Does Chilli Have a Valentine?

Check out a few highlights from my interview with Chilli, and get the whole thing here, if you want.

Tracy: Do you find love on season two?
Chilli: I find some good things. (Laughter) Love takes a while. When you’re mature, it’s rare that you can find love quickly. When you’re young, you don’t really know. You’re just in love with the idea of being in love. So, you’re quick to say “I love you.” It’s too soon.

Tracy: I get it. We have to tune in to find out. So, you do have a Valentine?
Chilli: (Laughs) My favorite Valentine is my son, Tron. I kind of forgot about Valentine’s Day. I have really good ideas for Valentine’s Day. I’m just creative, and I’m a hopeless romantic anyway. It’s not always about buying the most expensive thing, but there are other great things you can do, too.

Tracy: So, you’re going to plan the evening and tell your Valentine where to take you?
Chilli: For me, what I’m doing for that person has nothing to do with what they’re doing for me. I’m the type of female, I don’t think Valentine’s Day is just for the girl. It’s for the guy, too. Women should do things for the person they care about, also. Unless you make a plan together to go on a weekend trip or something.

Tracy: What Valentine’s Day ideas do you have?
Chilli: I’m thinking… I’m thinking… (laughs)

Tracy: Since you mentioned expensive gifts, I have to bring up the Floyd Mayweather thing. Is it normal for him to buy you thousand-dollar items?
Chilli: That’s not an all-the-time thing. For Floyd, people have to understand one thing about him: He doesn’t have to be a significant other for him to splurge on you. Fourteen thousand dollars is like $400 to him.

Tracy: Doesn’t that confuse things?
Chilli: What could confuse things is if we made the mistake of sleeping together. Which, we’ve never done that. I tell chicks when it’s a platonic relationship, you don’t have sex. You don’t have sex with people you’re not going to have a committed relationship with. Sex should not be the thing to lead you to that commitment. It should be the quality of the person.

Read the entire interview here.

Steve Harvey: Thanks, but No Thanks

I don’t want to offend. I know he has a huge following of loyal fans, but the truth is that I feel some type of way about taking advice from Steve Harvey. It’s not really personal, but he is one of the few so-called relationship experts out there who has multiple divorces under his belt. Yes, he’s married now, but let’s be real. As a single woman, do I want his opinion on how I should go about building and sustaining a healthy, loving relationship? Maybe if he makes it to his golden anniversary this time around, I’ll change my tune.

One could argue that he’s speaking from experience. So, maybe his failed marriages have taught him how to make relationships work. However, from what I’ve read of his books and from what I’ve heard him preach, his shtick is more about telling single sistahs what to do to get a man than it is about instructing couples on how to maintain healthy relationships.

I know what you’re thinking. “Girl, you quote Hill Harper all the time, and he ain’t even got one marriage to his name!” True. However, there are at least two significant differences between Hill and Harvey: (1) Hill is the type of guy I might date. He’s attractive. He’s intelligent. He’s single. So, I care a little bit more about his POV; although, I still read his books with the side eye. (2) Hill’s book, “The Conversation,” included lots of other men’s opinions. He didn’t attempt to speak for every man.

However, let me get back to the point. When you’re single, you always have people offering unsolicited advice. Everyone who has somebody – and even those who don’t – think they have it figured out. They know why you’re single and what you can do to “fix” it. Few seem to just accept what you have: you haven’t met the right person yet.

So, you learn to decipher the good advice from the bad. For this SIS, the relationship status of the person and his or her romantic history help determine whether I bother listening. If you’re in what I consider a healthy, long-lasting relationship, I may take heed to what you’re saying. If you’re a man or woman who cheats on your significant other, constantly complains to me about your spouse or has only been with your partner for one or two years, then you fall into another category.

That’s where Harvey is. He’s in that category of counselors whose romantic situation makes me skeptical of what he has to say.

That’s not to suggest there are no tidbits of wisdom in his words; however, as a friend of mine put it, those things he writes that have you nodding in agreement are often just plain common sense.

Whether you’re on Team Harvey or not, I won’t judge. I have friends who’ve found his advice helpful, and he claims that many readers who took it to heart are now in happy relationships.

So, I won’t begrudge him that success (even though I question whether he’s exploiting the lonely black women out there by using their situations to line his pockets). If he’s helping women find happiness, then more power to him.

However, when I have questions about dating and relationships, I think I’ll turn to happily-married couples who’ve stood the test of time for advice.

The truth is that anyone can offer advice – and this blog is proof – but this SIS suggests we make sure to be a little selective about whose tips we follow.

Oh, and watch my interview with Steve. That’s me with the microphone!

Pastor Jamal Bryant: ‘We’re Not Options to One Another’

So, I had a quick pow wow with Pastor Jamal Bryant recently. If that name sounds familiar, you may have seen him on TV One’s “Ultimate Merger” sitting next to Omarosa as she deliberated on which of her suitors to send home. If you watched the series, then you know that in the end, she didn’t select any of the 12 men to be her beau.

Rumor has it that she was already dating Michael Clarke Duncan at the time of taping, but even if that’s true, the show was a pretty accurate depiction of the struggle a lot of women go through when trying to find the right guy. There was the bald, short, cocky guy who didn’t have a job. There was Al B. Sure, who obviously thought singing “Night and Day” over and over again would be enough to win Omarosa’s affection. There were dudes who just weren’t interested in her, including one who snuck out of the bachelors’ suite to spend the night with another woman, and then there was the guy who was married.

So, I asked Pastor Bryant what he thought about the disconnect between sistahs and brothers. He said:

“There are so many levels of disconnect. The African-American culture is the only in the world where you hear a woman say she doesn’t need a man. Asian women don’t say that. Russian women won’t say that. There is no other culture on the planet where you hear that. It’s only African-American women who you will hear say that. The black woman’s over-independence has made black men feel unnecessary or like an accessory. So, men have taken that to mean that a woman is an option, and being part of a woman’s life is optional. Men and women have to need each other, and understand that we’re not options to one another. We’re necessary for our existence, totality and purpose.”

So, of course I don’t totally agree with his POV. Honestly, I think most of the women I know are independent because no one has stepped up to offer assistance, not because they just want it that way. So, is it the chicken or the egg? Is our independence the reason so many brothers aren’t committing, or is that lack of committment why we’re so independent?

Take a look back at my chat with Hill Harper.