'We were on a breaaaaaaak!!'

So I must say that I was pretty surprised by the responses from the ladies in last week's topic about their men kicking it with other females. Honestly, I didn't think y'all would be so cool with it. But then I thought about it some more and came to the conclusion that y'all really wouldn't be cool with it as you claim. Ideally (or theoretically) you would be cool with it because 1) it seems rather jealous not to be, 2) who are you to be telling a grown man what he can or cannot do, and most importantly 3) you would like the same privilege when your male friends are around.

So when a situation like this does arise, you won't explicitly tell him no, in fact you might even say you're cool with it, but you'll be worried and not too happy about it while he's out watching Love & Basketball 2 with his ex girl. But hey, I'm glad you guys said what you said though, because it'll hopefully give me leverage if I'm ever involved in this type of situation.

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For this week's topic, which actually applies to both guys and girls, I have an introductory video:



http://youtube.com/watch?v=fsvsRZhNVp4


That had to be one of the funniest scenes in all of Friends (if you know the context). Friends was my joint back in the day in high school. Even though I didn't identify with any of the characters (them: White 20-somethings living in NYC, me: Black teen living in H-town), I still thought the show was high-larious.

But anyway, every relationship (unless it's the special one that turns into holy matrimony) eventually breaks down and ends with the break-up. Some are mutual, others are friendly, and most are ugly. But if the couple has been together for a while, there are a lot of emotions, hopes, expectations, mutual friends, etc. involved in the relationship, so when problems arise, it's hard to just end it right off the bat (even when that's clearly the best thing to do).

So before the break-up, comes "the break", i.e. when a couple disillusions themselves into thinking that taking time apart from each other will actually help the relationship. But what exactly is "the break" and what is it for? It seems that in general the motivation for taking a break is either to A) not kill each other or usually B) see what life is like apart in order to determine if it is better or worse than being together. You would think that if the relationship is in bad enough shape that a "break" is necessary, that the relationship should just end. You can always get back together later if you miss each other enough, but at least after the break-up happens, the boundaries are clear. You are no longer together, so you're free to do whatever.

The main problem with "the break" is that each person has their own interpretation, which is typically not communicated, so someone ends up hurt. One person (typically the initiator of the break) wants to test the waters and see what other fish are in the sea because that's why they wanted a break in the first place. The other person (typically the broken one), still expects to talk every day because the other is their best friend and they really didn't want to break in the first place.

But what ends up happening is that one person feels that the other isn't doing what they should (or is doing what they shouldn't), and a big fight ensues over what each person can and cannot do on the break. Then either the couple gets back together (even though none of the reasons behind breaking have been resolved) or they finally realize that they should just call it quits.

So seeing that "the break" is most likely never going to go away, what should be the parameters for it? Should the couple maintain the same level of communication as when they were together or should they only talk sporadically? Should they be allowed to date other people or is it still exclusive? Can they get "physical" with other people or is it strictly hands-off? Men AND women would like to know...

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So a number of people have felt that either my blog posts were about me, about them, or about someone they know. Aside from the hypothetical question for the ladies (which I think we all know by now was Tijani after his comments exhibited way too much knowledge of my "hypothetical" situation), none of these blog posts are about anybody in particular. Typically I get the ideas from random conversations or people explicitly asking me to pose a question. So now I'll be adding this Law & Order-esque disclaimer so that there's no confusion. I don't want anybody else getting mad at me for supposedly putting their business in the street...

This blog post is completely fictional. Any similarity or connection to actual people, places or events is purely coincidental. For educational purposes only.