Some Men Are Shallow... And Some Women Are Materialistic (Where do you stand)?
I am starting to realize something about men and women - we choose to be stupid. We have the capacity to put tons of metal into the sky and out in space without them crashing down. We put huge vessels on top of and under the water without them sinking. We think of and accomplish so many things with our minds and yet sometimes we act as if we have no sense at all. So I guess my question for today is, are we dumbing ourselves down to fit in with the rest of society?
Think about it, most of the things we do in this life are based on the reactions or ideas of others. We buy expensive cars many times because we want to show our success. We buy expensive watches, shoes, pocketbooks, and houses to sort of “one up” other people. I am not saying that we don't do some of these things because we genuinely like them but let's be honest - society sort of dictates what we think is hot and/or what we think is the best. That my friend, has caused us a lot of unnecessary heartache.
Fellas, how many of us are trying to buy love? Look at television and you will see exactly what I am talking about. I watch several shows where unattractive wealthy men are dating or are married to beautiful women. Their houses are huge, cars are exotic, and the gifts are spectacular. This is not just a T.V. thing though, it happens in everyday life. Men are breaking their backs to try to obtain the baddest women out there so that they can show their “arm candy” accomplishments.
Our society is all out of whack. Black Men's Magazine, Vibe, Maxim, and our videos keep suggesting what hot is. They keep trying to define women by what they look like and not necessarily by who they are. Fellas, we often times feed into the hype. Many times guys know that the women they have are there based on what they do for a living. Who he really is also falls to the wayside because he is seen as the financier for her wants. We are willing to trade in our hearts for a big booty and a smile.
Men are usually accused of being visual creatures and for the most part it is true. That keeps us in trouble but just as many men are blinded by superficial looks, many women are guilty of materialism. Women want a handsome guy but ladies are more likely than men to disregard looks. Let's face it, half of the MLB, the NFL, and the NBA are evident of that. Money goes a long way for some women in making men look better. Wanting to have the newest and best materialistic items have led women to sort of whoring themselves out to the highest bidder.
Tupac once said that he saw a woman in the mall who he thought was attractive. He said that she looked at him as if he were nobody. Later that day he spotted the girl with one of her friends (the friend noticed he was Tupac) and ran up to him. All of a sudden the woman was interested in him now. It's funny but I remember when I was dating, it amazed me how things worked. Yes I would approach the most attractive girls and with regular conversation, I was not that interesting. When asked what company I worked for, they became excited because I guess they thought that I was worth more than I really was. It was a destructive two way street -me only caring about looks and them seeing dollar signs.
Maybe this article is not written for you and maybe you think that it is filled with gross generalizations but I guarantee that you know men who have issues with running after beautiful women who can care a less about them. I also bet that you know women who are caught up with materialism and choose men based on the amount of zeros on his check. Come on, we all have a little bit of these characteristics within ourselves. Have you not asked your boy, “what does she look like or who can you compare her to?” Have you ever said, "girl, you know he is a doctor"?
Some of the things that I am saying are sort of tongue and cheek and I know it. The point though is still valid. We seriously place our love lives in harm’s way because we often times purposely choose the wrong people. We sometimes get married to known gold diggers because they are fine. We don't think about true love or where they will go if we lose all we have. We often times marry shallow people who will try to trade us in for a younger, more fit model. Maybe we don't find real love because we trifle with it and maybe we get screwed over because we keep trying to screw others over. Nothing is wrong with wanting a beautiful woman and nothing is wrong with wanting to be financially secure but when these things are your one and only focus, that is where you fail.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Are We Losing Our Intimacy?
Are We Losing Intimacy
Everywhere I look, there is sex. I dare you to go a complete day without seeing one sexual image. Let's face it, sexuality has become engrained in our society. Turn on the TV and what do you see, Bob standing there looking crazy in the face because he has taken ExtenZe. They show couples lying in bed excited about the new lubes on the market that help enhance the sexual experience. Women are shown walking around town with their hair blown back because they have received the new Trojan Vibrations. Try to do a simple Google search and you may get steered to a porn site. Unless we are living in a cave, we can't seem to get away from it.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE SEX! I believe that sex is a wonderful gift that was given to mankind from the beginning of time. There is nothing wrong with or dirty about sex. I just think we have started making sex into this nasty thing that is no longer intimate but is now a money making machine. It has now become an obsession in our world. I read somewhere that 76 percent of porn buyers were men and that the porn industry makes about 13.9 billion dollars a year.
I am not here to tell you my moral stance on porn so I will try to just give you some researched facts. A study from the BBC radio 1 found that one in three young adults who occasionally watched even just light porn said it had upset a partner or caused relationship problems. That number rose to seven out of ten for those who watched more than ten hours. Divorce Wizard.Com says that at a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 2/3 of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases.
I can't speak for all men but for the men that I know, porn has had a heavy influence on our lives. For the most part we learned about sex from these films. Some of our signature moves, and at some point maybe our wants and desires, have come from these movies. Let's be honest fellas, sometimes we are guilty of wanting our women to do some of the things that our favorite porn star is doing. When our mates don't provide this for us, we really become upset but don't realize that we asking for some demeaning stuff. Real talk, some men are hard down mad because their woman won't let them have anal sex with them or because their women won't let them ejaculate in their faces. While in some homes, these things are normal practices, in other homes they are deal breakers.
Much research has been done and documented on the effects porn usage has on men but research is not as prevalent on women. Though women tend to view porn at a much lower rate than men, sex shops are dominated with female sex toys. Passion parties have exploded on the scene and most of the women I know have thrown or have been to at least 2-3 of these parties. Some of the items that are introduced can be used for the sexual enhancement of both male and female partners however that depends on the household.
For some men, a vibrator is considered his arch enemy. Let's face it, the vibrator can do things that we just can't do. The average man can have sex without orgasm for 3-13 minutes. On average it takes a woman 10-20 minutes to have an orgasm which by the numbers can make it hard for a woman to reach orgasm during sex. So the vibrator comes in and does the trick at a much faster rate. According to Dr. Lori Buckley, a psychologist and certified sex therapist, "When women become used to the intensity of a vibrator, it can be harder to have an orgasm during intercourse since they're lacking the direct clitoral stimulation that they have learned to love and rely upon." I have heard some women say that they prefer vibrators to sex because they can use them for five minutes and get theirs, without the fuss of having sex and possibly not having an orgasm.
I am not trying to argue against porn or sex toys. Some couples enjoy both of them and to that, I say “to each his own”. The point that I am trying to make though, is that too many of us are losing intimacy based on these things. Husbands are making wives feel dirty and unattractive because of porn. Wives are making husbands feel inadequate because of their toys. Human beings were born with everything we need for sex. We have hands to caress and stroke, we have tongues and lips to kiss and suck, we have brains to think about how to help us achieve our sexual pleasures, and we have mouths to speak up and tell our partners what we want.
Everywhere I look, there is sex. I dare you to go a complete day without seeing one sexual image. Let's face it, sexuality has become engrained in our society. Turn on the TV and what do you see, Bob standing there looking crazy in the face because he has taken ExtenZe. They show couples lying in bed excited about the new lubes on the market that help enhance the sexual experience. Women are shown walking around town with their hair blown back because they have received the new Trojan Vibrations. Try to do a simple Google search and you may get steered to a porn site. Unless we are living in a cave, we can't seem to get away from it.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE SEX! I believe that sex is a wonderful gift that was given to mankind from the beginning of time. There is nothing wrong with or dirty about sex. I just think we have started making sex into this nasty thing that is no longer intimate but is now a money making machine. It has now become an obsession in our world. I read somewhere that 76 percent of porn buyers were men and that the porn industry makes about 13.9 billion dollars a year.
I am not here to tell you my moral stance on porn so I will try to just give you some researched facts. A study from the BBC radio 1 found that one in three young adults who occasionally watched even just light porn said it had upset a partner or caused relationship problems. That number rose to seven out of ten for those who watched more than ten hours. Divorce Wizard.Com says that at a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 2/3 of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases.
I can't speak for all men but for the men that I know, porn has had a heavy influence on our lives. For the most part we learned about sex from these films. Some of our signature moves, and at some point maybe our wants and desires, have come from these movies. Let's be honest fellas, sometimes we are guilty of wanting our women to do some of the things that our favorite porn star is doing. When our mates don't provide this for us, we really become upset but don't realize that we asking for some demeaning stuff. Real talk, some men are hard down mad because their woman won't let them have anal sex with them or because their women won't let them ejaculate in their faces. While in some homes, these things are normal practices, in other homes they are deal breakers.
Much research has been done and documented on the effects porn usage has on men but research is not as prevalent on women. Though women tend to view porn at a much lower rate than men, sex shops are dominated with female sex toys. Passion parties have exploded on the scene and most of the women I know have thrown or have been to at least 2-3 of these parties. Some of the items that are introduced can be used for the sexual enhancement of both male and female partners however that depends on the household.
For some men, a vibrator is considered his arch enemy. Let's face it, the vibrator can do things that we just can't do. The average man can have sex without orgasm for 3-13 minutes. On average it takes a woman 10-20 minutes to have an orgasm which by the numbers can make it hard for a woman to reach orgasm during sex. So the vibrator comes in and does the trick at a much faster rate. According to Dr. Lori Buckley, a psychologist and certified sex therapist, "When women become used to the intensity of a vibrator, it can be harder to have an orgasm during intercourse since they're lacking the direct clitoral stimulation that they have learned to love and rely upon." I have heard some women say that they prefer vibrators to sex because they can use them for five minutes and get theirs, without the fuss of having sex and possibly not having an orgasm.
I am not trying to argue against porn or sex toys. Some couples enjoy both of them and to that, I say “to each his own”. The point that I am trying to make though, is that too many of us are losing intimacy based on these things. Husbands are making wives feel dirty and unattractive because of porn. Wives are making husbands feel inadequate because of their toys. Human beings were born with everything we need for sex. We have hands to caress and stroke, we have tongues and lips to kiss and suck, we have brains to think about how to help us achieve our sexual pleasures, and we have mouths to speak up and tell our partners what we want.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Deaf, dumb, blind, insane, or stupid
Stop Acting Blind, Deaf, Dumb, Stupid, or Insane.
When it comes to dating human beings are either blind, deaf, dumb, stupid, or are insane. Something has got to be seriously wrong with us because it seems as if we make the same foolish decisions time and time again. Maybe we are just gluttons for punishment, clearly broken hearts just don't quite hurt enough.
The average human being is born with two functioning eyes. This gives us the ability to see and react to things that are going on around us. What I am starting to realize is that, though most of us have physical sight, we remain mentally blind. Let's be honest, we have seen enough in our lifetimes not to make certain decisions as they relate to dating and yet we still make them. I read an article in Essence Magazine not to long ago about a woman who had gone out on a date with a guy who did absolutely everything to sabotage the date and what did she do, she slept with him. Long story short, she left the guys house in tears because he was a jerk.
It's one thing to be a teenager and even a young adult who makes stupid decisions. We all think that being used and abused could never happen to us, but come on people, I know folks well over thirty years old who are still doing the same stupid crap. It's a little hard for people to feel sorry for you when you willing walk into a land mine field. One definition of being blind is to disregard evidence and sound logic. Another definition is that someone is not controlled by intelligence and reason. It's understandable not to see a bad situation before hand, but to see a bad situation and run to it, is just foolish.
Most of us are not only blind but we are also deaf. It's not that we are unable to hear, we hear just find. The problem is that we sometimes choose not to listen. I have friends who corner me just about every time I see them. They are always asking me about what some guy they are dating is thinking. Now grant it, I don't know what's in every guys mind but for the most part if a woman tells me something that a guy has said or done, I already know what he is thinking and/or is going to do. I know many people ask questions that they already know the answer to yet it is human to hope for a more positive answer than anticipated.
Sometimes you have to be willing to listen when your friends and family tell you something about the person you are dating. I know that we have this tendency to tell ourselves that our loved ones just don't know the person and are on the outside looking in but let's be honest. We often make excuses for our mates even when we know that our loved ones are telling us the truth about them. Many times people tell you exactly who they are and we choose not to listen to them and amazingly we are surprised when we get hurt.
When we aren't playing blind or deaf, we decide to play dumb. The real definition of dumb is someone who is not able to speak but we speak just fine. The real issue with us is that we are afraid to tell people what we want, need, and/or deserve. We are scared of what they are going to say or how they are going to react. So we sit in silence as we are mistreated and go unloved. People sometimes have this tendency to blame their mates for their not being happy and yet say nothing to them about it.
Even those closes to us have a tendency to play dumb. They know how we get when they try to tell us about our love interest. Someone could be beating you, cheating on you, or using you but let somebody tell you that they are and you will go months if not years without speaking to the messenger. People choose to clam up when you speak about your mate because they know that if they give an opinion, they will get all of your displaced wrath.
Let's face it, when it comes to love, most people look stupid. Being stupid is showing a lack of normal intelligence or understanding but we understand just fine. We just choose to continue walking down dark paths. Some of us call this insanity but insanity by definition is mental illness or derangement. I can't imagine that the world has so many insane people.
Look, you are not blind, deaf, dumb, stupid, or insane. Life is filled with choices and you have to choose to do what is best for you. When you see that something is not right, act upon it. Be willing to listen when people try to give sound advice because they love you and want you to be happy. Speak up when you are not being treated the way you feel you need to be treated. Lastly, stop acting stupid and/or insane because you aren't. Show some love for yourself and people can't help but love you and if they won't love you, they will have no choice but to respect you.
When it comes to dating human beings are either blind, deaf, dumb, stupid, or are insane. Something has got to be seriously wrong with us because it seems as if we make the same foolish decisions time and time again. Maybe we are just gluttons for punishment, clearly broken hearts just don't quite hurt enough.
The average human being is born with two functioning eyes. This gives us the ability to see and react to things that are going on around us. What I am starting to realize is that, though most of us have physical sight, we remain mentally blind. Let's be honest, we have seen enough in our lifetimes not to make certain decisions as they relate to dating and yet we still make them. I read an article in Essence Magazine not to long ago about a woman who had gone out on a date with a guy who did absolutely everything to sabotage the date and what did she do, she slept with him. Long story short, she left the guys house in tears because he was a jerk.
It's one thing to be a teenager and even a young adult who makes stupid decisions. We all think that being used and abused could never happen to us, but come on people, I know folks well over thirty years old who are still doing the same stupid crap. It's a little hard for people to feel sorry for you when you willing walk into a land mine field. One definition of being blind is to disregard evidence and sound logic. Another definition is that someone is not controlled by intelligence and reason. It's understandable not to see a bad situation before hand, but to see a bad situation and run to it, is just foolish.
Most of us are not only blind but we are also deaf. It's not that we are unable to hear, we hear just find. The problem is that we sometimes choose not to listen. I have friends who corner me just about every time I see them. They are always asking me about what some guy they are dating is thinking. Now grant it, I don't know what's in every guys mind but for the most part if a woman tells me something that a guy has said or done, I already know what he is thinking and/or is going to do. I know many people ask questions that they already know the answer to yet it is human to hope for a more positive answer than anticipated.
Sometimes you have to be willing to listen when your friends and family tell you something about the person you are dating. I know that we have this tendency to tell ourselves that our loved ones just don't know the person and are on the outside looking in but let's be honest. We often make excuses for our mates even when we know that our loved ones are telling us the truth about them. Many times people tell you exactly who they are and we choose not to listen to them and amazingly we are surprised when we get hurt.
When we aren't playing blind or deaf, we decide to play dumb. The real definition of dumb is someone who is not able to speak but we speak just fine. The real issue with us is that we are afraid to tell people what we want, need, and/or deserve. We are scared of what they are going to say or how they are going to react. So we sit in silence as we are mistreated and go unloved. People sometimes have this tendency to blame their mates for their not being happy and yet say nothing to them about it.
Even those closes to us have a tendency to play dumb. They know how we get when they try to tell us about our love interest. Someone could be beating you, cheating on you, or using you but let somebody tell you that they are and you will go months if not years without speaking to the messenger. People choose to clam up when you speak about your mate because they know that if they give an opinion, they will get all of your displaced wrath.
Let's face it, when it comes to love, most people look stupid. Being stupid is showing a lack of normal intelligence or understanding but we understand just fine. We just choose to continue walking down dark paths. Some of us call this insanity but insanity by definition is mental illness or derangement. I can't imagine that the world has so many insane people.
Look, you are not blind, deaf, dumb, stupid, or insane. Life is filled with choices and you have to choose to do what is best for you. When you see that something is not right, act upon it. Be willing to listen when people try to give sound advice because they love you and want you to be happy. Speak up when you are not being treated the way you feel you need to be treated. Lastly, stop acting stupid and/or insane because you aren't. Show some love for yourself and people can't help but love you and if they won't love you, they will have no choice but to respect you.
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