Caribbean people don’t really understand the 4 seasons very well, unless we lived in places where seasons change every 4 months.

Kiss me now, because tomorrow I might not be in the same mood!

Let me caution you to remember that LOVE is seasonal. In the Spring it is easy, but in the Summer it is hard work. In Autumn (Fall) you may feel very generous and fulfilled, but in Winter you will feel empty. The information you need to get through Summer and work on your relationships is easily forgotten. The love you feel in the Fall is easily lost in the Winter. In the summer of love, when things get difficult and you are not getting the love you need, quite suddenly you may forget everything you have learned about relationships. In an instant it’s all gone, emotions take charge. You may begin to blame your partner and forget how to nurture their needs.  When the emptiness of winter sets in, you may feel hopeless. You may even blame yourself and forget how to love and nurture yourself. You may become cynical and feel like giving up. This is all a part of the cycle. It is always darkest before the dawn.

To be successful in our relationships we must accept and understand the different seasons of love. Sometimes love flows easily and automatically, at other times our hearts are full and at other times our hearts are empty. We must not expect our partners to always be loving or even to remember how to be loving.

Remind me again! What season are we in, currently?

We must also give ourselves this gift of understanding and not expect to remember everything we about seasonal love. The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.

We have weathered another 4 seasons. Are we good, or what?

FINAL THOUGHT.

Not only do we need to hear it two hundred times but we also need to understand that unlearning what we have learned in the past, about someone, will not apply to someone else (someone new) We are not innocent children learning how to have successful relationships. We have all been programmed by our parents, by the cultures we have grown up in, and by our own painful past experiences. Integrating this new wisdom of how to have loving relationships is a new challenge for many of us. So become pioneers and travel in new territories….

Expect to get lost sometimes. Expect your lover to be lost from time to time.

Never be enough!

Knowledge is the only way forward.

A “Y” chromosome has to survive unscathed in a nest of many “X” chromosomes, to be a good man, in relationships.

Men who understand the Chromosome differences have fewer problems with women. When a man knows that every female has (2) X chromosomes and a  man has a Y and X. Then you know why we are so different. Of course, it’s not that simple as a math equation, because personalities play a big role in how the sexes interact with each other. But once we know and acknowledge that the differences are just that  (2) “X” does not equal a “Y” and an “X.” we do not think alike, and we do not communicate the same.

You will have to admit that one of her X chromosomes came from her dad the other from her mom. And yours, as a man your “Y” came from your dad and the “X” from your mom.

Instinctively we men who think we understand women will want to either run away from love or increase our addictions. This the time to work on your feelings and communication skills and not run away. When deep feelings come up, we project our feelings onto our lovers. If we did not feel safe to express our feelings to our counterpart or a past partner, all of sudden we cannot get in touch with our feelings in the presence of our present partner, At this point, no matter how supportive she is, when you, as a  man, are with her you will not feel safe, to share with her, those feelings will be blocked.

Thanks, Dad for your "Y" chromosome

It is a paradox: because when you feel safe (vulnerable) with your present partner, your deepest fears have a chance to surface. When they surface you become afraid and are unable to share what you are feaking-out (internally) about. Your fears may even make you numb. When this happens the feelings that are coming up get stuck (in a bottleneck).
It’s a good thing that I have many female cousins older and younger than I that I can talk to when this kind of mess gets the best of me.  Had I not grown up around so many women I would be lost. My dad and uncle were not the best communicators.

They told you stuff by grunting, once for “yes” and twice for “No.” Not a whole lot of help. Well since my younger days I have found that I needed to not be like them. Well, maybe I should be just a little bit.

When a man sees how she hugs her dad, he knows she has a great relationship with him.

And has the potential to be a good wife!

Dad (if he is a good one) shows his daughters the kinda loving a man should give her, and Moms should teach their sons how to relate to women.

  

Should love be eternal?

My love for you can lift you higher and higher!

In my narrow view I see so many people going through it totally based on the commercial aspect of professing love, buying flower and chocolate and expensive dinners and who knows what else (the ring)… This is why I feel Love is a battlefield of wills. In my experiences… I recall loving women not one but multiples at different times in my life, for different reasons in different ways. Love can be a complete and utter disaster. But even with all the heartaches, we have to believe there is one person somewhere out there, meant just for us, who will bring us some kind of happiness long term,( or is it the other way around). Of course, I also think it’s not all pretty ponies and fairy tales. I’m talking about Real Love can be messy. It's fighting, but it’s more about the making up that makes love eternal. It’s pulling apart from each other to find our paths, but running together and holding on tight, refusing to let go. Love is the calm in the middle of the storm. I’m a very practical man I relate love as Casting a jumble of pieces into complete disarray on the table, reassembled it into a whole new perspective. Life doesn’t have to be great nor super bad. We all have only one predestined road to follow. Life exists not in the black and white, but in the gray. The realist in me knows that. My logical business mind has embraced the notion without even giving it a second thought. Failure in business is not an option, it is only a learning point--- a means to succeed, it’s part of living in the gray. Why am I so black and white minded when it comes to my heart and love? I think I know why I can accept it now. I’d buried my emotions behind a wall of steel because I hadn’t been ready…. My first and only marriage ended... after 25 years. I didn’t want to trust that it would never happen again. Failing in Love multiple times has more to do with not recognizing that past emotions come bubbling up at the most interesting moments. I which I understood it then. Those interesting moments cause a person to relive the past, even if the person in your present is nothing like the one from your past, you had a failed relationship with. I was told by a woman I was involved with that my ex-wife has done a job on me that I can’t seem to trust anyone anymore. She was partly right….. I read the following and it made sense to me:

True LOVE is eternal

There is no falling “in” love or “out” of love. When you truly Love, it never dies. Love is eternal, it’s sacred, it’s a way of life. Not some temporary feeling that loses its truth over time. People only fall “out” of Love, when they never truly Loved to begin with.

Your beautiful life “If you must look back do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so Prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present.. Gratefully.” ~Maya Angelou

REAL LOVE

Even a divorced man has a problem with his ex sleeping with another man!

Now how crazy is that, let’s put all jokes aside. A Modern day man just can’t handle that kind of information very well. Even if they say they don’t care about her anymore. Their gut flips upside down and downside up multiple times when they hear that their now ex is having sex with someone else.

The other morning I was driving with my neighbor to work, he is a young guy who has gotten a divorce not too long ago because his ex-wife was constantly accusing him of cheating  (she is a Latina and he is a Latino) he had enough and filed for divorce. She still nags him about other women he works with and even a few in the church they attended together.

So when I saw this other lady in a car with a guy and I mentioned that I thought I saw her and pointed to the car. He almost had an accident, thinking she was now sleeping with someone else. Luckily it was not her but a very close look-a-like. His response to me: “Not funny man, she better not let me catch her sleeping with someone else” SMDH and I said: "sorry my BAD." the relief on his face told the story… and I felt sorry that  I scared him like that. The above is a Michael Baisden video… on why men can resist the chance to cheat!

Do you know how he will react if he finds out

we had sex in the back of your car?

This Shows that we men can do all kinds of cheating but once we find out that the new woman might snitch, we could lose our minds.  

OK, now women seem to have a few different ideas about their men cheating.

A more mature woman thinks it is not realistic if a woman believes men will not cheat in the world where there are so many available women 10 to 1 in some places. OML this is heaven on Earth for men living in a city where the numbers are crazy like that OK Atlanta comes to mind. This is why when I decided to leave Chicago and head South my now ex-wife said: No way in hell to Atlanta.” She had heard enough stories about how sweet these Southern women were and how the numbers were just crazy. My best friend while we live in Chicago use to talk about Atlanta women… so much that he moved there shortly after we moved to Miami. She knew what a bow-wow he was and the idea that I would be hanging out with him in Atlanta was not going to sit well with her.  Here is another video highlighting why women who have trust issues think one way or another about men having an appetite and eating out too often. Men are not the only ones who cheat!

MY thoughts

We all, male and female have ownership issues, trust issues, and every other kind of issues when we have been intimate with the opposite sex, we can’t just turn our feeling off, they pop up at some of the worst times catching us off guard. Even an academy winning actor can’t fake the feeling that stirs up when we are surprised by the fact that cheating has happened when we weren’t looking. Don’t surprise us like that, none of us can handle the truth!

Friends Blurred Lines

We have graduated from friends to friends with outrageous  passionate benefits 

When exactly does the lines, between good friends and lovers become blurred? That is the line some of us find ourselves crossing inadvertently. We all know, like the song says “ There is a thin line between love and hate” But where exactly is the line between just friends and lovers? I have often wondered about it so I decided to ask a friend, like in the "Who wants to be a Millionaire" game show. I hope I’m not the only one that remembers that game show. When in doubt call a friend, maybe the one who became a lover after being your good friend for years who helped you hit the $1M. Say what you may, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has crossed that line that became blurry and found myself thinking what took us so long. We had chemistry so why did we wait. Well simply because the other side was the other line that went from lovers to haters. What in the World happened to make that other line (hate-line) even get crossed that was not even possible when you were just good friends.

Yes, good friends can start hating each other, but it seldom happens in a flash. We are friends unless we suddenly feel betrayed or the other person suddenly feels betrayed.  

Back to the blurred lines that shouldn’t even really be there, to begin with. Once you are not focussed on the “what if(s)” you remain calm and no lines get crossed. But once you become annoyed at the possibilities you are sure to say or do something that will cause “ill feeling”... now just think about your own experiences. When “stuff hits the fan” it is all over the place and very hard to clean up, even if the two people invest major time trying to clean stuff up. Someone will miss a spot. Which will cause the other person to frown and think; "did they miss it on purpose? so that I will have to clean that last spot up. " Well if you were the one that caused the stuff to “hit the fan” then you should be the last one to finalize the cleanup.

So does the blurring of the lines happen when your passion for each other suddenly become so intense that you can’t resist each other anymore? the “Friends without benefits” now has graduated to” friends with benefits to previous friends to now lovers” complexed situation.

Oops, that was never the intention. Or Was it? Only the nose knows what happens behind the eyes, the nose is always in the middle. "It's not that I can't admit my feelings for you, it's that I don't want to tell you!"

I used to think it was so much easier to just pursue a woman I wanted before becoming friends… But it’s usually CAOS (Computerized Association Of Stupid) waiting to happen, these days women are so much more accomplished that they are no longer wait for “Mr. Right “ to come and rescue them. These women have lives that men sometimes dream of having with them. Women travel to far away places in groups (Girls travel clubs) they have flings with men in far away countries exposing themselves to new cultures, and coming back home with smiles on their faces. This stuff was reserved for flight attendants.  OK, guys do it too but guys are instinctive hunters. We can check into a hotel in Siberia and find a warm body to cuddle up next to, within a short period of time, if we have "game!"

My thoughts

Women didn’t do that in the past. They had to get to know you, let you pursue them... then romance them and then they caught you when your guard was down now you are hooked. As a traveling business IT consultant I found it more of a challenge to not pursue women when I was on business trips. OK, I was also married at that point, and that Bow-wow in me had been tamed. But after many trips, I often wondered if my being on the road was causing my now ex-wife to wonder if I was still the guy she married. Maybe I no longer was, so when I stopped traveling as much as in the earlier days, she seems to kinda lose the spark we had for each other and life together became a fizzle. I wasn’t clear to me that we became lovers very soon after we met until I started writing this blog post, I met her in a town outside of Chicago (on one of my business trips that originated from N.Y. to Ill.) hmmm. Maybe that guy from N.Y was who she fell for, not the devoted husband and father she got tired of being married to.    She still travels now, as an Airline employee, without me. And our sons do also. I’m the only one with the last name “Daniel” who does not travel hardly anymore. Just in case you are wondering she never changed her last name back…. to her maiden name!
  

From my B.A.D. perspective

 We need to get and stay REAL when we are talking in groups with an Open Mic setup. Our fantasies get our mouths carried away, by us having the need to impress our peers. Don’t get me wrong we have all done it, to some degree. Men have done it simply by pretending to have lived a life they have not. Women are now on the equality trip.... I love this kind of talk because, we who know better, can pick out NON-sense out of these conversations instantly. Just listen to these mature men B.S. each other about having “a threesome VS the fantasy of having a Threesome…” what they all admit is that it’s more of a fantasy that most men may not be able to handle (truth) ...I can be wrong, but had these statements been a reality in their past experiences, then their words would flow better. I can honestly state that any dude that can call up 2 females friends and think he can have a threesome with them just by showing up….. is talking nonsense. Maybe in his dreams, unless they are porn stars.. Like I said I could be wrong. These women may want to record the action and review it, or even sell it to the highest bidder. ( like his wife or steady girlfriend) These fantasies “do not just happen that way!” 

 Women on the other hand in groups sitting all up close to each other want to sound as if they are cool with casual sex, in front of their girls, but Oops they slip up when they get to the part of wanting equality in doing what they want to do like men do… they are a little too unbelievable in my narrow view. Just listen to how Denise worded her responses. “ REALLY. you will sleep with a man who is “Mr. Rightnow, who can …..” but will not allow yourself to care about him? If he is straight up honest about what he wants and tells you about his double standards… REALLY? If you are all that liberal and can do everything a man can do because you want to reserve the right to do whatever he does. Then why are you stumbling over your words? Yes, I’m # I will not allow myself to care about some who is honest and tell me something like that movie. The thing that gets me about open mic conversations…. is that once you have said what, you may not have intended to say you can’t take it back. This is why I stick to writing I can always re-think what I’m writing and change the sentences so that I don’t sound too stupid. If men and women are now so open about their sexual habits and their willingness to share them in open Mic conversations stuff that is recorded and put on Youtube…. Then I believe only parts about what they are saying. I’m of the opinion, that you don’t talk about your experiences in an open Mic setting unless you have editing rights. Like the young fellah said “ I’m not going to answer that on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. 



OK… now it’s also me. My B.A.D. for being honest. I reserve the right to not answer that question, on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. You don’t have to Mirandize me to get that response. “Yeah, She popped the buttons on my shirt. But I left her clothing intact.“ Both my hands are visible in the picture….. Judge for yourself a picture does not lie, it’s worth a thousand words at least it used to, before Photoshop. Smile for the camera dude! You are being set up! 

“Yeah, She popped the buttons on my shirt. But I left her clothing  intact.“ Both my hands are visible in the picture….. Judge for yourselves a picture does not lie, it’s worth a thousand words at least it used to, before Photoshop.

Smile for the camera dude! You are being set up!

Is she Cautious or Paranoid?

I just hide in the library so that no one will bother me!

We all know that phrase “once bitten twice shy,” this is pretty much the standard in today's  World, where being taken advantage of is more the norm…. Then the opposite.

Women especially have been victimized by unscrupulous men. Who have little if any regard for how they leave a woman feeling after they have used them for their pleasure and  discarded them like “yesterdays trash.”

If you are the guy who steps to a woman after she has been taken advantage of, may  God be with you. It’s not fun to watch the fear in her eyes if you cause her to relive any if not all of her past negative experiences, especially the ones that traumatized her. Needless to say, women have in today’s World more negative experiences than their mother or grandmothers had. Social Media is a constant stream of information about people you know and some you don’t even care to know. Once a woman had experienced some of what they see going on they go from being cautious to being totally paranoid. She thinks to herself “I will never let that happen to me again.”

While some good men will pursue her she will run and hide, simply because she is thinking “he wants to use me, not love me.”  a serious case of “avoid and you will not have any regrets!” Protecting oneself is not a bad thing… but denying yourself a chance to have love and be happy….. will leave one totally lonely.

Now I know there are women who know what I’m talking about. And even men who have experienced, that prevent them from being adventurous in the “Love Circle”

Often enough we don’t understand why we are so defensive when there may not be any need to be.  

A quick story. I met a lovely woman and she seems receptive to my friendly approach, but a bit shy. At first, she was a little apprehensive about becoming too friendly... I sensed her reluctance, so I did not push. I didn’t feel she was ready for a new friendship.

Here is where the miscommunication happens between men and women. Men don’t always think the worse cases because the pretty face and figure “8” is looking too good not to pursue. Whereas a woman does not see all of her attributes as being special. She wears makeup and will not let anyone, she might be attracted to, see her without it. In my eyes, she didn’t need the makeup she was pretty enough without it. I made the mistake of letting her know that she didn’t need all of that stuff because she was beautiful without it. So when her guard was down I took a picture of her while she was doing some reading in the library and she freaked out. I was puzzled why she was so freaked… Then I understood she didn’t think she was beautiful because her ex-boyfriend belittles her about her looks. I had no chance with her after that. SMDH the damage was done by someone else, and I didn’t take the time to understand what she instantly felt when I took the pictures…. She thought: “OMG these pics will be on Social Media in an instant and I will not be able to say that wasn’t me”   comparing herself to being Plain VS Beautiful was all in her head.

Men can do serious damage to a woman’s mental state of mind.. By not taking the time to try and understand what it is that scarred her in her past. But how do you know upfront!

That was not the worst case that I had encountered. A woman who was cheated on repeatedly told me and quote: “I have Trust issues because I was cheated on repeatedly” her words. Every man she was with cheated on her repeatedly, once she gave herself to a man she would wait to see how long it would take before he cheated on her.  SMDH My response was: “STOP giving yourself to the same type of men.” Her response “all men are the same.” Now tell me how does a good guy breakdown those walls and make her understand that “Cheating is a choice, made by someone else, she did not cause it” her scars were so deep it would take some serious work to get past those walls she has built.

 Final thought

“Let not your heart and mind be troubled about things that are not within your control.”  You can find LOVE on a two-way street, and lose Love on a lonely highway. Highway traffic is busy and you are just one individual cruising at a speed that will get you ignored, instead of notice. If you are wearing “a red dress” and driving a convertible you might draw some attention, but if you are simply trying to hide then you might be seen as a victim with scars. Men will avoid chasing women they perceive as having problems that are too much work to overcome!  A highway is not the place to "meet and greet." by the way!