After The Booty Call

This Spring I’d like to kick off a new relationship series.  I want to touch upon the good, the bad, and whatever else is in between.  It’s been a while since I’ve done this and my intuition tells me that now is the time.  Many readers have been here since I've started this crazy journey that I call my life nearly 3 years ago.  For that I'm humbly grateful and I have to truly send all of you my sincerest thanks. I've been very open with these pages and that will never change about me.  Through my ups and my downs, my highs and my lows, you have been here and that amazes me.  It's been an uphill battle filled with lots of growing pains, lots of tears, lots of shame and learning, yet lots of joy & plenty of God's Love. The positive feedback that I receive from the majority of you is what always keeps me coming back. I’d like to give way to this new series and extend my hand to those that need it the most. What I want all of you to know before we begin is that any relationship that isn’t deeply rooted in the Love of God is destined for disaster.  For my Ladies, this Spring I want to encourage you to have standards, set limits and know your boundaries.  Even more so, I want to encourage you to have high standards; the type of standards that demand a man’s respect and don’t give way to the social media traps that society has set us up for. Fellas, I challenge you to find that amazing woman that makes you want to give her your absolute best!  A Lady that makes giving her your best the most amazing feeling ever! I'm gonna dig really deep with this one.  Some of the content will be uncomfortable but we'll work through it together.  Enjoy…

I decided to write this post in an attempt to reach out to my young sisters.  Not insinuating that my older sisters aren’t still struggling with this one but I realize its way harder to teach an old dog new tricks.  Let me start out by saying that my booty call days are long behind me.  When God’s Grace touches the heart of a woman there’s an amazing transformation that begins to take place.  Sinful nature is avoided at all costs and God’s Love replaces self-hatred.  Situations that I would have compromised my soul for are no longer nor will they ever be options for my life.  I had a vision earlier today and I remembered my own booty call days and the emptiness that always followed immediately after.  There was definitely instant gratification that came from being in the company of and held by a man for one-night, a few weeks or in some instances a few months but the scars of emptiness left behind with these temporary relationships was never worth the pain.  Thinking back I can remember waiting anxiously for that after phone call or text message. Just something to wash away the shame and feeling of guilt that lingered that following day.  Realizing that I was sleeping with someone that refused to make a monogamous commitment to me as if I was on probation and they had to observe if I was worth the price.  Looking back I wish I had just one positively strong female in my life that would have said, “Baby, you are not a loaner vehicle to be driven around until this man decides if he wants to keep you or not”.

Being a writer gives me the opportunity to speak to so many women from so many different backgrounds. I get to hear their perspective of what a booty call is to them. It saddens me that across the board many women often try to sell me on the convenience of these short-term rendezvous.  “It’s convenient for me because I’m not looking for anything serious at this time.” is what I hear the most.   My thoughts are always like, “Huh, what in the hell is convenient about letting a man into your personal space, to defile your body, and then leave you emotionally malnourished with inconsistent communication, which often times is initiated at his leisure?”  My last booty call was the worse and was the “eye-opener”, or so to speak for me.  The young man was very much my junior in age and he had this youthful spontaneous energy that one just doesn’t have when one is a responsible adult holding down a home, a car, bills and most importantly children.  I admired his carefree way of being and his ability to completely abandon any emotional attachment to our situation.  On one particular evening we broke the entire frame of my bed and I remember thinking, “This is ridiculous, and this needs to end”.  This was the type of intimate and physical relationship that I’d want to have with my future husband not a man that’s leaving me completely unsatisfied emotionally when he walks out the door.

Why would I compromise my standards?  Why was I ok with doing what everyone else around me was doing? Women tend to be nurturing and caring beings by birthright.  We’ll see one of our best girlfriend’s about to hit a brick wall and instead of slapping her with a dose of tough love reality we’ll play the devil’s advocate and say things like, “Girl, you have that young man sprung”, or even more dreadful, “Girl you still got it!”  To make matters even worse, we’ll pick-up the phone shortly after and tell another girlfriend how stupid we think the first girlfriend is.  Foolish encouraging words of self-destruction circulate around our friendships that aren’t submerged in truth.  Thankfully, I’ve learned to become my own best-friend in these instances and I found a lovely 25 year-old young lady to introduce to that particular young man.  I removed myself completely from the situation because in addition to selling myself out, I was also defiling my temple; the beautiful body that God has given me to share with a man that I’m fully committed to in God’s image of Love. The Bible sums it up very nicely in 2 Timothy 2:22 “Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living, faithfulness, love and peace.

In this new age of Instagram and Facebook, I see how easy social media steers my young sisters toward soul-selling.  We take pictures of our every movement throughout the course of our day and in most instances we get feedback from men that are attracted to the physical assets we readily put on display.  How many, “likes” a young woman gets in an hour begins to become her validation of self.  How many men will want to link up with her based solely on her publically displayed sex appeal, image (or lack thereof), and the idea that her Instagram Love doesn’t cost a damn thing. This is where some of the most un-meaningful relationships will begin. We have set new lows for women in our society; talk of God and of the church becomes that of the radical Christian that no one wants to be associated with.  It’s way easier to do what everyone else is doing and continue selling out the one person that you need to rely on the most...yourself. One young lady in her late 20’s recently told me that her boyfriend, (whom she met on Instagram) actually “deserved” some sex from her after sending her flowers multiple times and taking her out on occasion. This is the mentally that we buy into when we refuse to pull out our pencil and paper and really reevaluate what our relationship goals are. In a society that is ravaged with the virus HIV how we’re not asking for a person status at the top of our goal list is simply absurd to me.

If the long-term goal is marriage or let’s say that the short-term goal is simply a committed relationship then I can promise you booty calls are not going to bring you any closer to either of the two.  Having sexual intercourse with a man is like allowing him an up-close and personal communion with your soul. Spirit to spirit contact is what leaves a woman feeling so empty after a booty call encounter.  The emptiness comes from the intertwinement of the two souls. We’re spiritual beings before anything else. Young men have become so desensitized to sex with young women that many times there is zero regard for any type of on-going communication after the initial encounter unless of course, it involves more sex. My analogy for this is just a sleeping subconscious that allows both parties to forget the true nature of what we were created as humans to do.  We were created to love one another. The sleepy state-of-mind that many of us are in prevents us from igniting that flame of God that lives right inside of our inner core.  I really need to start paving the pavement more often. I need to come up with a questionnaire for young couples that are participating in these non-contractual and dangerous sexcapades.  They’re unhealthy, unsafe, and in many cases they’re the root to why many of us have so many trust issues to begin with.

Finally, if you find yourself wondering what the next step is after the booty call. Then my advice to you would be to take matters into your own hands and make the next step. Ask God for the guidance that only he can offer and tell the young man that you’re involved with that you mistakenly lowered your standards but that moving forward you won’t be able to continue on that road.  You may have to simply sacrifice having anything with him altogether but I promise you that in the long-run nothing will feel better than having respect for yourself.  Let’s start spring off with the fresh renewal of Life that it represents.  Keep God’s Love first and you’ll always remember that His Love is all you need.  In times of loneliness, trust, lean on and talk to Him.  Remember that God wants you to have all the wonderful things that this life has to offer.  That includes a loving Husband to “protect”, “provide” and “profess” (Steve Harvey’s 3 P’s theory), his love for you. 

Wishing you colorful and passionate Love built on God’s rock this season!  I Love you all and want the absolute best for each and every one of you.  Let’s move toward love, marriage, family and stability. Let’s refrain from participating in booty calls. A season of building up versus spreading apart and tearing down!  Let's go Ladies...R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Much Luv,