Friday Flirt: Giving Good Love

It's been awhile since I've done a Friday Flirt, so I wanted to get back to the basics and talk about love...good love. In many of our lives, we have battle scars from love gone bad. Tales of "he did me wrong" or "she was a mistake" pepper our conversations at every turn. We hear stories of love gone right and may shake our heads with a disbelieving, "yeah, whatever." Through our own experiences, we may have become bitter and skeptical about whether true love exists. Somewhere, though, in the recesses of our hearts, a memory still lingers of a time when we believed...

Let me try to restore your faith: love is real. Let me say it again: love is real. I know lots of couples who are living their lives full of love and joy. Couples who deal with the complexities of every day living and still manage to give and receive good love. Notice I said, give and receive. At the heart of any good love experience is reciprocity. If I give my all, then you must give your all. Good love, indeed.

How many of us who are in relationships, take the time to make space for our lovers? I don't mean in a way that suffocates who and how you are. I mean in a way that is mutually satisfying. Do you support your lover's interests? Are you invested in his/her dreams? Do you take the time to check in with your lover to make sure that he/she is feeling protected, encouraged, cherished, etc...? Do you? Because that's how you cultivate good love. Think about it: when you are growing your garden, you must nourish your potential crops with plenty of water and sunshine. You have to put in a consistent amount of work to get the desired result. And if you want to reap the benefits of your hard work, you pay attention to any negative change and adjust your actions accordingly. And that is what you must do if you want good love. You pay attention to your lover and feed your relationship properly. If things start to go awry, you check them out and fix what you can--if you want the desired results.

Too many of us may lose sight of the fact that there are two people in a relationship. We let external forces create chaos in our coupledom. I don't mean when you are in a messed up situation and your people try to save you from yourself (y'all know how that can be). No, I'm talking about two people who are living and loving and making mistakes along the way as they navigate the course of their relationship. Unfortunately, things that can be handled between them, may get inflated when outside folks add their opinions. Once you shake and stir what other folks add, you might end up with a mess. Fareal. However, good love requires that two people who are fully invested in the pursuit of mutual togetherness remember that they have to protect their union. Together.

Many of you may be wondering what does good love look like? I believe that good love is consistent. For me, that is an important element. I don't want you acting sometime-y and moody when it comes to matters of the heart. Even in the midst of conflict, I need to know that your love for me is still present. I believe that good love is honest, period. None of that wishy-washy hemming and hawing. Tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Period. There also needs to be respect. Good old fashioned R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Good love should be strong, palpable. I want to feel it to my marrow. I don't want to guess or read some hidden clues that you love me. Fareal. There should be communication: physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual. Ultimately, I want you to love me like I love you. To give 100% in all ways, always. It's simply not negotiable.

I know what good love feels like because I am in a relationship that satisfies me to the core of my being. When I speak of my lover, you hear the chimes of our wedding bells. Even in our disconnections, we are still connected in myriad ways that serve to balance out our bond. For those of you who seek good love, I wish that you can experience it without fear. I wish that you can have your heart stimulated by good love that awakens a desire so strong it makes your knees buckle. I wish you kisses by the light of the moon and whispered love talk that makes you blush at the memory. I wish you love so good that you wear it like a badge of honor. I wish you love, love, everlasting love that fills all your empty places and gives you wings. I wish you a love so good, that it's good...Peace.

"Body and Soul" by Anita Baker (and yes, I know she has a song called, "Good Love")

Friday Flirt: Our Love

In my quest to bring the love back, I have promised to post about love: being loved and giving love. In my quest to celebrate the connections between people, I have committed myself to blog about how love appears in my own life as well. One of the most present ways that I am able to experience love is through my relationship with my husband. From the day that we became a couple, it has been us against the world. We are the law abiding Bonnie and Clyde, the younger, less wealthy (but no less rich) Cliff and Claire Huxtable...basically, we are a united front.

When I first met him, I knew that we were connected in ways that extended beyond this world. In fact, we both felt it and would make references to us being from the same "soul neighborhood" where kindred spirits lived. As we moved closer in our connections, we admitted that we were, in fact, soul mates. And I don't mean in the hot and heavy breathless, do me baby, I gotta have you way that shapes most new relationships. Of course we desired each other, but our connection spoke of past lives and intertwined spirits that reunited through different life times until they emerged in our current forms...deep, right? But we meant it and lived out our connection with every fiber of our beings.

We spent time getting to know each other before we decided to be exclusive. Yup, he courted me. And I reciprocated in kind. We sent puzzle pieces with coded messages to each other, wrote letters that included excerpts from stories we enjoyed and we talked...yes, we talked. We listened, we felt, we acknowledged and then we would do it all over again daily. I knew his likes, his dislikes, his passions, his desires, his hopes, his dreams and he reciprocated in kind. And guess what? We didn't have sex on the first date (yup, we went on real dates) and we didn't become a couple after that date either. We let us marinate. We waited and discovered that being together was the only option because neither one of us could imagine being without the other. And then we began building...

So this post is an open love letter to my husband because I want to speak to the ways that he has shown me love and has made me want to be a better person. If you know me in real life, then you may have seen us together. If so, you know that our connection is bona fide...We are connected in unspeakable ways that make strangers come up to us and tell us that they love us together even though they've just met us at that moment. We are bonded in ways that defy explanation, but never defy logic. Of course, we're together as a couple, because when you see us together, even you couldn't imagine us apart.

My husband is, as Toni Morrison writes in Beloved, "a friend of my mind. [He] gather me, man. The pieces I am, [he] gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a [man] who is a friend of your mind." I make no apologies about loving my husband or the fact that he loves me. I have had enough hardship to last 20 lifetimes and I am blessed to have a man who loves me in all ways, always. And I reciprocate in kind.

"Our Love" by Natalie Cole

Friday Flirt: Are You Ready For Love?

Are YOU ready for love? Have you taken inventory of all of the qualifications that you want in a mate? Done a checklist about all of the things it will take to win your heart? Have you written it down? Prayed over it? Memorized it? Good, now that's the easy part. Yup, as hard as it may have been to streamline your list, you are not even half way there yet. Why? Well, because the law of attraction states that YOU ATTRACT WHAT YOU PROJECT. So considering that, it doesn't matter what you say you want if you are not prepared to attract what you want. That is not an external process; it's an internal one.

You have to do the excavation work to get to your core to find out who you are and what you deserve. You have to tear off all of your layers and be your most organic, authentic self. Are you prideful? Work on it! Are you selfish? Deal with it! Are you mean? Get it together! You can't say you want someone who is funny if you won't laugh out loud; you can't say you want someone who selfless and you won't share anything you have. It doesn't work like that because the law of attraction says that you draw to you who you are.

Someone is reading this post and saying, "Not me! I have __________ and ___________. And everyone who knows me says that I am the __________________ person they know. And I keep meeting people who are not worthy of my time." I'm sure that there is some truth to that, but consider this: if a person is not worth your time, why are you letting him/her take up your valuable time? Seriously, if someone is not up to your standards, why would you waste both of your time? If you go to a store looking for an item of clothing, would you purchase something that didn't fit (well, some people might, but that's a different post for a different day)? If you went to a restaurant, would you be satisfied if they put your meal on a garbage can lid (Cosby Show reference) and served it to you? Probably not, so why would you allow someone to occupy your heart, mind, body and/or soul who doesn't fit? Then when it doesn't work out or end in your favor you get upset, when you should have seen it coming all along. See, this harkens back to self-awareness and self-appreciation: you won't allow anyone who can't add to you, subtract from you. I'm not talking about at work or at school or anywhere where you have to interact with less than desirable folks. I'm talking about your own personal and valuable space, where only you get to hand out the VIP cards and NO ONE can tell you who to allow at your heart's table.

Are you ready for love? Have you done the work on yourself to attract someone who is suitable and deserving of your time? Have you made a commitment to deal only with folks who serve to better you and would have you do the same (See my last post on being loved...the right way)? Moving forward, be more selective about the people you let into your space. After clearing away the clutter or debris in your heart, mind, body and/or soul, you will find true love--even if it's only with yourself!


India Arie "I Am Ready For Love"

Friday Flirt--Let's Start a Love Movement

I'm gonna start a love movement y'all. Seriously...far too many of us are missing romantic love in our lives. A couple of weeks back, I mentioned how we have forgotten about the art of seduction and the thrill of anticipation. When was the last time you were courted? When was the last time you went on a date with your spouse, significant other or a new prospect? When was the last time you put on all of your smell goods and a nice outfit to enjoy the company of your lover? When was the last time you felt truly beautiful (men, too) or sexy even?

I must confess that I'm guilty of ignoring the more sensual side of my nature. Family, work and other responsibilities have caused me to be distracted and neglect an essential part of my life: romance. Unfortunately, this is the first thing that often suffers when one's schedule is too tight. Recognizing this, I am trying to put more romance back into my life.

In that spirit, I introduce to you a new section called "Friday Flirts." It will usually feature a love song or a love poem to help you jump start your weekend eros. As I move forward in the quest to bring love back, I will seek to identify how we move in our love relationships. The first attempt to work towards love can be found in the following Anthony Hamilton song "Float." Hamilton's velvet vocals caress the notes and bring to mind a night of passion...Enjoy!