How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man 3 page

didn’t have any business being married at twenty-four., I believed wholeheartedly in the idea of marriage; after all, my parents had been married for sixty-four years before my mother passed away. And I had every intention of duplicating what they had: a stable relationship in a home filled with love, strength, perseverance, and wisdom. It was all I knew to do. So it made all the sense in the world to give a ring to the woman I loved and say, “I do.”that was where the problem began.the weeks leading up to my marriage, I didn’t have a steady paycheck to support my soon-to-be wife. In my heart of hearts, I knew this wasn’t right. I’d even said as much to my mother; I told her I was going to call off the wedding because I wasn’t working and it didn’t feel right. My mother, being a woman who wanted to see her child married and knew how devastating it would have been to my fiancée to call off her dream wedding, talked me out of canceling the big day. Invitations had been sent out. People were looking for the show. Who was I to rain on this festive parade?later, my mother apologized and admitted she would never have talked me into getting married if she’d known how unprepared I was to be a good husband. By then, we were able to put our finger on what was missing-what was dooming my first marriage even before the spit on the stamps we put on those invitations was dry: I didn’t know who I was, what I would do with my life, and how much I was going to make doing it. As I explained in Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, everything a man does is filtered through his title (who he is), how he gets that title (what he does), and the reward he gets for the effort (how much he makes). These are the three things every man has to achieve before he feels like he’s truly fulfilling his destiny as a man, and if any one of those things is missing, he will be much too busy trying to find it to focus on you. He won’t have it in him to settle down, have children, or build a life with anyone.my first marriage, I didn’t have these things lined up by any stretch. I had dropped out of college and went to work at Ford Motor Company. Later I was laid off and didn’t get a job until a month after we married. It was a way to make some cash, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted out of life-that it wasn’t my calling. And I was frustrated by it. How could I get a wife to buy into me and my plans for the future when even I wasn’t enthused by them myself? How could she know me if I didn’t know myself? How could she benefit from what I did and how much I made if I wasn’t doing or making anything? I was frustrated, our financial outlook was in shambles, and we were always at it-always fighting about something.I wasn’t a man., she’d married a member of the male species and I had some good traits. I was kind and trusting; I was a very good protector; and I made no qualms about professing to anybody coming and going that she was mine and I was hers. And some good, a lot of good, came from our union: my daughters Karli and Brandi and my son Steve. But I wasn’t fully a man. And it cost us.wish my father would have warned me, would have sat me down and schooled me on the particulars of marriage. Perhaps he could’ve told me that a time comes when one needs to cut out all the foolishness-the screwing up in school, the fooling around with a bunch of different women. I wish he would’ve told me that if I didn’t stop acting foolish by a certain age, there would be a cost associated with my lack of focus, with deferring my dreams of being an entertainer. Had he done so, a lot of pain would have been spared for everyone all around. He didn’t share with me his thoughts on when a boy needs to focus on maturing into a man. He didn’t tell me, “Steve, listen: you got a couple years to date a few women while you figure this thing out, and once you decide who you are, what you want to do, and how you want to make your money, go get a partner who can help you accomplish these things.”would have been a great lesson for my father to teach his son. But this isn’t the way of men.are neither the greatest communicators nor sharers of information. There’s no manual that says we should know sometime between ages twenty-five and twenty-seven what we want to do with our lives and by ages twenty-eight through thirty, we should be settling down with a woman who is as committed to helping us achieve our goals and dreams as we are to helping her achieve hers. What we constantly hear, instead, is “You’re young-sow your oats, enjoy yourself, have a good time, don’t get tied down, don’t get serious with any girls.” And by the time we finish setting ourselves up financially and convince ourselves we’re ready to settle down, we’ve fumbled through countless “relationships,” leaving women by the wayside, some of them shattered and bitter because we thought it more important to add a notch to our player belts than to act honorably. We’ve gone for that gold star some men award each other when they have more than one woman at a time. And for your trouble? We get pats on the back-told over and over again that this is what we’re supposed to do if we’re real men.hardly get pats on the back when they get married.more, married men, whether they’re happily married or not, are constantly sharing the horrors of marriage with us, forever pointing out that all the freedoms single men enjoy come to a screeching halt when the ol’ “ball and chain” gets attached to a man’s ankle-that marriage is some kind of death sentence. Indeed, among men, conversations related to the ins and outs of marriage become conversations based on bravado and jokes, rather than the truth, which is that a marriage-one built on love, respect, loyalty, and trust-is the best thing that could ever happen to a man. Hill Harper pointed this out on a relationships roundtable we did together on Nightline; Hill, an actor who’s written a few outstanding books on communication between men and women, insisted that single men would benefit greatly if married men admitted publicly that behind closed doors, they are saying to themselves and their wives, “Thank God for marriage. Thank God for my family. Thank God somebody supports me and patches me together so I can go to work the next day. This marriage thing is pretty all right.”is, for sure, the completion of manhood.it’s high time we started teaching this to our young men early. We need to pull them aside and explain that there comes a time in which they need to cut out the foolishness. Because once we do we can get back to the business of finding one another, falling in love, creating a family, and spending a lifetime supporting and dreaming and growing-together. This is not something a woman can teach; a man who is twenty-two or twenty-three years old cannot have his mother sitting him down and talking to him about what it takes to be a man; she has no idea of the competition level on which we operate, what drives us, and what we face every time we head toward the front door and out into the world-no more than a man can possibly fathom what it means to be a young woman. We love and admire our mothers to death, but they can’t walk in our shoes; men and women are much too different, and she will miss the mark-from the simplest things, like how to shake after you pee, to the most complex situations, like how to square off against another man and, without anyone getting hurt in the process, still be able to walk away with your dignity intact.course, I realize that telling women they can’t teach boys how to be men isn’t helpful; the world is full of single mothers going it alone while the fathers of their children run from the awesome responsibility of raising them. And it seems that many men who commit to their families by staying the course are often psychologically absent, lost as they are in their work. But it’s imperative that boys who do not have their fathers around to show them the ropes get acquainted with some positive, smart, strong male role models-an uncle, a counselor, a coach, a teacher, a neighbor-so that they have someone to talk to, and that someone is vested in making sure that our sons learn the most important lessons.sure, I’ve been teaching this to my own sons, Wynton, Jason, and Steve. And that training starts the moment I open my eyes in the morning. Every day, I have my sons wake up the same time as me-no matter what ungodly hour in the morning it is. If I’m hitting the treadmill and weightlifting at 4:30 A.M., so are they. If I’m going into the office at 5:30 A.M. and I’m working by 6:00 A.M., they’re dressed and on their way somewhere too. If they’ve got school or their study workload is a little heavy, they still have to wake up and, before they get themselves ready, text me their plans for the day-what they’re working on and what chore they’ll be completing before they sit down for breakfast. This is what typical morning texts from my sons look like:22

:06 AM (JASON): Soon, I will be an official Harvey Academy graduate. I take one more test next week and then I’m off to make you proud of me. Today I will sweep the front courtyard and study. Love you Dad, talk to you later.

:10 AM (ME): I’m already proud. Just give me something to brag about. Give your dad some great moments for his twilight years.

:11 AM (JASON): Yes sir. Looking forward to making that happen.when they mess up, I bring the pain, too. Like just this morning, all of them were supposed to be front and center down in our family gym at 4:00 A.M. to do a group workout with me. Hey, if I’m going to wake up and get on my grind before the sun rises so that I can provide their lifestyle, the least they can do is keep me company while I’m doing it. Well, 4:10 A.M. rolls around and I’m well into my workout and all of my sons were still knocked out; when I called Steve’s cell phone, he told me they’d all “forgotten” the plan. I sent a text to Jason first, reminding him that just like in the jungle, the gorilla (me) is always on top of his game and the gazelles (my boys) aren’t swift or strong enough to keep up:

:59 AM (ME): Gorilla Silverback, 2, Gazelles, 0

:00 AM (JASON): How’d you score two?

:01 AM (ME): Gorilla takes what he wants. I get two points.

:02 AM (JASON): I’m going to take one back this afternoon. Your Bible is in my room-LOL.

:02 AM (ME): I told Ms. Anna to put it there. Now you can figure out why. Gorilla 3, Gazelles, 0.

:06 AM (JASON): Dad how do you keep scoring all the time?

:15 AM (ME): I never stop coming. This is from your insides, your guts, you hear? Your sinew. Your will to win. Your desire to show up and be counted. Your pride. Where is your pride for doing what you said you’re going to do? If I didn’t do what I said I was going to do, you all wouldn’t respect me. My desire to be respected is so great in me that it pushes me to excel. Where is your pride?needed them to know that their father is cranking-that while they were sleeping, I was downstairs doing wind sprints and abs, and then at work earning a solid paycheck so that I could pay our bills to ensure we all have a roof over our heads, beds to lie in, and food on the table-a home. For me. For their mother. For them.all of us.I talk to them-constantly talk to them-about what it takes to be a real man. If more men truly understood what that means, it would really eradicate so many of the negative relationship issues we grapple with-fatherlessness, low marriage rates, divorce. The list goes on. My dad didn’t talk to me a lot, but he showed me by example what it means to be a dedicated father and husband, taught me about hard work and the importance of using it to take care of your family; respecting your significant other and requiring your children to do the same; and being the best father you can be to the babies you make. Did I get it right? Not all the time. I failed at two marriages before I found my relationship stride. That is human. But each time, I drew lessons from the darkness-from the failures. And then I vowed not to let them happen again, not only for the sake of my wife and our marriage, but also to be that example to my children-my sons and my daughters-who are watching me and, like I did with my dad, using my example to get clues about how they should treat a love interest, and certainly how they should expect to be treated by that love interest.that list of traits every man should have is “Do What You Say You’re Going to Do.” This is the hallmark of manhood. It’s how people judge you-how others determine which level of respect they’ll give you. We men brag about what we’re going to do all the time-“Oh, don’t worry man, I got your back,” and “No worries, I got you covered,” and “I promise you, I’ll be there”-but unless those words are backed up by actions, they mean nothing. Not to your boys. Not to your children. Not to your friends. And especially not to women.don’t want to hear excuses for why you didn’t follow through on a promise you made, especially when it concerns the well-being of their children. But the man who says he’s going to protect his lady needs to be ready to do what it takes to make her safe. A man who promises to provide for his lady works hard every day to make a decent enough wage so that she and the family they made together can have what they need, and maybe even a little bit of what they want. A man who promises to love his lady doesn’t step out on her or hit her or wear her out emotionally and mentally; instead he loves her the way a woman wants to be loved-by being faithful and respectful and attending to her needs.in doing all these things is based on that simple tenet of manhood: doing what you said you would do. If you’re not doing this, then everyone around you has the right to think that you’re just a raggedy dude-your woman has the right to say, “Girl, he ain’t worth nothing.”learned this the first time in my life when I was thirty, after I got kicked out of college and lost my job at the factory and my marriage hit rock bottom. I was living out of my car, driving up and down the road to comedy gigs, trying to establish myself as a comedian, and talking to myself all the way, from city to city, town to town, club to club. I wrote all my jokes out loud; I talked about life and how I got myself into the position where I didn’t have a home to go back to. When you’re by yourself, you can really get some stuff worked out. I once went for three weeks without having anything more than a quick “Hello, how are you?” conversation with other human beings. I mean, I’d walk into a club, find the manager, and he would say, “Thank you for coming, buddy. You’re on for twenty minutes, you get one drink at the bar,” and then I’d go up there, tell my jokes, then the manager would come over to me after I’d go offstage and say, “Here’s your money, sir-great job,” I’d get back in my car and do it all over again. If I was only making seventy-five dollars per appearance, I couldn’t blow my money on a hotel, and I sure couldn’t waste it on phone calls to anybody, so I would stash my cash and stay in the car and wait for my next gig. You try going even two days without talking to somebody. I’ll bet you can’t do it. But I did that for three weeks and started asking myself some questions and answering those questions too. I found out a lot about myself and recognized that I wasn’t being the kind of husband my wife needed me to be or the kind of provider I needed to be for her and the kids and even for myself. Simply put: I wasn’t doing what I said I was going to do. And until I did that, I couldn’t truly be a man.am not the only man who thinks this way. Over and over again while I was on tour with Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, men stood up and repeated the same ideals and sentiments. I’ll never forget one man who made his way to the microphone at one of my events; he was bald, had a stylish beard, a nice blazer, and a white shirt. The women in the room took notice of him; he spoke about how in his last relationship, he was ashamed because he hadn’t gotten himself together-hadn’t achieved the career and financial status that he wanted to achieve. But, he added, he’d been working on himself and understanding what he was capable of and he was in a good place. “I’m a good guy,” he said, “but I’m a helluva man. I don’t have all the money in the world, but I got all the traits that make for a good husband. If you need protecting, I got you. If you need money, I don’t have much but what I do have, I’ll bring it home. I’ll give you my last name. I can do most anything with my hands, so if you need something fixed around the house, I got you covered there, too. And I do what I say, and say what I mean.” And then he brought it on home: “What I’ve been missing is the right woman. If I had the right, stabilizing force in my home-the right support system-I would be even better.”man finally knows what we all eventually come to know: that we have to learn how to be men before we can be anything to anyone who wants to love us-and certainly before we can love them back. But once we get it right? We come to something close to completion, the thing that makes men want to be better, not only for ourselves, but for the people we love. I can’t count the many incredible things that have happened to me as a businessman, a provider, a husband, a father, and a man since the right woman came into my life; I’ve never in my life gotten the kinds of accolades and accomplishments I’ve achieved since Marjorie and I started our journey together. I’ve been on Oprah, Ellen, a correspondent on Good Morning America; I’ve been invited to speak at a church. A church. In my life nobody has asked me to be the keynote speaker in a house of the Lord. Ever. These things I’ve earned come not only from my deciding to do better, but from somebody seeing that there was better in me. People who’ve known me for years notice it. Hell, I have a picture of myself from 1995 in which I could see it-the physical toll that my lifestyle and choices were taking on my body, from not being the kind of man I needed to be and not having the right woman to complete the cycle of manhood. My face was sagging, I had put on a ton of weight, I just looked done; it was hard to believe I’d been that miserable.I’ve put my house in order. I cleared my life of all its debris so that when the blessings did come, including first and foremost my relationship with God, my discovery of what makes me happy-success in my career and a strong, loving woman by my side-I could receive those blessings and start doing right.I’m passing that message on to my sons so that they know the secret too: learn how to be a man first. Then find the right woman who can bring out the best in you-make you better. Marriage is not a death sentence. It’s a completion.sons.and Jason passed those tests and earned the right to apply to college this past spring. With them, we’re going to build a tradition. I was the first one in my family to go to college, but I flunked out. But my sons got accepted into Morehouse. When they got their letters, I sat in the chair in my office and cried; my sons are going to a prestigious college with a rich and proud legacy, and I couldn’t be more pleased. When Jason saw me, he got a quizzical look on his face and asked me why I was upset, what they’d done to make me react in that way.

“You don’t even know what this means for me, son,” I said simply. “I’m not turning out convicts, there are no babies popping out of the woodwork, and the two of you are going to Morehouse. Give me a moment to celebrate getting it right. This isn’t about you.”recognize my job isn’t over-that Jason and Wynton and Steve have quite a ways to go before they are full-on men. But they’re on their way.I pray that they take the lessons I’m teaching them, and the lessons they’ll learn along the way, and make quick work of being the kind of men capable of making someone-themselves and their intendeds-happy. That said, will they make mistakes? Yes. But my job is to limit them.

Guide to How Men Feel About Relationships in Their Twenties, Thirties, Forties, Fifties, and Beyondtook my daughter Lori to lunch recently-just me and her, one on one-and I’m not going to lie: I was a little bit more than concerned. It was, after all, the first occasion we’d spent any quality time with each other without her mother, Marjorie, there to quarterback the flow of conversation. I mean, when I take my sons to lunch, the fellowship is pretty low-key; I say, “Find yourself something to eat, man,” they order, and we eat. Everybody pushes back from the table happy and satisfied. But the idea of sitting in a restaurant alone with Lori made me come to terms with a couple of things, namely that I haven’t a clue what thirteen-year-old girls like, care about, or have on their minds.I got a lesson that day.

“So, Daddy, when can I start dating?”my head, I was screaming, “Who in the hell is this big-headed boy trying to take you out? You’re thirteen-a baby! I’ll kill him with my bare hands!” In real time, though, all I could manage was a slow count to ten, some swallows, and a couple of blinks. Finally, when I was sure I would neither shake nor stutter, I dove in.

“How old do you think you should be?” I asked innocently.

“Oh, maybe fourteen or something like that,” she said.swallowed hard. Again.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but nobody can come by the house for you when you’re fourteen to take you out. That’s way too young.”

“Well, my friend Cat dates older guys,” she said matter-of-factly.course, in my mind, I had a vision of myself sharpening knives and loading guns and yelling from the front stoop in a housecoat and slippers that anybody named Cat should be forewarned not to so much as step on our block trying to corrupt my baby girl. Little fast butt. Out loud, though, I kept my remarks as calm and measured as I could muster.

“When you say ‘older guys,’ ” I asked politely, “what do you mean?”

“She likes guys who are, like, fifteen or sixteen years old,” she said.blinked a couple of times and did a few more hard swallows. “Well, baby,” I said between sips of ice water. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”lunch’s end, I was real clear on this one thing: Lori is not a little girl anymore, and we are in the middle stages of that dance-the delicate tug-of-war between age-appropriate attraction to the opposite sex and all-out boy craziness. I now understand that our conversation didn’t mark the first time my daughter’s thought about boys and dating and even marriage; if she’s anything like every other little girl on the planet, she’s considered down to the most minute details what her husband-to-be would look like, what kind of wedding they’ll have, where the wedding will be, what kind of material her wedding dress will be made of, and whether she’ll smush the wedding cake in her new husband’s face. She’s probably considered, too, how many kids she wants to have with this dream husband of hers, what their names will be, and whether she’ll hyphenate her last name with his.know I’m right. This is what girls do; they dream about the Happily Ever After-the wedding, the kids, the married life. Everything they watch-from their Disney movies to their tween television shows to popular music, magazines, and other cultural bellwethers-tells them that while it’s okay to be independent, smart, and strong, it should be their priority to meet, get, and keep a husband. And the moment the biological clock starts ticking, whoa! Finding a man to settle down with and have babies becomes quite the priority.assured, it doesn’t work this way for little boys. Ever. There’s not a man I know who’s sat around dreaming about his wedding day. He may dream of certain women-more specifically, what he’d like to do with them-but trust me when I tell you this: boys and men don’t care about marriage the way women do, and we certainly don’t sit around fantasizing about it or worrying about biological clocks. Indeed, the way we look at relationships is so far the opposite of the way women see it that it’s a wonder, at all, that we even figure out how to be together.we do. It just takes a little while for the two of us to get on the same page.help you understand why, I thought it only fair to give a decade-by-decade breakdown of what’s on the minds of men as it relates to relationships-a guide, of sorts, that will go a long way in showing women what it takes for a man to get into a marriage state of mind.MAN IN HIS TWENTIES…just starting to discover the cornerstones of manhood-who he is, what he does, and how much he makes. He’s deciding whether to go to college or not, whether to pick up a trade or not, whether to go to grad school or get a master’s, or not, and none of his decisions, at least in his early twenties, will help him come to any real conclusions about his future, himself, or his direction in life. Basically, he’s using this decade to figure himself out-to work out the kinks before he settles down to the awesome responsibility of being a husband, a father, a homeowner-a man who is responsible for the well-being of not just himself, but other people he loves. In most cases, you simply cannot expect that he’ll be ready to provide financial stability and family direction for you when he’s still trying to figure out how to make money, get solidified in his career, and make it on his own.his midtwenties, he’s going to be looking around in the workforce and noticing other men who are homeowners, have cars, and are taking care of families, and his financial clock is going to start revving up. It ticks as loudly as a woman’s biological clock does; we hear the calling to start proving we’ve got the who we are, what we do, and how much we make in order to prove that we are truly men. This isn’t nearly as important in the college years because money isn’t really all that relevant; everybody there is broke and making their mark by becoming members of social organizations, playing sports, joining fraternities, and being a part of the fabric of campus life. But when he hits age twenty-seven or twenty-eight and he starts seeing his boys drive up to the bar in the fancy car and step out in the fancy suit and whip out a business card featuring both his name and an impressive title in raised lettering, a man in his late twenties is going to want a piece of that action-a fancy car, title, and money of his own. This is critical to him, and nowhere in the playbook is marriage a part of the moves he feels he needs to make to get to where he’s trying to go financially and careerwise.fact, he may discover on his journey toward figuring out just who he is that he’s not responsible enough, yet, for a committed relationship. Or he may have practically every man around him-from his father and brothers to coworkers and friends-telling him that he needs to play the field and put off for as long as possible settling down with one woman. We simply don’t preach to our sons the virtues of fatherhood and family-don’t tell them that there is a cutoff date for the foolishness and that creating a lasting relationship with one woman is necessary to complete him as a man. He is being driven solely by his financial clock at the same time your biological clock is most likely driving you, and trust me when I tell you, the alarm on his clock isn’t set to remind him that it’s time to make babies.This Means for Your Relationship, there are examples of men who can get their careers together, make an adequate amount of money, and be happy enough with their station in life to settle down at this age, but it’s more likely that a man at this stage is not going to take any relationships with the opposite sex all that seriously. You can determine whether he has potential, though. The key here is remembering that the word potential implies he’s capable of taking action. A man who has potential isn’t sitting on the couch; he’s got a firm plan for what he wants to do with his life and is on his way to being what he says he wants to be. He’s got a short-term plan-maybe it includes school or earning enough money to start a company that he’s thought through and for which he’s created a business plan. And he’s got a long-term plan-one that cements how his goal will play out in the future. If he’s got no plan, can’t articulate his future, and doesn’t appear to be working toward any goals, this isn’t the guy you want to hang on to.also have every right to study what kind of man he’s shaping up to be-whether he is respectful, courteous, treats you the way you want to be treated, and is a law-abiding citizen. You deserve to know, too, whether he has hopes and dreams and a sound relationship with God. If he has children, you should be investigating for yourself what kind of man he is to his children and the relationship he has with his kids’ mother. You should also be clear that he wants to be in a monogamous relationship and be able to trust that he’s acting like he’s in one when he’s around you. All of these things are an indication of what kind of husband he’ll end up being when he is ready to settle down. It’s like my coach used to tell me: you’re going to play the game the way you practice it. If he’s not monogamous while dating you, and his heart isn’t morally into doing right by women, what’s going to be different when you get married? The only thing that changes after the ceremony is the third finger on your left hand. Everything else? Stays the same. So it will be up to you to be clear about what you require to feel mentally and emotionally satisfied that the man you’re with can fulfill those requirements.me be very clear: you have every right to sit this man down and explain what you want as you round the corner and head toward age thirty, telling him that what you accepted in college at age twenty-one is wholly different from what you’ll tolerate as a twenty-seven-year-old woman whose body has a limited time span in which to produce babies. It was fine to date, go to parties together, and hold hands out in the quad when you were in college, but he has to respect the fact that your biological clock is ticking and that he should either sign on to the commitment or move on so that you can focus your energy on a man who can give you what you’re looking for. Don’t be scared: sit him down and say, “Look, I’m twenty-eight and I am looking for a mate right now because I would love to start having children when I’m about thirty-two. I don’t want to be thirty-eight having or trying to have my first child, so I’m focused on finding the guy that’s right for me.” Ask him how old he wants to be when his child, maybe a son, is old enough to toss a football around with him, and remind him that he doesn’t want to be that father who’s too old to take his teenage son to the hole or chase after his fly ball. I guarantee you that it’ll be something he won’t have thought about before, because young men don’t sit around thinking about such things. Women think about this constantly, and it’s okay to let him know that he needs to pick up the pace. The man who truly wants you will accelerate for you; he will pick up the pace and walk in lockstep with you. You can’t change him-by his late twenties, he will have solidified who he is as a man. But you can bring out his better qualities. He will be what you want him to be if he knows what will make you happy.MAN IN HIS THIRTIES…beginning to solidify himself in his career, is starting to make the kind of money he’s wanted to make, and is achieving at least some of the goals he laid out in his master life plan. And once he starts measuring his life and the things he wants to accomplish in it, he starts thinking about settling down. This march toward commitment is boosted by the idealized visions he’ll start having about fatherhood: every man will start kicking around the image of himself having a son who dotes on him, wants to be like him, and is a great athlete. He’ll dream about teaching his son all the sports he grew up playing, and he’ll want to be able to play those sports with his son as he gets better at them, so he’ll start realizing that the longer he waits, the less likely his idealized vision of fatherhood will be realized. The question we all ask ourselves in our thirties is, “How old am I going to be when my boy is sixteen?” We still want to be a formidable physical presence in our teenage son’s mind, and to compete with him in sports. The last thing we want to be is an old, feeble dad. And so we’ll start recognizing that the days are numbered for us to make that ideal scenario a reality-that as we get into our midthirties and beyond, we have less of a chance to play with our boys. Consequently, we’ll start thinking seriously about making some babies.in their thirties also start accepting the inevitable-that all of the running around and the chasing we did in our twenties feels like “been there, done that” in our thirties. We become more okay with the idea that our dating days could end one day soon because we feel like we’ve sampled much of what’s out there and the thrill of the hunt isn’t all that exciting anymore. The games get old. That’s not to say that a man is not excited by a beautiful woman like he was in his twenties or that he’s not aroused by hot and sexy women. But after he’s gone through a number of relationships and he starts seeing the patterns, he gets real clear on the fact that being with a woman is not going to be all hot and fabulous all the time. So he’ll become more open to the idea that if he meets the right person who comes with the least amount of drama and can add support, loyalty, and fun to his life, then he’ll accept moving toward commitment. In other words, he’ll recognize that he can’t play forever, that a grown man has to stop showing up at the club at some point. (This becomes all the more clear the night he goes to the club and he’s surrounded by girls who were still in elementary school when he graduated from college. That’s a cold reality check.)course, a lot of this is dependent on the age in which a man becomes, in his mind, successful. If he becomes successful in his late twenties, he may be more likely to move toward commitment when he hits his early thirties. By then, he’ll feel like he’s in good enough financial standing that he doesn’t have to kill himself anymore in the workplace with the crazy hours, the networking, and the climbing the ladder. But if it takes him a little longer to become successful, he’ll be resistant to the idea of settling down. He’ll still be looking at what everyone else has and measuring himself against them-his friends from college who are more successful and making more money than he is, and the ones who aren’t doing as well as he. If, on the other hand, he’s got it together, or feels like he’s close enough to where he wants to be, he’ll start warming up to the idea of long-term commitment.should note that because a lot of his focus is on making sure he’s successful, a man in his thirties will be less concerned about a woman’s accomplishments. He won’t really care how many degrees you have, and won’t be impressed by them, especially if the way you present them, your salary, and your career feels like you’re trying to compete with him or suggest that you don’t need him to be happy. That’s not to say he won’t be attracted to an intelligent, successful woman; he just likely won’t care about finding his financial match.This Means for Your Relationshipmost important thing you should know about men in their thirties is that you should expect commitment from him, in whatever form you need it. If you’re not living together but you’re dating exclusively, or you’re sharing an apartment and bills, you have every right to expect that he is working toward a long-term relationship with you.gauge his level of commitment, start by asking him about family. It’s the best way to get a man to think out loud about the future. Ease into the conversation by asking about the numbers: “What do you think your family will look like?” you can ask. “Do you want one kid? Three? Seven?” You might ask, too, about his home life-“Did you get along with your dad? How about your mom? What parenting traits do you think you’d bring with you to fatherhood? Which ones would you do without?” Each of these answers, when you delve deeper into them (I show you how to do this in Chapter 6, “Let’s Stop the Games: Asking Men the Right Questions to Get the Real Answers”), helps you get to the bottom of where this man’s head is at when it comes to love, marriage, and family. Asking him about his relationship with his own father could lead not only to a discussion about whether he wants to be a dad, but also what kind of father he sees himself being and the traits he’s looking for in the potential mother of his children. All of this is vital information for you as you consider whether he’s the right guy to make babies with, and it gives you insight into whether this man is a good fit for you.’re going to need to pay very close attention, too, to where he is in his career. If he seems unsatisfied and still hustling to put his plan into place, then it’s more likely that he’s not going to want to commit. You’ll be able to tell where a man stands by watching how much time he spends outside of work on hobbies, with friends, playing ball-enjoying more leisure. This tells you that he has time-that he’s not all about the job twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and can find contentment in other things.in mind that we’re talking about ambitious guys here, not the guy who’s never been on his grind and avoids hard work or sits around waiting for things to happen for him, or the guy who is still on the grind. Those guys may not wholeheartedly embrace commitment because they’re still searching for who they are, what they do, and how much they make, which means they will be too busy accomplishing their career goals to the exclusion of everything else., the ability to get the commitment from the man who’s ready, willing, and able to give you what you want lies with you. You have to be willing to walk away if the commitment you expect isn’t forthcoming. There are countless women who’ve dated a man, fallen for him, given him the cookie, and expected him to return her love and devotion with commitment, only for him to reveal after years of hanging on that he has no interest in marriage. You have to stop waiting to find out if he’s willing to commit and ask up front: “Do you ever want to be married?” He might say he’s not ready, but you have to push for more information. Ask him when he sees himself getting married-if it’ll happen in a year, two, or three. If he comes back with “I’m not the marrying type” or claims he’s not looking to get married “anytime soon,” don’t walk, run away. Let him know that you have every intention of being married in a certain time frame and if he doesn’t want to be a part of it, you have to move on. This will be hard for you, I understand; all too many of you fear he will walk away and you will have a hell of a time finding someone else to sign on for a committed relationship. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the man you’re leaving is not the last man standing. Move on. You made a mistake with that guy, but it’s okay. Cut your losses and go find the man you deserve and who wants you back.MAN IN HIS FORTIES…feeling good about his station in life and is entering his prime, especially if he’s a husband and a father. He loves his accomplishments and he’s making money, but at the end of the day, if he has a home to go to, that’s major. It completes his journey to manhood. No matter how famous he is, no matter how well he’s done for himself, nothing beats coming home to the arms of the people he loves most; his kids are glad to see him, he’s the hero all the time. He reveres the title “Daddy.” And he’s happy that there is a woman who loves him and supports him and makes him feel like he’s valued. That’s a proud moment for a man, especially when he’s old enough to understand the importance of it. By forty, a man wants to feel like he’s a stand-up guy who does what he says he’s going to do, is respected, has himself together, and can be counted on by his family to be a man. Some struggle with this, but it all comes into focus when he becomes a husband and father. It’s a settling moment, and it brings out the best in a man because it pulls out all the love he has to muster: he’s going to work hard to make sure his family is provided for; he’s going to be proud to announce his wife as his lady and tell everybody about his kids; and he’s going to protect his family with the might of the angels.he’s single, he’s single for a reason. He may be unlucky in love. Or he may have signed up for life-altering jobs that made it hard for him to settle down-like working abroad or joining the military. Or he might just be that odd guy who’s resistant to the idea of marriage and kids, even after all these years-a bona fide commitment-phobe. Whatever the cause, unless he’s a divorcé, he’s resigned himself to the fact that the traditional family-a wife and kids-may not happen for him (or he’s decided he doesn’t want to be bothered with it at all), and so he becomes comfortable with the idea of a life alone. If he has nieces and nephews or close friends with children, he’s perfectly happy doting on them, and he doesn’t feel as if his life is missing anything; he’s just as satisfied with this arrangement as all the women out there who don’t think their lives are horrible failures if they don’t have kids and a ring. Life is about comfort for them; they are financially comfortable, have established comfortable routines, and have comfortable lifestyles. And they’re not necessarily lonely because they put themselves in situations where the female company they keep isn’t disruptive to their day-to-day lives. This is a nice way of saying it’s going to take a lot for someone to come along and jar the overall sense of ease to which the single, fortysomething man has grown accustomed. In his mind, he’s thinking that commitment will disrupt his perfectly stable, doable, enjoyable arrangement-one in which he does what he wants, when he wants to, without having to be accountable for anything or anyone but himself., this doesn’t mean that the fortysomething man is not susceptible to meeting a woman who rocks his world-who makes him think he can’t live without her. It’s just that he’s mastered the art of companionship and isn’t necessarily as driven to hunt for women and meaningless sex as he was in his twenties and thirties. As a man gets older, he doesn’t need sex as much, and he’s already had relationships with a wide and diverse group of women, so the hunting he did in his younger days slows down. He’s not trying to be in the clubs or at the sports bars looking for the young, hot thing. He’s going to be more attracted to somebody he can talk to, whom he can have a nice meal with and go out to events, concerts, and other recreational events with; who fulfills his sexual needs; and who, like him, doesn’t feel any pressure to make the relationship any more than what it is. This is comfortable for him; it’s what all men want-comfort, peace, and companionship-and the forty-year-old single guy is going to have this in abundance. He’s arranged it this way.course, if he’s a fortysomething divorcé, he’s likely alone because he’s wary, but more prone to the hunt because he’s back out on the dating scene and reacquainting himself with all the women he had to walk by with blinders on while he was married for the last decade. Now that he can actually sample without repercussions, he’s going to want to play for a minute. It may take him a few years before he’s even thinking about committing to anybody again, especially if he’s newly divorced and still has some very strong and complicated emotions about his ex. Still, it’s true what they say about a man who has been married before: if he committed to someone once, he’s certainly not scared of it and would be open to doing it again. He won’t necessarily romanticize it, but he will remember how wonderful it can be and won’t completely be opposed to the idea of marriage after he’s gotten the playing out of his system.This Means for Your Relationship’re going to have to be more thoughtful about how to find a forty-year-old single man and especially how to approach him. He’s been there, done that, and he’s not going to be fooled by nice bodies, batting eyelashes, and coy behavior. Sure, he knows how to go find some hot twentysomething who perhaps he’d be willing to spend a couple nights with, but mostly, he’s done that so many times it has very little interest for him; he knows that the chances are high that the younger women haven’t done anything, haven’t been anywhere, and haven’t yet had the adult experiences he’s had. Instead, he’s going to need and want someone who’s got something going on, and who is interesting and especially interested in the things he’s built into his life to make it comfortable.means, too, that you’re going to have to be a little bit more creative in trying to find him. He’s not going to be found in the club or in the gym or the sports bars-typical places where the opposite sex meets when they’re young, hot, and fresh. You’re going to find this guy at a jazz club, actually listening to the music, or at sporting events, enjoying the game, or on the golf and tennis courts or in the football league. As a single man, he can indulge in these kinds of entertainment and sporting hobbies because there’s no wife telling him that he’s being indulgent and selfish for structuring a lifestyle that’s enjoyable to him.that hopping into a relationship with a divorced fortysomething man may be tricky if his divorce is new. There may be a lot of ways he sees his ex’s face in yours and runs in the other direction. If he’s been divorced less than two years, you should prepare yourself for some bedroom play and not much else; he’s probably going to want to keep it moving, no matter how fabulous you are. That’s because forty-year-olds don’t believe the hype. In his twenties, he believed anything a woman told him, and in his thirties, he got a little more skeptical. But in his forties, he doesn’t believe much of anything women tell him. They’re all fabulous cooks who love to keep a clean house by day and dress in lingerie every night; not a one of them dare leave the house without makeup on; they love sex, are avid basketball and football fans, and love the smell of cigar smoke-until, that is, they get into a relationship and the pretty packaging falls off. As a man who was married before, he already knows there are very striking similarities in the way women in relationships respond to pressure, stress, and challenges, and so when life comes along and creates difficulties for them, he knows there’s a good chance that he may wind up back in the same place he was with the woman he divorced. So you’re not going to lure him by telling him how wonderful being with you is; he may not believe you. You’ll have to show him, rather than tell him. If he takes you out on the golf course and you look like you’re having fun, or he takes you to the sports bar and you argue with the most avid fan about the merits of the Lakers’ triangle offense, or if you can discuss the beauty of a Coltrane versus Miles Davis classic solo, then he may start believing that you have a lot of the same interests as he does and that you’re a unique one-of-a-kind catch.he’s moved on from the hurt of the divorce and he starts getting lonely, he’ll realize that sex with a forty-year-old does, in fact, have the potential to be a lot more interesting than sex with a twenty-five-year-old; he’s well aware that physical perfection isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be and he’s going to start wanting more companionship-the woman who’s comfortable with her station in life and his, too.MAN IN HIS FIFTIES AND BEYOND…working desperately to solidify his legacy. Simply put: he’s looking at the tape and trying to figure out how to set up his family for when he’s done working or after he’s gone from this earth. He’s thinking more in terms of security than he ever has before, even as he’s looking forward to emptying his nest-sending the kids off to college or to start their new lives on their own so that he can enjoy his significant other in ways he hasn’t since the two of them had children. He’s more content in his newfound peace with his lady and is settled into the life he’s built, but still worries about protecting his family-not with brute force, but by making sure they can survive without him.mind-set is boosted by his ever-changing body. He starts to worry about it because it’s in his fifties that his body starts to betray him. His blood pressure increases, his cholesterol levels increase, his prostate gives him problems, and there are aches and pains that he’s never felt before. All of this makes him much more aware of his mortality, and he realizes he has to take better care of himself. This, of course, is much easier for him when there’s a woman around. It’s a lot harder for a man to live right, eat right, and stay out of trouble if there isn’t a female presence there to tap him on the shoulder and remind him why it’s better to leave the cheesecake and steak alone and eat more vegetables, get in more exercise, and stay out of trouble for the sake of not only himself, but the ones he loves.This Means for Your Relationship’s going to be a lot more open to the idea of having a woman around not only to love in the way that a man loves-by protecting, professing, and providing for her-but also because he knows that a fairly sweet, nurturing, caring woman will increase his life expectancy by at least a decade. This will put him in a better position to want to commit to someone, certainly more so than a man in his thirties and even forties. He will basically be looking for someone to grow old with as he faces the other side of the high-paced workforce and begins to imagine what it will be like to do all the things he always wanted to do-travel or spend leisurely, carefree afternoons-with a steady companion who also is happy to finally be settled down and enjoying the rest of her life.understand that these different stages of manhood are not ironclad definitions of men at these different ages; there are always exceptions to the rule. What I’ve described here is a generalization of what happens in men’s lives as they move from decade to decade-things that I’ve gone through myself, and certainly experiences that friends of mine have shared with me during the course of our friendships. My sincere hope is that you’ll use this as a loose guide to understanding just where your man’s head may be when it comes to a relationship with you-an understanding that just may help you get the kind of love you want, need, and deserve.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 659