Act like a lady, think like a man (6 page)

This is not to say you’ll never have a conversation with your man that lasts longer than two minutes. We understand that sometimes we’re going to have to give a little more in terms of communicating with you—that every now and then we’re going to have to spill our guts and reveal what’s going on in our heads. We also know that you may just want to lie in our arms and cuddle and talk it out with absolutely no resolution. We are capable of doing this, too. It’s not easy. But it can be done. We know that sitting and listening and even participating in a long conversation about your feelings is necessary and inevitable. But don’t be surprised if those conversations are few and far between. Detailed conversation is what you have with your girlfriends. Men just want to hear the problem and then fix it. It’s about maintaining this balance—the two of you understanding exactly what each other requires to be innately happy, and then trying to provide at least some of that so that both mates feel like they’re in this relationship with the other. For men, that means that every once in a while, they may have to sit and be still and just listen. For women, it would go a long way if they respected the encryption of manhood—that we’re too focused on who we are, what we do, and how much we make to spend a whole lot of time sitting around pondering things that can’t be fixed.

Of course, it would go a long way if women stopped opening the conversation with “we need to talk.” The moment you say that, our defenses go up, the repair tools come out, the sweat starts rolling, and we’re sprinting through the events of the past weeks, trying to figure out what we did wrong, when we did it, and how we’re going to fix it so that we’re not in trouble anymore.

In fact, I think it’s a good idea that, if you just want to vent, you start the conversation with something simple, like, “Honey, look, nothing is really wrong—I just want to tell somebody something.” That’s a great opening line; it allows us to relax, take our foot down from the witness stand, put away our “fix it” tools, and actually sit and listen to what you have to say.

5 F i r s t  T h i n g s  F i r s t

We were doing the
Steve Harvey Morning Show
live by remote in Detroit, and a woman came up to the podium to say hello to me and the crew—a really attractive girl, nicely dressed, with beautiful dark skin, pretty white teeth, gorgeous body, really put together all around. And when she started talking, she really threw me because I could hear in her voice that she was mature, but she just didn’t look like she sounded. So I asked the lady how old she was; she said she was forty-two. Blew me away. I didn’t think she was a day older than thirty. Then I asked her how many kids she had.

“Five,” she said, smiling from ear to ear. “I’ve got three of my own, and I adopted two.”

Now I’m sitting here thinking, wow—that’s really slick.

She’s over age forty, she’s taking care of not only the kids she gave birth to, but two more she took in out of the kindness and generosity of her heart, and she looks years younger than she really is—she’s really got it going on. Be clear: I wasn’t about to do anything with this information because guess what? I’m a happily married man—emphasis on happily. But some years ago, that conversation would have gone down a wholly different way, and it would not have involved me asking her anything about her kids, where she works, how she’s living—none of that.

But a guy who was all in her space while we continued doing our show—that’s another story. He clearly had plans for this lady. You could tell just by the way he was leaning into her, hanging on her every word. Oh, he was talking to her like there weren’t hundreds of people surrounding them—like my cohost and I weren’t in the middle of a show. I knew what he was trying to get to. But clearly,
she
had no clue.

In front of everyone during a commercial break, I asked her,

“What does
he
want?”

She laughed and gave me a confused look. “Nothing,” she giggled. “We’re just making small talk.” Mind you, the guy trying to talk to her isn’t saying a word. He knows that I know.

And after a few more commercial breaks, and a lot more of his obvious moves, I finally told her he was looking for much more than a simple conversation.

“He wants something from you,” I said. “I can prove it to you.”

Now the crowd, full of mostly women, is goading me on.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “Turn around right now, look in his face, and do not take your eyes off his eyes. Now tell him how many kids you got and watch his reaction.”

The man seemed calm until she got to the word
five
. He reeled back like a spooked horse; his whole facial structure changed, and even though he covered his mouth, he couldn’t keep his surprised, “Ooh,” from escaping his lips.

He couldn’t get away from her fast enough. The next break, he was down on the other end of the venue—fifty feet away, in some other woman’s face. See, he wanted something from her, but that something didn’t include five kids. He had a good job, he appeared intelligent. He had told me he was making good money; clearly, however, he couldn’t foresee his money split those many ways. When he was flirting with this woman, all he envisioned was he and her getting down to it, no strings attached.

My cohost just laughed and laughed and asked me how I knew all of this. It’s easy: when a man approaches you, he has a plan. And the main plan is to sleep with you, or to find out what it takes to sleep with you.

Here’s a generalization but in my experience, it’s true.

Women love to sit and talk for no apparent reason but to talk, but we men, we’re just not cut out to chitchat for the sake of chitchat—we don’t have time for it. We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we’re coming over there. If we don’t want anything from you, we’re not coming over there.

Period. Please highlight this part right here so you can always remind yourself the next time a man steps to you: a man always wants something.
Always.
And when it comes to women, that plan is always to find out two things: (1) if you’re willing to sleep with him, and (2) if you are, how much it will cost to get you to sleep with him.

That’s his mission in the club.

That’s his charge in the lunchroom at the office.

That’s what he’s up to when he skips past all those seats at the church and sits down in the pew right next to you.

If a man sees you and asks you how you’re doing, what do you think he came over there for? He didn’t come over to learn anything from you, to find out about your interests and likes and wants. That’s what women do when they’re interested in getting to know someone. For a man, it’s really less complicated: he liked what he saw from across the room and now he’s going to go over there and get it. He doesn’t care anything about your personality or what you do for a living; your friends mean nothing to him, and whether you know Jesus is irrelevant. He just wants to know if he might be able to sleep with you, and he’s talking to you to determine exactly how much he has to invest to get what he wants.

When I say, “invest,” I’m not talking solely about monetary values; I’m talking about your values—your requirements. He’s trying to see if your “price” is too high, if it’s affordable, if he can get it on credit, whether he can get it tonight. If you don’t lay out any requirements, then you’re free—game on. He knows he can get you to the bed with minimal effort. But if you tell him up front you have requirements—that you need his time, his respect, his attention—then he knows you’re expensive, that he’s going to need to put in work to get the cookie.

For some men, that cost may be too high—they’re just looking for a good time and have no interest in “investing” time and respect and a commitment. One man may assess right away, “Man, I got to go by there two or three times a week, gas is five dollars a gallon, I got this other woman I’m hollering at, I’m going to have to call her and all of that. No, that price is out of my range.”

For another man, your sticker price may be affordable.

This is useful information to you because now you know when a man approaches you, you can cut through the riffraff, lay down your requirements (which I’ll talk about later), and determine right away whether he’s willing to pay for what it is he’s looking for. Okay, so ladies: it’s no secret now—and you can act accordingly. When you’re not aware that all men have plans, you’re not placing requirements on him, and if you’re not setting any ground rules, then you’re essentially telling him that you’re open for
his
rules. You’ve established that you don’t care how often he calls, when he comes by, how often you all talk, and whether he opens your door; this means that he’ll call you when he gets ready, he won’t be opening any of your doors, and even though you asked him to be there at seven, he won’t show up until eight—all because you didn’t (a) acknowledge that a man always has a plan and (b) act accordingly.

This is precisely what was on my father-in-law’s mind when one of my daughters brought home her alleged “boyfriend” to the house for a family dinner. You should know that my father-in-law is one of the smartest men I ever met in my life—he’s a man I look up to, and I look up to very few men. The things that come out of his mouth are usually, if not always, on point and make me think. The same was true this particular evening when he lined up this boy on the living room couch and asked him plain as day, “So, what’s your plan with my granddaughter?”

The young man, about thirty, asked very simply, “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean just what I asked,” my father-in-law said. “What is your plan?”

“I don’t have no plan,” he said.

“Then what are you doing?” my father-in-law asked.

“I’m just trying to get to know her,” he insisted.

“But what’s your plan? Where is this going?” my father-in-law snapped back.

Finally, under the pressure of the questioning, the squared shoulders, and two straight-faced black men making it clear we know the game, the boy finally broke down and said those four fateful words: “We’re just kicking it.”

My father-in-law sat there and stared at him for a minute, satisfied, finally, that he’d gotten to the bottom of it. He tasted blood. “Okay, then—cool,” my father-in-law said quietly.

“Let’s share that with her, that you’re just ‘kicking it.’ Let’s see how she feels being the kicked one. Let’s take that back to her.”

She looked so crazy when, a few minutes later, we let her know about her man’s plans—that they’re just “kicking it.” Because she knows from our constant talks and updates and sessions about men that when it comes to relationships, you’re either being kicked or you’re potential long-term material. It can’t be both. Clearly, he had a plan that was different from what she wanted.

Luckily my daughter had her granddad and me to help her decipher her man’s plan. But not every woman has a father figure around to hip her to the game. Now, when that man comes smiling all up in your face and talking like he’s really into you, act like you know. Because now, you do: he wants to sleep with you.

What’s your price?

If you let him know up front, he will let you know up front if it’s too high a price for him to pay. And then you can move on.

6  
S p o r t s  F i s h  v s . K e e p e r s
 

Anyone who really knows me knows about my passion for fishing. I’ve always loved the tranquil moments that come with the sport—sitting on the bank or the deck of a boat, out on the open water. There is no greater peace. But I also crave the sudden explosion of adrenaline that comes when I feel a fish on the other end of my line; you can’t imagine the thrill that comes when I have to use every bit of my might and mind to see if I can keep this fish hooked, reel it in, and get it in the boat.

And then comes the hard part—deciding whether to keep the fish or throw it back. So in addition to fishing, hooking them, and reeling them in, I get another rush when I’m forced to look at them, see how they feel, and evaluate whether they make it on my stringer. And trust me: a fish has to be really special to make it onto my stringer. Otherwise, it gets tossed back into the water, so I can fish some more.

A man fishes for two reasons: he’s either sport fishing or fishing to eat, which means he’s either going to try to catch the biggest fish he can, take a picture of it, admire it with his buddies and toss it back to sea, or he’s going to take that fish on home, scale it, fillet it, toss it in some cornmeal, fry it up, and put it on his plate. This, I think, is a great analogy for how men seek out women.

See, men are, by nature, hunters, and women have been put in the position of being the prey. Think about it: it used to be that a man “picked” a wife, a man “asked” a woman to dinner, a man had to get “permission” from a woman’s father to have her hand in marriage, and even, in some cases, to date her. We pursued—in fact, we’ve been taught all our lives that it was not only a good thing to chase women, but natural. Women have bought into this for years, too; how many times have you or one of your girls said, “I like it when a man pursues me,” or “I need him to romance me and give me flowers and make me feel like I’m wanted”? Flowers, jewelry, phone calls, dates, sweet talk—these are all the weapons in our hunting arsenal when we’re coming for you.

But the question always remains: once we hook you, what will we do with you? Taking a cue from my love of fishing, my philosophy is that men will treat women like one of these two things: a sports fish or a keeper. How we meet, how the conversation goes, how the relationship develops, and the demands you make on a man will all determine whether you’ll be treated like a sports fish—a throwback—or a keeper, the kind of woman a man can envision settling down with. And the way we separate the two is very simple, as I explain next.

Doesn’t have any rules, requirements, respect for herself, or guidelines, and we men can pick up her scent a mile away. She’s the party girl who takes a sip of her Long Island iced tea or a shot of her Patrón, then announces to her suitor that she just wants to “date and see how it goes,” and she’s the conservatively dressed woman at the office who is a master at networking, but clueless about how to approach men. She has no plans for any ongoing relationships, is not expecting anything in particular from a man, and sets absolutely not nary one condition or re-striction on anyone standing before her—she makes it very clear that she’s just along for whatever is getting ready to happen. For sure, as soon as she lets a man know through words and action that he can treat her just any old kind of way, he will do just that. Men will stand in line to sign up for that, believe me.