, every kiss he gets for handing over cash for school clothes and supplies and toys, every bit of appreciation he gets for keeping the lights and cable on, boosts his prow-ess as a man. That’s why, if he’s a real man, he will always put buying something for himself far below his responsibility to provide for his family. His need for another set of golf clubs or expensive shoes or a fancy car or anything else men like to spend their money on will pale in comparison to providing for loved ones, because those golf clubs can’t make him square his shoulders the way true appreciation from a woman can. Conse-quently, everything he does is going to be about trying to make sure the woman he loves has what she needs.

Now I know that expecting a man to care for you financially, no questions asked, in an age in which women have been raised to be financially independent of men gives you pause; if you’ve been taught all your life to go dutch on your dates and pull out your own checkbook when it comes to paying your bills, and you’ve been repeatedly told that you can’t depend on a man to do anything for you, then it’s understandable why you can’t wrap your mind around this simple concept.

But remember what drives a man; real men do what they have to do to make sure their people are taken care of, clothed, housed, and reasonably satisfied, and if they’re doing anything less than that, they’re not men—or shall we say, he’s not your man, because he will eventually do this for someone’s daughter, maybe not you.

For sure, all too many men shirk this responsibility, whether out of selfishness, stupidity, or sheer inability or a combination of all three. But some men simply do not have the education, resources, and wherewithal to make an adequate amount of hard cash. And if a man can’t provide, then he doesn’t feel like a man, so he flees to escape the horrible feelings of inadequacy, or he’s going to bury those feelings in drugs and alcohol. Indeed, you can probably trace a whole host of the pathologies exhibited by the most trifling of men back to their inability to provide. Some try to use crime to make up for it (clearly, our prisons tell us that’s not working); some use drugs (our street corners tell us that’s not working, either); some just run (the numbers of women raising kids alone, and falling into poverty because of it, tell us that’s definitely not working). But ask any one of those men who aren’t doing right by themselves or the ones they love what they regret most, and I’ll bet you a majority of them will say the same thing: they wish they had the ability to provide.

Of course, some men simply refuse to share the money in their pockets with their women. As some rap songs and hip-hop magazines tell you, these men feel they’re being “played”

if they provide anything of monetary value to the opposite sex.

Some men even label any and every woman who expects her intended to provide for her the very handy, decisively ugly phrase
gold digger.
Oh, when it comes to women, that phrase gets tossed around these days like dough in a New York City pizza parlor. In fact, men have set it up so well that we’ve got women thinking that if they remotely expect a man to pay for their dinner, or buy them a drink at the bar, or set any financial requirements for their man, then they’re gold diggers.

I’m here to tell you, though, ladies, that the term “gold digger” is one of the traps we men set to keep you off our money trail; we created that term for you so that we can have all of our money and still get everything we want from you without you asking for or expecting this very basic, instinctual responsibility that men all over the world are obligated to assume and embrace. It’s a “get-over” term, ladies—one that has a very legitimate premise (there are, of course, women who date and marry men solely for the cold, hard cash), but one that has been wrongly and almost universally applied to any woman who has made clear that she expects her man to fulfill his duty as a man.
Know this: It is your right to expect that a man will pay for
your dinner, your movie ticket, your club entry fee, or whatever else he
has to pay for in exchange for your time.
You all have to stop this foolishness with the “I pay for my dinner so he knows I don’t need him” approach. As I point out in the next chapter, “The Three Things Every Man Needs: Support, Loyalty, and the Cookie,” a man—a real one, anyway—wants to feel needed.

And the easiest way to help him get that high is to
let
him provide for you. This is only fair.

And if he loves you? Oh, he’s going to bring every cent home to you. He’s not going to come back from gambling all his money away, saying, “Here’s $100—that’s all I got this week.” He’s going to come straight home with that check, and if there’s anything left over after he takes care of each and every one of your needs, well, then he’ll play. This is man business, baby. It’s how we do.

Now, there are different ways to provide besides monetarily.

Your man could be broke, but he’s going to do everything within his power to make up for this by supplying your needs in other tangible ways. If you’re running low on groceries, he may not be able to give you money to go to the store, but he might have a little extra something in his refrigerator and pantry to hold you over until he can give you a couple of dollars. In other words, he’s not going to let you go hungry. If your car is broken down, he may not be able to pay for a mechanic, but he can call his buddies over to help him move your ride to the side of the road and give you rides to work until he figures out how to pay for your car to get fixed. If you need some pictures hung, and the sink unclogged, and a new garage door installed, a man who loves you will climb up a twenty-foot ladder to get that picture up on the wall, put a bucket down to catch the over-flowing water from the sink while he goes to find the right part he needs to fix the pipes, and pore through the instruction manual for hours to figure out how to get that garage door in.

Providing for the ones he loves and cares about, whether it’s monetarily or with sweat equity, is a part of a man’s DNA, and if he loves and cares for you, this man will provide for you all these things with no limits.

When a man truly loves you, anybody who says, does, suggests, or even thinks about doing something offensive to you stands the risk of being obliterated. Your man will destroy anything and everything in his path to make sure that whoever disrespected you pays for it. This is his nature. You pick most any male species on the planet, and the same is true: no one is going to disrespect their family without paying a cost—or at least putting up a serious fight. This is innate—recognized and respected from the first relationship that a boy has, that relationship being with his mother. He may not know what unconditional love is yet, but a boy child will never (a)admit that his mother is capable of making mistakes, or (b) let someone say or do something to his mother. This is taught to males practically from the womb—cover your mother, protect her, don’t let anybody say anything about her or do anything to her, and if they do, let them know it’s time to take it outside. This is most certainly the way it was taught in my house, too. I remember distinctly when I was a little boy, probably around age eight or so, standing there waiting for my mother to pull on her coat for our bus ride downtown. My father came in the room and said, very simply,

“You and your mother are going downtown—watch out for your mother.” That was rule number one in my father’s house: Do not come back in this house without your mother and your sisters. You might as well kill yourself or get on a bus and go somewhere else, but don’t come back without your mother and the girls. Now, I knew good and hell well that if anybody so much as raised a finger to my mother, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it—that she was really taking care of me on that bus. But, buddy, I’d be on the bus and in the store with my little chest stuck out, swearing I was doing something to protect my family.

Because that was what I was supposed to do.

Indeed, that is what every man is supposed to—and is willing to do—for the people for whom he professes and provides.

Once he says he cares about you, you are a prized possession to him, he will do anything to protect that prized possession. If he’s hearing you argue with a bill collector, he’s going to say,

“Who are you talking to? Let me talk to him right quick.” If your ex is calling and bringing drama in your life, your man is going to talk to him about it. If he sees your kids are cutting up and getting out of hand, he’s going to talk to them, too. In other words, he’s going to be providing protection and leader-ship for his family because he knows a real man is a protector.

There is not a real man living who will not protect what is his.

It’s about respect.

I’d argue that this is most certainly one of the key things any woman wants in her man, because it is what girls have been raised to expect—that they can count on the most important men in their lives to go to battle for them, and keep them safe from all harm, no matter the cost. I think you all know this so well that you take great care in letting a man who loves you know when someone’s been a threat or danger to you, because you know that your man—whether he be your father, brother, uncle, husband, or lover—is going to do everything in his power and then some to defend your honor. Maybe even hurt somebody, despite the consequences. For instance, you probably don’t really want to hype what’s going on down at your job because he might head down to the job and have a few words with your boss if necessary. And we all know that would not be a good situation.

I remember one time when my mother was at home and the insurance man came by looking for some money my mother didn’t have. My father was at work, so he didn’t actually witness this man come to our front door and say to my mother, “The next time I come here, you better have this money or else.” My dad got wind of the situation from one of my siblings, and when he asked my mother what, exactly, this man said to her, she hesitated and hemmed and hawed for a long time before she finally broke down and told my father about the exchange. She didn’t really want to tell him what went down because she knew my father would snap. When he finally had the information he needed, my father came to me and asked what time the insurance man usually shows up, and I told him. And the next time that man came by the house, my father was there waiting for him. I’ll never forget the image; that man never made it past the back of his car. When we looked out the window, my father had that man bent over the car with both his hands on that man’s neck. “If you ever say anything disrespectful to my wife again, I will
kill
you,” he said. Now, that may seem a little extreme, but this is what real men do to protect the ones they love.

Protection isn’t just about using brute, physical force against someone, though. A man who truly cares about or loves you can and will protect you in other ways, whether it be with advice, or stepping up to perform a task that he thinks is too dangerous for you to do. For instance, if it’s dark outside, he may not want you to put the car in the driveway or walk the dog by yourself because he fears for your safety; in this instance, he’ll move the cars and walk the dog himself, even if he’s just off a double shift, so that you can be inside where it’s safe. If you’re walking by someone who looks like he might be a threat, a man who loves you is going to protect you by putting himself between you and that guy as you walk by so if he tries anything, he’ll have to get through your man before he so much as lays a finger on you.

My wife, Marjorie, still cracks up when she thinks about how I “protected” her on a recent joint fishing and diving trip we took in Maui. See, my wife is a certified scuba diver. I am not. When we got out on those choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean, I couldn’t help but feel like something was going to happen to my wife down there, and I wouldn’t have any way of protecting her. Nonetheless, she put on all the equipment and began to descend into the water. I got antsy and immediately started lighting up cigars and walking around the boat explaining to the dive masters that “this one has to come back.” By the time she was actually under the water, I’d told my security guy, who can’t scuba dive, to put on his snorkel and get in and keep an eye on her. I’d also told everyone onboard—from my manager to the captain—that “if my wife is not back up here in thirty-five minutes, everybody’s putting on some suits and we’re going to go get her.” The guy leading the expedition said as nicely as he could, “Sir, everybody can’t go down to save one person,” but his words meant nothing to me. “I’m telling you,”