Short Cup of Caramel Frappuccino

This was written on December 28, 2011 at 4 o’clock in the morning after getting off at 2 A.M.  I felt my emotions and feelings at the time needed to be written down, and they could not wait.

As the year comes to an end and a new one begins, I will be celebrating my one year anniversary with my cariño.  I don’t really talk about my boyfriend much on here or other social media sites and I have very good reason for it.  I’ve done the whole blab about your significant other type thing and after the relationship ended I was left feeling ridiculous at the fact that I sounded like a love sick puppy for nearly three years.  Never again.

I met my boyfriend during the Summer of 2009.  I vividly remember my first interaction with him.  I needed help with a problem and I was told that he would go help me.  I never spoke to him much after that first interaction since he looked like the assholes that I hated growing up.  The next time I spoke to him was when I decided to inform him that I had let a girl at Chickfila know his name.  He had said someone left something on his car and I believed it was her.  I was so afraid that he’d get upset about me telling the girl who he was, but he just laughed it off.  I looked at a bracelet that he wore to work everyday with the Puerto Rican flag and asked him, “You’ve been to Puerto Rico?”  ”No, but my Mom is Puerto Rican.”  ”You’re pretty dark to be mixed.  If you’re really half Puerto Rican speak some Spanish then!”  ”HOLA!”  I never spoke to him much then and soon I left to go back to school forgetting about the attractive Bronx native.

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So today I decided on my mini vacation that I’d go watch Crazy, Stupid, Love.  The film stars Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling (swoon) Julianne Moore and Emma Stone to name a few.It’s about a man (Carell) whose wife up (Moore) and decides that she wants a divorce after sleeping with another man.  The man soon encounters a ladies man (Gosling) at the bar who offers to help him get back up and out into the dangerous world of dating.  Now the plot of the movie is pretty much summed up in the titled.  We’ve all (or will do) some pretty CRAZY and STUPID things for LOVE in our life.  

Carell’s character does all of those things when he and his wife separate, but throughout all the problems that Carell faces he never stops loving the woman he first laid eyes on at 15 and bought a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone for.  The film really makes you sit and wonder when will I meet my soul mate or have I already met them?  You could have come across your one true love at school, work or standing in line at a movie theater.  You honestly never know when you’ll come across that person which is why we as humans go crazy and do stupid things all in the name of love.  I know people who have met their husbands at their place of work.  I know people who are with someone that they once hated with a passion.  I know people who turned down multiple dates from a person and that’s the person they’re married to.  

Love changes a person.  Love makes a person work harder so that they can become a better person.  Love makes you drunk call a person at 4 in the morning to tell them how much you miss them and it makes that other person pick up the phone.  It makes you cook them red velvet cupcakes knowing good and well you can’t bake to save your life.  It causes all of us to do those things that we’ve declared we’ll never do, but end up changing our mind once the right person comes along.  It’s the reason why we live.

Guy 1:  I’m going to visit my girl today.  I can’t wait to see her.  

Guy 2:  Man shut your ol’ WHIPPED a$$ up.

Guy 1:  What?  I haven’t seen her in TWO months man.  She’s been doing missionary work in Nigeria, caught malaria and almost died.

Guy 2:  Get your WHIPPED a$$ out of my face.

There’s something about the word “whipped” that I loathe so very much.  I’ve never been called “whipped” because well I’m a young lady and we’re expected to be smitten with our boyfriends/husbands by society, but when you have a male who’s willing to break his neck to make sure his girlfriend continues to be happy he’s considered “whipped” by his boys…and sometimes his woman’s friends.  The word just has such a negative connotation to it which makes me hate it.  The word “whipped” is really another way of people trying to say, “Oh he’s in love.”  Men have such a negative look on love especially when it’s their friend that’s experiencing the emotion.  It’s almost like love is the ending road.  

I’ve always admired guys who would do anything for their woman and they have no alterior motive behind it, just because its the person they love.  I guess being “whipped” consist of driving two hours to see your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, declining invites to hang out with your boys at the strip club because your girlfriend is having horrible cramps or simply cooking her a dinner knowing good and well you can’t cook.  Any man who uses this word towards his friend is pretty much jealous and wishes they had the same thing.

I recently ordered Essence relationship columnist’s Demetria Lucas’s book A Belle In Brooklyn:  The Go-to Girl for Advice on Living Your Best Single Life and decided to pick it up today after taking a far too long break.  In the chapter, The Atlanta Fiasco, Demetria talks about her friend Eddie and how he was one of her top-five dates from the time they sat on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial just talking.  The quote that followed really struck a chord with me.

‎”When a guy has a personality and something to say, he doesn’t need to spend money to be memorable.”

Now I’m not the most experienced in the dating field, but I have to say this is true.  Of the three men I’ve gone out on dates with (two of which I’ve dated, the other was just…yeah) some of my favorite dates have been ones that just involve walking around talking.  I’m not saying every date a man takes you on should involve little to no money being spent, but I think you can find out if a man is a keeper from dates like this.  Dates where a ton of money is being spent is nothing more than a gimmick to me.  I know for a fact that there are men out there who think, “Well if I spend a lot of money on her she’ll ignore the fact that I don’t know how to carry a conversation because I have no life.”  I’ve had memorable dates that cost a nice chunk of change for a young adult in college and I’ve also had dates that involved doing the simplest things.

I’ve always felt that it’s the man’s job to plan dates so between my first boyfriend and my current boyfriend I must say my current boyfriend is in the lead for most memorable dates by a LONG stretch.  The most memorable date from my first boyfriend was Valentine’s Day 2009.  He came to visit me from Alabama dressed in his military uniform and gave me a teddy bear with matching dress blues.  He’s did other things that were sweet, but the further we got into our relationship it just seemed like going back to his house to watch a movie after eating was our typical date.  Yes, these are cheap dates but doing the same thing over and over doesn’t make anything “memorable” just routine.  He was always willing to spend a ton of money to see me or send me flowers for an anniversary, but he NEVER took the time out to really think of something I said I wanted to try out.

Now when it comes to my current boyfriend I might be biased in regards to our dates, but they’ve all been fabulous.  We’ve gone to the aquarium, ice skating, dancing, and a Kevin Hart show to name a few.  I think the most memorable date we’ve had though was when I was home for Spring Break this year.  What did he do you ask?  He cooked dinner for me.  That’s right.  Dinner.  Lemon pepper wings and mashed potatoes.  Sure it was nothing extravagant, but there was no wait to be seated or no waitress to constantly annoy us in hopes of receiving a larger tip.  Just he and I on a rainy day in March sitting in his kitchen eating a meal he took the time out to make and watching a movie in his room afterwards.  I think what made it so memorable was why he did.  I was constantly complaining about how my Mom never cooked meals anymore since I started college.  So the week before I came home he told me he was going to treat me to a home cooked meal. 

I also think this is a good way for a man to tell if a woman is really into him or what he has to offer financially.  A gold digger will become bored.  Any woman who truly loves you will be more than willing to take up a date offer that includes nothing more than laying on your couch while rubbing her feet and talking about politics or reflecting on previous good times that you’ve had.

So last night/this morning I was having a pretty deep conversation with my significant other.  He decided he was going to ask me 21 questions about whatever so I accepted the challenge.  All of the questions were pretty good I must say and I can tell that he was trying to make me let my guard down with questions asking how I emotionally felt about him and if I think I’ll ever be able to let my emotional walls (the Berlin Wall as he calls them) down.  One question that really stuck out to be, and I might be wording it wrong, was if I think I’ll ever find love.  My answer was “yes,” and followed by “I deserve to find love.”  Of course it was then that I realized that I don’t truly have a good grip on the word lacking full understanding.  ”You’re not suppose to though, right?” He asked me.  

Although this is true everyone has some general grasp on what love is to them.  Originally my idea on it was caring for a person as much as you do for yourself.  I later learned that this idea was a bunch a bullsh*t and leads to you getting hurt because chances are your significant other may care a lot less about you or vice versa.  The person who cares the least holds all the power in a relationship I feel.  I say this because the one who cares the most is always going to have that idea in their head to stick it out because things will get better.  The one who cares the least doesn’t give a damn about how much the other person has dealt with and done.

I do have an image of what love is to me and that’s when I see 70 year old couples acting as if they’re teenagers still.  You know, the husband still opens his wife’s car door and all doors to enter/leave a building.  The most important thing is they still hold hands.  Whenever I see an elder couple doing this I stop, smile and if someone’s around I’ll nudge them and say “Look at that.  Isn’t it cute?”  I think  this is probably why holding hands is such a big deal to me.  I remember the first time I actually held my significant other’s hand as corny as it sounds.  We were downtown after going out to eat at O’Charleys and just walking the Riverwalk as it started to rain a little.  He grabbed my hand and initially it was a little awkward for me, but I felt comfortable.  Of course when I told my friend how GREAT the date was she thought he’d finally kissed me, but that came a few dates later.  

So I guess my idea of “love” is eternal love as Desi (a.k.a. Javier) described it last night.  The only problem with this is that you don’t know if you have eternal love until death do you part in this day and age because people who are married for 40 years are getting divorced as if they haven’t spent nearly half a century together.  I guess I’ll just have to continue discovering it.  

I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl, ‘cause we’re resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl she’s so great. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option… ‘Oh he’s got a good job.’ I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.-Blue Valentine

This past weekend I tweeted about how women are impatient when it comes to love.  I’m not fully sure why that idea came to my head, but it did.  I’m a woman…obviously, so I felt as if I knew a little about the subject.  At an early age there is one thing that all young girls are exposed to…Disney Princess Fairy Tales.  I believe the first Disney film I saw in regards to love was Beauty & The Beast.  Belle could have chosen any guy she wanted, but she ultimately chose the Beast.  There was one point where the Beast had allowed her to go home, but she returned back.  She didn’t love the Beast until he was almost died which led to him turning into this drop dead gorgeous man.  Now let’s me honest, Belle was initially going to settle for the Beast.  She had no clue if he would ever turn back into a prince, but due to the fact that she was the town weirdo and well he was too, I’m sure there was a point were Belle thought “I might as well marry him.  Nobody else is as awkward as me.”  

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