 I need somebody to respond to this and tell me what I need to do because your girl didn't tell. What's up y'all? So earlier today I was sent this video by my brother Bobby. It's entitled Dating in Your Forties by Crystal Renee Hayslett. I hope I'm not butchering your name but um yeah I watched a little bit of it and I had thoughts so I wanted to revise it in a similar way that I revised the meet the parries video. It's an interesting conversation that she brings up but I also would like to add additional male context to some of the things that she said so if you're a young woman watching this, if you're a seasoned woman watching this, if you're a young man watching this hopefully I can add some color to this to this conversation so I'm going to stop it periodically and give my thoughts. Let's go. Hey guys and welcome to this episode of Keep It Positive Sweetie. I'm Crystal Renee and today we are talking about dating in your forties and when I think about dating in your forties the first song that came to mind was Destiny's Child Independent Women. I'm a women independent throw your hands up at me and when I think of that is because I feel like once women get to their forties they're in and they're still dating they're definitely independent. When you're dating in your forties there's so many factors that come into place um your biological clock is ticking society has put so much stress on you need to get married by this age you need to start having children by this age. You know there's been a lot of conversation about women who are a bit seasoned you know women over the hill or who've hit the wall as it were and you know some people believe that there must be something wrong with them other people believe that they are in their prime and I think it really just speaks to the shifting societal landscape generally right back in the day it was customary to get married start a family in your 20s right um but you're also pretty much guaranteed a job real estate was a bit more affordable you could look forward to a pension um the world as wide as it as it is wasn't necessarily as accessible so you were content in your city in your town however as we're moving into the 22nd century that's no longer the case right people are prioritizing education men and women people are prioritizing status wealth accumulating material possessions and when your priorities are those things um it's very easy to put off those traditional milestones right like it's very easy to look up and now you're 40 or 30 something or even 50 and those traditional things are not there and unfortunately because we have so many options because we have so much access it's actually made things more difficult when it comes to finding partners or even finding friends it's hard as hell as an adult to make friends so I I guess I would say to women dating in their 40s it is kind of fair for men to be concerned about why you are still available in your 40s it's not to say that there is absolutely something wrong with you but it is to say that from a male point of view it's a fair assumption and this dismissiveness that we often kind of meet that with I think is really counterproductive because the reality is you know as great and fantastic as you might think you are if your son your 20 something year old handsome successful son came to you and he instead of introducing to you a young supple young lady who's intelligent and all those good things that he could potentially have children with he introduced to you a woman that was your age or a woman that was significantly older than you you would have an issue with it if you were being completely honest right so when you think about it from that vantage point it's a bit easier to empathize with why men are a bit apprehensive and obviously you know there is a conversation about the biological clock a man who wants to have kids knowing that you can give that to him it kind of eliminates you from the running but the other thing too even for men who might not be interested in children is the baggage right like reasonable men understand that all people come with baggage all women come with baggage however we also understandably realize that it's different coming with five years of baggage versus 10 years of baggage versus 20 years of baggage and if you are a woman in your 40s you have seen a single woman in your 40s you've seen a significant bit of life a significant bit of experience and that is now life and experience that your male partner now has to navigate you know your triggers you know your sensitivities maybe even you know an ex lover that you had that was the best thing since sliced bread but in 20 years you might have been able to accumulate more than one of those guys and now he has to measure up and constantly compete with that it's fair for men to kind of be apprehensive and not necessarily be so gung-ho about seasoned woman and this you know assumption that it's because we're intimidated I think it's a it's a trivialization I think it really cheapens this conversation men aren't intimidated we're just we're a bit more reasonable than we give ourselves credit of being I found myself attracting like 20 year olds and I was like what is this guy no I don't look 40 that was the first thing I don't look like I'm the how old I am but I was attracting young people and with that it became a stress because I knew they wanted children I'm like okay these are conversations we have to have and I always wanted to date somebody that's either my age or a little older and honestly they'd already had children because I didn't want that pressure I don't want the pressure of okay he wants children I can't give him that and another thing that's really hard about dating in your 40s is for me is finding a man that's not intimidated of course I want someone who has something going on with for themselves of course I want somebody who can do the things for me that I can do for them but it doesn't have to always be on the level that I do it because that's not what I need you for I need love I need affection what's difficult sometimes about these conversations is you know when you when you sit and listen to certain women describe their ideal guy a lot of times they're describing a girlfriend not a not a man right they're they're describing traits that would traditionally be found in women right and they revert back to this whole you know I'm coming across men who are intimidated by me but then it begs the question that why aren't you able to attract the men who wouldn't be right and I've talked about how some women are actually more secure and comfortable in relationships where the power dynamic is more in their favor and they might not actually admit it but some women actually find themselves more comfortable around men who make less men who are less intelligent men who are less accomplished because he's easier to control right he's easier to manipulate he needs you you don't need him and I think that's actually worth a conversation as opposed to this blanket men are intimidated by me and then the other thing is she looks good for her age she looks really good for age however the reality of men of a certain caliber men of a certain status as she put in men who wouldn't be intimidated by her their priorities are different right to to men of that caliber beautiful woman is a dime a dozen you know a successful woman is a dime a dozen their priority list would include a woman who can provide them with legacy right a woman who's good at all the things that he's not and you know I use the sports analogy all the time if you're a quarterback you wouldn't be enthusiastic about your team drafting another quarterback you would be enthusiastic about your team drafting a wide receiver what I see a lot of women doing in their critique of men is they are expecting us to value in them the traits that we have and I think they miss a lot of times that we're looking for a woman with the traits that we don't have right in a company the relationship between the founder and the co-founder might be stale but I guarantee you the relationship between the CEO and his executive secretary might last a lifetime because again this myth of the boss couple the power couple it's not sustainable right we need somebody who's a compliment not a reflection I need someone that is emotionally supportive to me someone that is that supports my career and I found that a lot of men are not in a space of maturity or even have the bandwidth to give me that they're so used to just buying women and oh I'll go do this I'll pay for this and everything's gonna be okay no like I need some like I need you to be my homie my lover and my friend I think it's also worth mentioning if we for instance we're watching a video about a guy complaining about his horrible experience in corporate America right every job that he's had his boss didn't like him his co-workers were shiesty customers were against him I think we would safely assume that maybe you're the problem right why why are you the common denominator of all this dysfunction why is your operating premise that companies are run poorly maybe if your resume was better you would be able to be recruited by land a job at a better company where you're making better money better relationships or maybe again you're the problem maybe the company culture was fine but you poisoned it maybe your lack of self-awareness is the reason why you continue to replicate dysfunction everywhere you go so similarly when I hear certain women complain about how quote-unquote men are men are intimidated you know men aren't this men aren't that it begs the question why are you incapable of finding men who do not fit those assumptions is it because again you can't attract or retain that caliber of men or is it because you're more attracted to some of the more entertaining aspects of toxic men then you are put off by the bad parts of those men right so you know I like the fact that this drug dealer he spends money fast he's entertaining but he's also inconsiderate he's also unreliable but I like the entertainment so much I'm willing to put up with the unreliable and then when I go and talk about men I say that men are unreliable and men are inconsistent and I further muddy the waters and tarnish the brand of black men and similarly you know men do this as well you know I've seen brothers who every girl that they they've come across cheats or every girl they've come across as a whole and it's like brother if you were a better dude you'd be around better people point blank and it's time we start taking ownership of the role that we play in the people that we keep ourselves around and the people that we enjoy being around as well one of the best dates I ever had I was living in DC and this was when the devil wears product was out anybody who knows me knows I can quote the devil wears product from top to bottom like I love that movie and we I had never taken a train ride before so we took the train from DC to New York he took me to nobu 57 and this is like when nobu was like just starting to pop because he was in every rap song so like it was like oh we want to know boo tonight so he went to nobu and then the next day he took me to see the color purple after the play he took me to Smith and Lewinsky which was the restaurant that Meryl Streep had Anne Hathaway go get her lunch and when she brought it she goes oh I don't need it I'm going to have lunch with Dimash yeah and she was like pissed so she takes a plate and throws it in the sink and the plate cracks and all this stuff so who went there we got the exact same steak that Meryl Streep had ordered or that Anne Hathaway had ordered for Meryl Streep and I was like this is the most thoughtful Valentine's Day I've ever had and probably still one of the most thoughtful weekends somebody's like really playing down for me and then we got back home he bought me my first Louis time bag and I was like okay yeah this is great and then I found out that he was a scammer I think she goes on to say he's Nigerian too that shout out to my night job bro that's so this is for the ladies part of the reason why it seems like so many men are shitty these days right there's a an abundance of future archetype men an abundance of fuckboys is because as you can see in this story those men tend to be the most memorable when you ask women about their best experiences their worst experiences it tends to be stories of their experience with shitty men and unfortunately the good men the men who would have been good long-term partners good fathers tend to be forgettable so when young men are watching this play out socially what it tells them is that it is far better to be memorable than to be good right and unfortunately I think women don't consider love bombing I think women don't consider sustainability because the reality of it is any man who is going to be so enthusiastic about throwing the kitchen sink at you without even fully or even appropriately getting to know you either number one has a whole bunch of money to blow that might have been ill gotten money because that money is a lot easier to blow or this man is trying to buy you but again since a lot of our women grow up watching reality television romance movies and romance novels the idea is the man who is willing to do the most for me the man who is willing to give me the most extravagant most memorable date is the man who loves me the most the man who is able to excite me the most is the man who loves me the most and the reality is not that because as a Nigerian I know brothers how much you need me to spend oh you got a 90 day rule okay I wait 90 days and day 91 I'm out so again ladies if you're not focusing on substance if you're not focusing on sustainability but instead you're focusing on games you're instead you're trying to find the highest bidder for your time attention or your punani you'll continue to be used as an object because again there are some men who take pride in conquering for the sake of conquering however long you need them to wait however much you need them to spend a matter of fact he'll hire a professional date planner to give you the most extravagant experience you've ever had in your life and because you're so blown away by the the pageantry of the experience and you didn't focus on y'all's conversation you didn't focus on the synergy you didn't focus on shared values you didn't focus on asking yourself the question is this somebody I would want to be stuck in the house with during a thunderstorm where there's nothing else to do and we're bored because that's that's what life is like you can fall in love with anybody who takes you to Dubai you can fall in love with anybody who takes you to nobu or buys you a bunch of expensive shit that's easy but real life is mundane and again because we're not prioritizing sustainability my fellow Nigerian brothers will continue to win because since women are treating their love affection and their attention as a commodity we'll pay and then we'll treat you like somebody we paid for especially when that post nut clarity sets in and those rose colored glasses lift and that makeup comes off and when I already smashed and I know that uh this is this all this is all this was but again women aren't thinking about this so we'll continue we'll continue to see men we're just paying the cost to quote unquote be the boss and the other thing I'll say too is like we talk a lot about how men have men are immature men won't grow up you know men in their 40s act like children but the reality a lot of women have peter pan syndrome as well a lot of women still think they're princesses all right shout out to Maggie the substitute teacher she said that whereas men tend to see themselves in young men women tend to see themselves as young women so basically there's still that little girl in most women and in a way it's a beautiful thing right that youthful exuberance and things like that that youthful energy but in other ways it's ridiculous and it's immature you have 50 year old women who are still waiting for their prince charming to ride in and with his white horse or white Mercedes real estate and aspen and he's got a beach house and a lake house and a ski resort and he has no kids and he's successful and he's mentally stable and he's the best sex you've ever had and it's like a lot of that stuff is super immature but we don't think about it that way because we live in the culture thanks to marketing that you could have it all you don't have to quote unquote settle and not only can you have it all you are deserving of it all because you're god's gift to everything now when you start saying it out it does sound narcissistic at best it's solipsistic right it's that first player energy mine mine is coming because i'm owed it regardless of who i am outside of myself how i'm perceived by others and it's not until you grow up and you mature that you realize that you aren't old shit and what you get out of life outside of some bad circumstances like we see in third world countries what you get out of life especially in the western context is what you deserve and what you put in how you make your bed is how you lie in it and for older women for instance to expect the same outcomes of their 20 year old counterparts is the definition of illogical and immature if you live in in atlanta we know there's a lot of scammers and most of them are of african descent so he had this african friend who um he's like he owed him some money and he's like hey baby can whatever his name was put this money um in your accounts i was like sure so i wake up one morning and there's like no oh i wake up and there's like a million dollar a negative million dollars on my bank statement i'm like a negative million dollars i'm like first of all i'm working for the government i know i ain't making no million dollars i'm like and what's who who pulled out a million it wasn't saying negative so i call the bank and they're like oh that's because there's a fraud alert on your account because the money that was deposited the other day was actually stolen one of my biggest pet peeves is someone who doesn't tip well judge me if you want to but i feel like when there are people in hospitality um you should take care of them especially if they look after you and especially if i'm taking to because i made the i actually set the reservation up because that was another thing i was always having to set up everything i'm like brah dog like can you do anything like what is going on like i don't understand that about men who like it's like the courtship has been lost like how men use like sin flowers we're gonna talk about that too i'm having to sin flowers um make take time in advance to set up hey i want to take you out um on this day they wait till the day of the oh what are you doing tonight there's no initiative anymore this goes back to the peter pan syndrome that i believe an unfortunate number of women have part of the reason why certain women aren't having certain outcomes with men is because men understand that dating these days is really just a performance right it's really just an nfl combine it's really just how much can i entertain this woman and make her feel like she's living her own private movie and make her friends jealous but for an uncomfortable number of men there doesn't seem to be anything to gain from it right so after we are done with humoring ourselves with this show right we move on right and we go perform at another theater i remember a brother i think i saw a Nigerian brother told a story about how he sent a young woman that he was dating money to get them food and she shows up with groceries and change and he talked about how that blew his mind whereas most women would have just taken the money and you know bought some bullshit and fed herself and brought back some for him she took initiative and she saw the bigger picture of this is going to save money this is going to be the healthier choice she added something to his life unlike other women who are just there to be entertained and to be pleased and to enjoy all the benefits that come with men and the worshiping that comes with us she actually saw enough value to him in him to want to bring value to him so when i see some of these stories of women telling their negative experiences with how men weren't good enough tap dancers it really makes me uh sad and annoyed because if if that continues to be your barometer man a was a great dancer man b wasn't hey well we're just gonna keep spitting out really good dancers who ain't good at shit else but what they're good at is making women fall in love with them making women come making women's friends jealous helping you take good pictures but when there are no lights when there are no cameras when there's no action i really hate being around this this person but again that peter pran syndrome doesn't allow you to think pass your nose and pass your hedonistic desires just consistently let me know hey babe i see you i hear you and i feel you and when he did that i was just like okay this is crazy i was like you're not my guy you can go like i'm not applying the pressure like day one unless i really really like you um like is he my husband or my cousin because i need to know what are we doing i am big on referrals i really do not like meeting strangers i want to know somebody that knows you to be like to vouch for you and say okay yeah this person isn't crazy or he this is his past it's what he's been through i need a little a little backstory background check on you but it's definitely a situation where i'm open i had to get i used to like to stay in the house all the time and i was like chrisley you're never going to find a man if you don't leave the house but y'all even that even just getting ready putting the makeup on doing your hair finding an outfit just going to shop for an outfit because you feel like i don't have nothing to wear and then you get out there and nobody approaches you i think what's interesting about this she previously complained about only wanting people who were in network with people that she's in network with right so she could vet and she could authenticate the individual and now she's complaining that when she goes out random individuals do not approach her and again it betrays a sense of entitlement right it betrays a sense of i am deserving of and should be expectant of certain outcomes right maybe people aren't approaching you because you might have an unfriendly demeanor or disposition maybe you don't look as attractive as you might think that you do right maybe you're not going to the right places right there there's several things that factor into that but at the end of the day like you you're not entitled to any outcomes and this goes for men as well right a lot of men think oh because i make six figures because i'm six foot because i have a six pack six inches all the other sixes that i am entitled to a woman i'm entitled to a bad bitch and it's like it doesn't work like that right and i think there's a great deal of humility that we need to reintroduce back into individuals right and when you have that humility you can then start to make the necessary adjustments to get the outcomes that you want right you're not a perfect person just because you think you are right you're not god's gift to anything because in that case everybody is which means nobody is so there needs to be some humility there needs to be some self-awareness some introspection maybe then you you'll get maybe not even outcomes you expect but better outcomes and i let people know straight out the gate listen if you're not intentional i'm in a very intentional space in my life right now i um i know what i want i know what i'm ready for i know what i bring to the table so when you come into this table i need you to understand ain't no half-ass and ain't no like i'll call it what i want to call her i'm a carry her any kind of way certain times like in my 30s i feel like i had a little more grace or i feel like i put up with more because i wasn't as secured who i am some of that peter penn syndrome because the reality is the intentional men are already taken they're already gone sweetie all right the intentional men they got married in their 30s you know in their 20s even all right now what's going to be left is either men who are younger than you who definitely can't be intentional because they haven't even created a life for themselves they haven't become the man that they need to become right so they're they they're not and they shouldn't be expected to expedite that process in order to appease you or you're gonna have the men who you know tried and failed let's say he's a divorcee you know or god forbid a widower he might not be as enthusiastic about jumping right back into another marriage right you might want to take his time to feel you out especially if he's a divorcee take his time to feel you out maybe get some of the uh midlife crisis out of his system get back out there you know see if he still got it right so he might not necessarily be wanting to rush the process or you're gonna have the men who are similar to you who waited right and they waited until they were 40 to get married or or settle down and those tend to be either the guys who they ain't got no hoes they're the nerd type they're the they're the ones that a lot of our women unfortunately have been socialized to see as boring right or you're gonna have the forever playboy right the guy i'm never gonna get married i'm gonna be out here pimping until i'm in a wheelchair so unfortunately as a woman you make as a woman who is seeking monogamy you make things incredibly difficult for yourself when you approach hit and cross this wall and again it's important to be aware right it's important to be aware of that so maybe you can start making adjustments you can start making accommodations right because it doesn't mean you can't still win or you can't still find what you're looking for but it means that you have to be far more exceptional in the ways that men think are exceptional than you've ever been in your life and again this goes for men as well but the easiest way to look at it this goes for athletes right it's hard as hell to get into the nfl it's so much harder to get into the nfl at 30 than at 22 because the nfl prioritizes young athletes straight out of college their bones their knees are still fresh right they can still take more physical damage and physical exertion whereas the 30-year-old might only have two years in a tank so again I think women and also men need to shift their perspective instead of just limiting it to your own confined perspective think of yourself from the perspective of the consumer and user experience design we talk about end user research right I'm not making this product for myself I'm making this product for an end user so I have to be able to understand and articulate what the end user values and what the end user needs and what solves their problems not what not what I think solves their problems what not what I think they should need not what I think they should value but what they actually value because if the competition does a better job at articulating and listening to the end user the competition will be more successful but if we continue in our community in particular to say that the end user needs to listen to me I want a man but I don't care to listen to men I want a woman but I don't care to understand women you continue to lose to the competition whether that be younger women or foreign women and for men whether that be players white men sugar daddies pimps futures you have to be able to take notes from the people who are winning at the thing that you want to win at we're not married but I don't want you I want you to be monogamous exclusive I want you to treat me like your wife and I want all the all the rewards of a husband and we're not married I'm so glad she brought that up because I've been talking about that forever a lot of women expect husbandly treatment from us from day one while simultaneously bombastically withholding wife treatment from us until we make you our girlfriend we put a ring on it whatever her prerequisite might be and it's not until this new movement of men speaking up men actually expressing themselves honestly unashamed that men are starting to push back and say no I have the right to have expectations of you as well and if you're unwilling to come to this proverbial table in earnest in good faith just like you're expecting me to come in earnest in good faith we ain't got really nothing to talk about because you can't expect me to assume that you're a good person and you're benevolent and you're going to do right by being the whole nine while simultaneously preserving your skepticism of me so either we both going to be skeptical and both going to move with caution but we both going to be nose wide open because this idea that heartbreak hurts women worse is bullshit this idea that men are apathetic and unfeeling people is bullshit we're not as emotionally expressive we're not emotional exhibitionists in the way that women are but we feel to we lose too and I know some people minimize that and say oh you just lost money no I lost time not just the time it took me to earn that money but the time that I spent on you and the time that's going to be necessary for me to get that money back so yeah either we're both going to act like victims or we're both going to be brave and authentic and unafraid in our pursuit of partnership and love in the whole nine but there's one sided asymmetrical deal where you're expecting me to be my Sunday best whether or not it's sustainable while expecting also me to assume that you're capable of the moon and the stars if I can only break through your wall to this trial period because a lot of men have gotten to the other side and realized that she wouldn't shit she wasn't just not cooking because I hadn't earned it yet no she just can't cook she doesn't cook and was using that as an excuse so I would continue to be my my version of Prince Charming. I had a lot of relationships where it was off and on and whenever he called back we were back on we'd fade out and then I would do what I was doing he would do what he was doing then he called and say he missed me and it was like okay we back you know I had a guy that I did that with for like six years he was like off and on off and on and um to this day it's funny they like you know that's your husband I'm like no they was like well he's still ain't with nobody and I'm like yeah because he got issues he has come at me issues and I was like that's not my husband. I think again it speaks to how we're expecting men to be better when better is not what's rewarded so in her example there was a guy who was non-committal and they maintained the situation on and off for six years now let's say young men are listening to that and they just watched their homeboy who was committal get cheated on all right their their smart friend who doesn't really get played like that because women see him as boring but the exciting charismatic dude he gets to be non-committal for six years on and off and also he's the one that you remember what do we think the next generation of young men who on top of that are being raised by some of these single women what do we think they are going to be like it's going to be more of the same so they're going to be just like they're charismatic non-committal unreliable inconsistent dads because mr. Johnny who was all those things that at 40 you now realize were important mr. Johnny ain't get no play back in the day who got play was my Debbie dad quote unquote that now you complain about so guess what these young men are going to gravitate towards being like especially in the absence of older men who can give them a more nuanced version of the game and teach them that they need to play both sides in a way they need to be consistent reliable but also adopt some of those enigmatic charismatic elements of the terrible men so again i think women need to grow up on the macro and consider how their actions and how their choices incentivize what we see more of especially from men let's just say this i put up with a lot of shit that i would not put up with now and that's because i don't have the tolerance i have a zero tolerance for lying cheating um for inconsistency for someone who a deal breaker for me is someone who's not like a man of god who doesn't want to go to church like i need somebody that i can do everything with again Peter Pan syndrome women are looking for girlfriends not men i want somebody to do everything with real men who have things going on and in your example he should or could already have kids maybe an ex-wife maybe multiple children he's not going to be available to be your one and only friend where you guys do everything with each other like you could have when you were 20 years old in college so again it's your big age and the priorities should be a bit different all right it should be you know going into the twilight of your life somebody who you can be comfortable with you guys can travel from time to time get your affairs in order you know grow your real estate portfolio mature adult things not somebody you can do everything with you have female friends and then i hear this whole man of god thing over and over and over again and it's bullshit because if that was true the the the drummer and the pianist and the church is actually a good dude he's ready to get married he would be the one getting scooped up but again those men aren't exciting they're not spontaneous they're not all those other things that actually matter more than whether or not he's a man of god if you were being honest but the man of god thing sounds so good that yeah i'm gonna say it but on my priority list it's not top five before i get to man of god i'm gonna get to bullshit like height and beard and you know chocolate or light skin or six figures or six foot so let's let's be honest ladies you're not looking for a man of god that would be a nice nice to have but tell the truth is you're not making distinctions between the men that you fall for and that you're smitten by with whether or not he's a man of god so again the male delegation who's actually paying attention is noting that okay these are the things that she says matters but when you look through her history when you look through the way when you observe the enthusiasm with which she talks about certain experiences man of god doesn't come up consistency doesn't doesn't come up honestly doesn't come up so ladies you can't continue to say one thing but do another and incentivize another and expect us to not be paying attention i need somebody that's like baby we're gonna pray together to because we got to keep this thing tight and um that's for me is like one of the biggest biggest things i always say when people are like what are you looking for in a man and i would say i want a man that has to seek god to get to me when they see me they're like oh i can't go about the same way i didn't want it with all these other women i got to go with this woman different lord help me secure this because i know if i do it i'm gonna mess it up i need you to seek him first before you step over here okay secondly um how he treats his mother i want him to like if my mother i would say watch how man treats his mom because that's how he's gonna treat his mom that's another one i think it's fair you know i think that's actually a good tip based on how a man treats his mother um there's a good indication of how he sees women and how he'll inevitably treat you however why doesn't that rule work the other way around is it fair for men to say watch how a woman treats or talks about her dad i imagine it wouldn't be right because we see an uncomfortable number of women running with the stories that their moms told them about how trash of a father that she decided to procreate with and how that shaped her perception of men at large and what men are deserving of and what men are worth or what men's role is now what happens if men earnestly started making distinctions between women especially in our community by how she thinks about talks about and treats her father or whether or not she has one i think there might be some protests there so maybe we should introduce a bit of nuance with the how he treats his mother piece as well because i think you know in our community it's a foregone conclusion that everybody had a terrible dad and everybody had a wonderful mom who was just doing the best she could despite less than ideal circumstances but the reality is not that clean some of our mothers are trash and some of our fathers were just doing the best he could but i don't know if we're ready for that conversation i look at how he is around his friends the friend the company that he keeps um how he is when i bring my friends around because a lot of times you can kind of tell when you bring them in different environments you're like okay that's another one that doesn't work the other way around we've seen women sit and defend their hoe ass conniving ass sneaky ass friends for days but now claim that it's fair to distinguish a man based on the company he keeps i actually agree with it i think it is fair but i think it works the other way around so when i hear women talk about well just because jessica's a hoe doesn't mean i'm a hoe more than likely it does and if it's gonna work this way if jamal is a scammer and i'm his friend i might be a scammer too if rebecca's a hoe and you're her friend you might be a hoe too and it's not an unfair question or unfair assumption i dated this one guy and um he was muslim and um my parents were so mad they were like you are that's unequally yoked like you should um shouldn't date somebody who's not christian and i was like and this is really kind of what changed my view on religion but we'll talk about that in a second um and i was like but nobody's ever loved me the way he has because of the way the the way he made me feel and the way he loved me it started to make me think that religion was just put in place to give people rules to live by fellas it's important that we understand that unlike men for women looks is not as fixed i've seen women find objectively unattractive men attractive and objectively attractive men unattractive and what i mean by that is charisma for women energy vibes you hear it phrase in different ways is far more important status even right like we'll see some women augle over a celebrity who before he was famous could walk by nobody would care or you see women put objectively handsome men bone structure muscle mass in the friend zone because he's a dweeb so going back to the entitlement piece um i think especially when it comes to getting women it's not about box checking it's all about how you make her feel right and that starts with an understanding kind of a baseline understanding of female psychology it comes with listening right being attentive and giving her permission to be her authentic self you know sweatpants chiller with no makeup on i found that women want to feel seen and part of the reason why some women gravitate to shitty men is because those shitty men give them permission to be their shitty selves if they see themselves that way whereas a more carlton type of man makes them feel like they need to continue to perform just like they have to at school or just like they have to in corporate america and later on when you're hearing about these two opposite types of men if you let her tell it the thug guy was objectively more attractive no he just made her feel more or better and then with the religion piece because i had a conversation with a female friend of mine who also was dating a muslim man and at the time they were dating long distance and you know we tend to trivialize different things because we want to create the reality that we that serves us right i want to believe what's going to be in line with the story that i want to tell myself but the reality is with religion for example religion shapes a great deal of our thought process and our lifestyle choices and although like a christian and a muslim might be able to make it work in the short term what happens when you guys have to now have the conversation if kids are part of this deal how are we going to raise our kids what are we going to be doing on sunday what are we going to be doing on on ramadan and not to say that it's impossible to make these things work but it's very very improbable especially if you're a solipsistic person who's used to things going your way and as she put it i want somebody i can do everything with a christian isn't going to be able to do everything with a muslim a muslim isn't going to be able to do everything with a christian or buddhist or hindu so again when we maturely play these things out and consider these things in the long term we see that they won't necessarily work and it's not enough that you wanted to work and it's not enough that love and feelings those are short term things is this sustainable honestly like i used to want like the hot boy you know what i'm saying they had it going on the most popular even from like high school i always dated like the start of football team college i paid it um day to start the basketball team um and then i it was a phase of my life where i started to attract like duzo's making a lot of money and i got i was in college and that was when i was exposed to like my first like millionaire boyfriend and i was like whoa this is a different life and being exposed to at a very young age was like it was a lot and i started to even look at me and like okay y'all just want to take care of me i had that mentality because i didn't have nothing going on but when you when i started having something going on and the table started turning i was making my own money i was standing on my own two feet i didn't have to pay my bills i could do it on my own that's when i started looking for different things in a man it's a lot that comes with that life and you deal with infidelity you deal with ego you deal with um um a lot of loneliness because they're always busy um and those are things like okay do i want that like is this the life i want do i want to be by myself all the time while he's out doing god knows what this is why i used to defend kevin samuels god rest his soul did i agree with everything the brother said no i obviously have a different approach but i think one of the covert things that he was trying to explain to women during some of these interactions was you do not want what you think you want you do not want what comes with it and unfortunately part of a lot of people and women in particular is peter pan syndrome is they only think about the benefit and they don't think about the cost if you want a german luxury car it's great it's awesome people are going to be jealous of you have you thought about the car insurance have you thought about the maintenance cost have you thought about how much an oil change costs have you thought about what it would cost to replace the radiator if it goes bad have you thought about if you live in a city like atlanta like i believe she does how now you're an exceptional carjacking or break in target but again if you only think about how beautiful the car looks when you're confronted with the not just the cost of actually getting the car but also the cost of maintaining and and dealing with what comes with the car you might realize that that's not actually what you want and similarly a lot of these women were seeing wanting bosses men who make six figures seven figures i've heard some women even say eight figures they do not consider what comes with that life because again part of this peter pan syndrome is i can have it all that man who is exceptional in every way and rich and everything he's all he's going to have all the time in the world i'm going to be the only woman he's going to love me unconditionally he's not going to be a narcissist he's not going to be competitive but he is a top 0.5 earner and different things that when you start listing it off doesn't actually make sense but unfortunately i think a lot of our women and girls go unchallenged in some of these asks because in real life there is something called a faustian bargain there's essentially a deal with the devil for every benefit there's a cost for every challenge there's a benefit right so it goes both ways but wisdom is the ability to consider both sides and while considering both sides you can then ask yourself do i want a high value man or a high quality man because those aren't necessarily the same thing and sometimes in order for that man to accumulate value he had to compromise his integrity and in order for the other man to maintain his integrity he had to relinquish or turn down things that might have made him valuable but again little women little girls don't think about these things we just see this guy's shining and means he must be a better person this guy is handsome this guy is rich he must mean he's he's more hard working he's more ethical whatever the case may be and the truth is actually very often the opposite um because he feels like he can because he's the one bringing all the money in so when i started making my own money i started my whole idea of what i wanted and a man started to change and not saying that my success defines me but i'm not going to sit here in line and say that it didn't boost my confidence and make me like i don't need you you know i can do this on my own i want you and there's a difference between needing somebody and wanting somebody can i learn from you there's guys that like literally can be top NBA players that like crystal i will meet you tomorrow and i'm like bruh the conversation is horrible like i'm a savior sexual you get me here you're gonna get me there okay you gotta you gotta get the mind first i'm like every time i'm on the phone with you i'm like a man that's hollering at 40 year old crystal needs to come with some confidence um some swag he gotta come knowing like i need to see that you know that you can handle me because i don't feel like you can handle me i'm like okay i'm gonna have to run all over you you know in some of my case studies i've talked about this unfortunate paradigm in our community where we hear women say he needs to handle me he needs to know how to handle me oh he couldn't handle me and you know simultaneously we see female rappers for instance including stallion in their name right megan the stallion even though a stallion is a male horse but it's it's this it's this sense of black women are this wild unruly animal that needs to be tamed that needs to be handled that needs to be to be manipulated and controlled or else that animal might buck that animal might hurt you and i think unfortunately for the same group of women to be asking for our protection we're gonna have to have a conversation right because if we continue to champion this paradigm of i shouldn't expect your cooperation i shouldn't expect your soft demeanor i should expect you to be unruly i should measure myself by my ability to handle your unrulyness but i should simultaneously protect you it's not gonna work right especially as the world opens up you guys know i'm not a fan of passport bros but women of other cultures are not championing the fact that they're gonna run over a man they're not they're not prioritizing a man's ability to handle them because they understand that that energy will attract a certain type of man going back to my first point about those men who are gamers those men who are matadors you pride yourself in being a bull you will attract matadors so maybe instead of being so comfortable and at peace with the unruly aspects of your personality maybe ask yourself if those unruly aspects are productive and if they help or hurt your chances of creating the sustainable long-term peaceful relationship that you now see value in in the latter part of your life come to me single don't be having a whole bunch of stuff going on okay some stragglers go ahead and let them fall by the wayside before you come over here because i need you to be open to receive all that your blessings that god has for you because i'm a blessing i need you to know i'm a blessing i talked to this guy for a year and didn't know what we were doing and when i finally asked myself so what are we doing i know guys hate that question it's like uh or they hate that we need to talk and they hate the what are we doing it's like dun dun dun women who are used to unintentional men if they were encountered with an intentional man it would scare them off it's uh it's fascinating and hilarious at the same time because you hear those same women complain and demand that the next man that they're going to be with is going to be intentional but their track record is the complete opposite and typically those women are more comfortable with unintentional men because intentional men might make them feel insecure might make them feel unworthy might make them feel uncomfortable hola why why is this why is god like me so much this i'm not used to this and like i say and people might not like this but i think especially as you get older as a man focusing on the positives and everything that's great isn't the best way to make decisions all right you need to know what the challenges are going in and i was talking about this the other day like you know when i was teenager or you know 20s i'm only 30 but when i saw a beautiful woman i just thought damn i wonder what it would be like to sleep with her or i wonder what it would be like to take her out or you know those surface level things but at this age my first thought is what's wrong with her what baggage does she come with what challenges might we have so then if i'm making a decision i'm making the decision based on am i willing to sign up in spite of the challenges am i willing to thug it out and see it through and commit myself to her despite some of her shortcomings and i think that's how many to make decisions i just like the car analogy forget what the car looks like and how fast it drives and all the cool gadgets on the inside what's the insurance what's the maintenance cost how many shops in my area actually work on this model that's what men need to be thinking about and similarly it's important that women are aware of their challenges as well so they can work on them and also be uh more transparent with the guy so he knows what he's getting himself into and once those rose colored glasses wear off after you know you guys have sex you know he's considered if he wants to stick around past that but if we remain in this unaware stage then we are asking why why did he stop calling me or messaging me after we slept together why did he lose interest or why did he ghost me well because he had one idea of who you were and found out that it wasn't that or maybe he just wanted sex and maybe he thought he wanted more but once he got sex he realized he didn't want more past the dairy's and um past the chimica say collecting data i was like it ain't that much data to collect i showed you in three months what it was if you didn't catch it you didn't catch it and i'm gonna speak that my next man i'm not even gonna have to ask him because he's gonna tell me and he's gonna let me know baby this is what it is i got you we in this thing my parents got engaged within six months and they were married by the eighth month so like it was a very fast track marriage and my mom always says they don't take nobody that long to figure out they want to be with you or not now i will say that i go back and forth to this some days i want marriage other days i want a life partner there's been a time where i wondered if i just wanted a uh commitment ceremony because i wanted to be i wanted to honor god and get married before god but not in the law you know what i'm saying i feel like it just gets weird and technical and what we do together how we build together is ours and if it don't work you go your way i go mine we split what we done together i leave what i came with you leave what you came with um but then other times like okay let's get married i don't know i still want my ring whichever way i do it i need that ring okay minimum eight what jayce say rocks will be a candy candy for your hand or new purse i think critiques of legal marriage are fair i remember watching this video of a divorce attorney and he says the legal marriage fits the def the definition of negligence because about 56 of them fail and there are really no safeguards in place i think you know you can make the argument for men and women but definitely for men especially if kids are involved alimony child support the whole nine but i think it also speaks to another part of the peter pan syndrome where it's like we just want pageantry we want the pageantry of love not the reality we want the pageantry of monogamy and marriage not the reality we want the wedding we don't want the marriage we want the butterflies we want the excitement we want the highs we want the for better we don't want the for worse and that goes back to i think the immaturity with which we think about companionship and you know in sternberg's triangle of theory of love i think we're over indexing on the passion and the intimacy and not thinking about the commitment mature love is about commitment it's about despite how i feel i have committed myself to this to you that's mature love that's authentic love that's sustainable love this feelings change and in this lady's case even though she's relatively attractive especially for her age once all those new butterflies wear off and you know the the novelty of a new person and a beautiful woman wears off that's what we're left with and we need to prioritize thinking about that not rings or ceremonies or dresses or pictures that's the only thing that matters i need the one that i like gotta take off some days my baby is just too big it's just too big everything's too big you know what i like about young men is that they're very confident if they're like attracted to an older woman those little boys be coming with some confidence it's like okay they make you feel good about yourself they they hype you up and i think we do the same thing for them older women it's like we struck their ego we make them feel more of a man and it's like they feel like they're conquering something but little do you know we conquer them speaking as a young dude who has uh you know been involved with some older women in my day you know back in the day when you know i was moving and grooving um one of the things that i did appreciate about older women is you know their conversation tended to be better right they were especially as a young guy who i guess some people describe me as having an old soul um it's it's difficult sometimes to relate to or be stimulated in conversation with people your age and that's one thing that i appreciated about older women i could learn something from them right even shit that i didn't really care about like furniture or fabrics right i was somebody who appreciated somebody who was who i could nerd over things with even things i didn't care about so yeah i always encourage young dudes if you have the res yeah they date some older women learn something from them however keep your eye on the price right still understand if you're somebody who's interested in legacy and she can't give that to you don't be coerced into trapping yourself into a life that you really don't want you know to to her point these these young men they're not as uh idiotic as they might come across and especially if she is gravitating towards the young fun men that might say something about maybe some immaturity in her because you will say the same thing about older dudes who date young women will say oh he's probably immature but when it comes to older women who date young men especially the young men who are still in the club popping bottles and doing all that young shit we don't consider the fact that maybe she's immature even like the energy and like the fun there's some 50s and 60-year-olds that like like to have fun but i feel like my age range like we're still young we still have a lot of vigor we like to go out like to travel i need somebody to keep up with me because when i go out like especially out the country i like to have a good time and i'm out partying i might be on the table i don't need you to be embarrassed like i want to have a good time and i don't feel like sometimes like older people they just want to stay in the house all the time or want to do boring stuff like i don't want to go play bingo where they say age ain't nothing but a number y'all love to use that line i was like age is more than number once we get down the line okay we gotta right now it's all cute but when we get to the nitty gritty and you start wanting babies and talking other things i'm like uh i'm 40 years old to wrap this up life is about balance life is about trade-offs life is about benefits and costs if we are simply prioritizing our perspective without being thorough in our critiques of ourselves without critiquing our expectations without auditing our offerings to qualify for said expectations it'll be very hard for us to attain the things that we want and it tends to be easier for us to blame everybody but ourselves so obviously i'm using uh crystal as a proxy because i don't know her personally but um i am seeing a lot of people men and women who instead of auditing the challenges that come along with being involved with them from the perspective of the other side they would rather run with this narrative that they are god's gift and the issue is that people haven't been able to see that as opposed to the reality that if you are somebody i think particularly a woman who is desiring of monogamy and you've been unsuccessful into the later post-wall years of your life from the perspective of men there might be something wrong with you and since men are providers and protectors our default is to assume the worst so instead of just simply shaming us for not knowing how to handle a good woman or being intimidated or any of the other common talking points maybe consider the fact that our assumption tends to be true thank y'all for listening hit the like button make sure you subscribe check out some of the other content and i'll see y'all in the next one also send me videos that you want me to revise and we'll keep this thing going peace out y'all