PLAYING HARD TO GET

Two women who have been good friends for a long time are now bitter enemies and it is all because of a man. I know what you think but it’s not like that. Women have been known to snatch men from other women including from their friends or even from their own sisters, but this is a unique case.

One of these women was approached by a man who liked her and wanted her to be his lover but she was reluctant to accept him. The man persisted for four months trying to win this woman’s heart but she refused. The reason she gave was that the man was not her type.

Then everything changed. When the man saw that he was hitting his head against a brick wall, he tried his luck on her friend who immediately accepted his proposal. The two are now lovers and everything seems to be going so well for them.

This has infuriated the other woman who now claims that her friend is not a good friend because she has accepted the man she had refused. I think this is ridiculous. She did not want that man and they have never been lovers. He was just trying to be hers but she turned him down which meant she did not like him. Her friend on the other hand saw something in this man and accepted him.

If two women walked into a shop to buy clothes and the first one does not like the green silky dress which the attendant suggested to her, that woman would not surely be mad and accuse the otherof being a bad friend for buying the silky green dress she turned down. I know women are confusing sometimes and it is hard to read what is on their mind but if this happened, my immediate thought would be “psychiatric”.

Women sometimes play hard to get. They pretend that they do not like you but what they are actually doing is they are trying to learn something about you. They may even want to buy time so that they get a second opinion from other people. Naturally, women also like being chased by a man because it makes them look valuable.

However, sometimes they push the game too far if they do not know the limits. In this way many women have lost good men. Traditionally, our women are taught that they must not be loose and that they must take time to study a man before accepting him. It is easier for a man to study a woman’s character than it is for a woman. A man can take months observing a woman before making a conclusion that she is the right one.

On the other hand, a woman can spend a lot of time admiring a man but without any guarantee that the man will approach her and ask her to be his lover. This is why when a woman is abruptly approached by a man she has not been expecting, she will find it difficult to immediately say “yes”. She needs time to think about it and to ask other people what they know about you.

A wise woman leaves clues for the man when playing hard to get to let him know that she is just caught by surprise and will have to think about it. The way you look at him, answer back and even your handshake can assure the man that what you need is just time.

Naturally, it is awkward for a woman to propose love to a man. If she wants to do that, she must use accepted standards to avoid being called a loose or desperate woman. It is this same fear of being called desperate which drives some women to play hard to get. They believe that a woman is not supposed to say “yes” immediately when aman asks because it devalues you. I don’t think this is acceptable if you already know the man.

I know that most men believe that if a woman is quick to say “yes” then she is probably loose and will say yes to any man out there without hesitation. While this may be the truth with some loose women, I don’t think it is the same with every woman. Women are just like men. We all have the same feelings when it comes to love. We do not want to fall in love with a wrong person.

We all admire certain individuals from the opposite sex. The only difference is that when a man likes a woman, he will make plans of catching her attention. He also has the liberty to observe the woman before he makes his move. Some men start by being friends with her before they speak their mind. Some men will use her friends who will convey the message to her and her response through them will make him realize if his bid will be a success if he went along.

Some men use a straight forward approach. They will just go to a woman and tell her how they feel about her. I guess if women had the guts, they too would use some of these but many of them just sit and wait. A few brave ones have tried to use the “friendship first” and the “through his friend” approach and it has worked. Even though we believe that women must not approach men who they have fallen in love with, I think they do that every day but they do it differently from men.

If the woman in the story above was playing hard to get, then she did it the wrong way. You do not use words like “not my type” when you are playing hard to get because that line is an ego killer. Telling a man that he is not your type is like slap in the face. We men tend to shrink when a woman tells us that we are not her type. This has almost the same effect like when a woman tells a man that his penis size is small.

I am not saying that women must not play hard to get. They can play as hard as they can but they must know the rules and how long the game is supposed to last. Playing hard to get is a lot of fun. It is like playing a challenging video game. It also makes a man feel special because it gives him the false sense of being superior among other suitors. It makes a man think that his woman is a hard nut to crack and other men won’t find it easy with her even this is far from the truth.

On the other hand, this woman may have set her goals very high on what type of man she wants. That is the only reason she could have said he was not her type. But one thing that women do not realize is that if you want to get the type that you want, you must first become that type yourself.

 Image courtsey of stockimages / freedigitalphotos.net,

CHEATERS

The woman tried to push the security guard aside so that she could get inside the building. The security guard pleaded with her and told her that he cannot allow her to enter the building. The woman was relentless. She tried to shove the security guard for the second time.

"Please let me get inside. This man has made me and the children suffer for such a long time. I want to see him." the woman shouted. 

"Madam, I can't allow you to get inside," the guard pleaded with her.

"Why are you protecting him? Do you know what I have gone through with this man?" the woman said. The poor guard looked at the gathering crowd in desperation. It was evident this is not what he was trained to handle. Preventing an employee's estranged wife from entering the work place to beat up the husband was something that he was probably doing for the first time. 

This incident happened at one of the corporate buildings in Ndola. It was early in the morning around 07:30 hours and it was on Monday. 

"What's going on here," I asked the newspaper vendor who was selling newspapers near the entrance to the building. 

"Her man hasn't been home from Friday." the newspaper vendor told me with a huge smile on his face. "Bwafya mudala."

I would have loved to see how this was going to end but I was rushing to the office.  My guess was that it did not end up very well for the husband. The woman was poised to cause confusion so that his husband's infidelity could be seen by everyone. He may have been given a torrid time even by his superiors for dragging domestic issues to the workplace.  

The woman surely had no choice but to go and pluck him from his workplace because after spending the whole weekend away from home, the man still had to report for work. This was probably not the first time he had slept outside his matrimonial house.

This woman was not bad looking. This is one thing that I have noticed with cheaters. Most of them leave their beautiful wives and opt to go out with not so good looking women and they all give a silly excuse "She takes good care of me more than my wife does."

This has become a universal lie. We hear this lie told over and over on TV including on programs like Jerry Springer and Cheaters.   

Alright, maybe with some men, this could be true. We cannot  rule out the possibility that some women fail to sexually please their husbands. Some men confide with friends even before they are caught cheating that their wives are not giving them what they want sexually. 

Take for instance this newly married 28 year old man who posted on a Facebook page seeking for advice. "I am married just for 2 months and my wife is telling me that I demand for too much sex from her. Where can I go? She has made it clear that it is one day per week for me to have sex. I am starving." 

The responses to this man's complaint were overwhelming and many people felt that the woman was not being fair. It is normal to feel sorry for this guy but would it be justifiable if he started sleeping away from home if he found a woman who can give him sex as much as he wanted? 

Many prostitutes know that men like sex so when a married man goes after them, they assume he is "starving" and so they will give him all the best sex they can think of so that he can come back again. 

A few years ago I witnessed the following incident. It was Saturday morning, around 10:00 hrs. I had just paid for my DSTV subscription and decided that before I go home,  I should check out my friends at "the Club" and play a game of pool. 

We were about fifteen people and all of us were men except for one woman who was at the counter in the company of two men. One of the men was sitting on the bar stool with the woman standing between his legs. It was all lovey dovey but at the same time evident that the woman was a prostitute. Her skin was bleached and she was drank.

From the look of things, they must have spent the whole night at a Night Club. Then the man's phone rang. He looked at the caller I.D  on the screen, said something to his friend and handed the phone to him. The  friend went outside with the phone for about 2 minutes before he came back.

After 3 minutes, the phone rang again. The man gave the phone to his friend again who went outside to answer it. This went on for about 4 times in a space of 30 minutes and many of us in the bar started noticing that something was wrong. 

Then all of a sudden, a beautiful woman, wearing a citenge wrap-around and a white top walked in. This woman's entry attracted the attention of everyone present. Everyone stopped talking as she walked to the counter where the two men and the prostitute were sitting.

"Who is she?" the woman asked the man. Luckily for him, the prostitute was not standing between his legs any more but was standing next to him. The man looked surprised and just gulped and swallowed spit as he saw his wife. He was not expecting her to walk in like that. It was a typical scene from a Cheaters episode only that this time there were no cameras following the woman.

Then something amazing happened. A guy just comes out of nowhere. He grabs the prostitute and slaps her lightly in the face. He then drags her out of the bar while shouting at her. "How many times have I told you not to talk to strangers bitch? Do you know this man you were talking to? Come on let's go home. That's why I don't like moving with you cos you don't have manners." 

This caused the man at the counter to gain some courage.  He told the wife a fake story of how his car had broken down and they couldn't leave it in the night. Then  in the morning they called someone to fix it. The wife wasn't convinced but she was not sure of what to do because of the awkwardness of the situation. She just asked her husband to go with her home. 

Five minutes later, the guy who had whisked the prostitute outside came back inside with the man who was caught by the wife. The man thanked him and gave him a K50.00 for saving his day. Apparently, the man who had slapped the prostitute did not even know her. He told us he just saw an opportunity to make a little money. 

To crown it all, the prostitute came back. Someone asked her, "My sister, so that man was not yours?"

"So what?" she replied sarcastically, "after all we have concluded all the transactions." 


Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici, freedigitalphotos.net

BROKE MEN SHOULD STOP HAVING SEX

 One lady wrote on Facebook that “Men who are broke should stop having sex”. This update caused a lot of debate with many people condemning her. This was not a surprise because I too felt this was a ridiculous statement. It was probably the understatement of the week.

However, some women were excited and jumped on her bandwagon, applauding the statement as a true fact. They mentioned that lazy men should not be tolerated. Men should be able to work hard and provide everything that a woman needs.

Yes indeed, the fact that a man should be the provider is correct and all men are naturally born with that instinct. That however does not mean that all men are rich. Some are poor and not because they want it to be that way but because of circumstances that surround them. I have seen poor men who have families and they provide for their families in their own small ways.

Are these men not allowed to have sex?

And how does sex tie in with being broke? I guess only a prostitute can think like that. Sounds harsh?  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, prostitution is the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity for payment.

Prostitutes turn sex into a business venture. Their bodies are on sale to anyone who has the money to pay for that service. They sell sex to hundreds of different people and are prepared to perform any sexual act as long as the client pays accordingly. A prostitute’s mind is focused on money before giving anyone sexual favours. It doesn’t matter how handsome you are, you cannot get free sex from a prostitute.

Broke men cannot have sex with a prostitute.

Men who have sex with prostitutes usually do not have any respect for such women because they consider them as sex objects and to some extent they even regard them as retards. Even the prostitute herself is mentally affected. A common argument against prostitution states that selling sex is harmful because it involves selling something deeply personal and emotional.

One woman posted in Yahoo Answers: “My husband wants to pay me for sex. Would this make me a prostitute?” Different answers were given and I have selected a few that I thought were interesting answers

“No, you’re still married.”

“Technically, yes. That would be prostitution.”

“Yes that would make you a prostitute. A weird one actually.”

“This is a strange situation. I don’t think you should do this if no feelings are there which sounds like there aren’t.”

“Sex for pay? Yes that does make you a prostitute. The fact he would think you are the type of person says heaps about how he thinks of you. How you react says as much about how you see yourself too.”

Many people would argue that being paid once for sex is not prostitution unless you take that a full time occupation. If a man takes a gun and walks into a bank and robs the bank, that is robbery if it was the first and only time that he did that. The same can be said of prostitution. If you sell sex once, you have engaged in prostitution.

However, there are relationships in which men would give a woman some money but not necessarily as a fee for the service rendered but just as an obligation. In this situation, a man can come and have sex with that woman even when he does not have money. He can give the woman some money when he has some and not demand for sex. That is basically a sexual relationship. A relationship based on consensual sex.

Men have been paying for sex for a long time and they still do. The reason some men do this is because they do not want to be in a relationship that will bring commitments. They would rather pay for sex from a prostitute because a prostitute will not bring her emotional luggage in their life. As soon as a prostitute is paid, everything is over. Even if you saw her with another man, it will not pain you.

Sometimes a prostitute may become pregnant and will not take the man to task and be responsible for that child because she knows that the man only paid for sex and not to be given a child. Many men would not accept a child from a prostitute because they know she has slept with several other men. This is the same as a businessman ordering merchandise and the delivery van being involved in an accident. The businessman will not responsible for that accident and loss of merchandise.

Women who sell themselves are regarded lowly in society. The reason is simply because it is repulsive to think that one woman can entertain so many people sexually. Some prostitutes get rich through selling their bodies sexually but they still remain with that negative tag. Most of these women, even when they are married still have that trait of prostitutions in them. Even if they have completely given up the profession, people will still regard them as loose people.

There are two types of women, those who are married and those that are not. If a married woman denies sex to her husband because he is broke, that woman must ask herself why she got married to him in the first place. She must also ask herself how many times she has paid for sex.

Every single woman must focus on finding a responsible man than thinking about using her body to earn some money. Men earn money without selling their bodies (although there a few that do that). What I know is that the oldest profession (prostitution) is here to stay and only the rules are changing.

Image courtsey of graur razvan ionut freedigitalphotos.net

LEGALISING UNDERAGE SEX?

"Mom, I am going out now." Sara calls out to her mother who is in the kitchen cutting some vegetables.

"Where are you going?" her mother asks with a little concern in her voice. 

"I told you on Tuesday that I have been invited to Joana's birthday party. It is on today and I am going with Mandy and Lisa." Sara says.

"Oh, I forgot about it. Just make sure that you come back before it is late." her mother says.

"I will mom. Bye." 

She walks out and closes the door behind her. There is a red car parked by the roadside waiting for her. Inside the car there are four other teenagers, two girls and two boys. One of the boys is in the driver's seat.

"Hi guys." Sara says as she sits in the back seat.

The boy in the driver's seat turns his head and smiles at her. 

"This must be Misheck the boy that Mandy has been talking about all the time suggesting that I should meet him." Sara guesses.

"Sarah, this is Misheck my cousin. He's going to drive us to the party and back home." Mandy says with a wink and confirming Sara's guess.

"Oh my gosh. This is going to be an interesting afternoon." Sara thinks. 

Suddenly she slaps her forehead and says "Oh. I've forgotten something. Just give me a minute." She gets out of the car and runs back to the house. 

"Mom." She calls out.

"What is it now?" her mom answers from the bedroom.

"Can you come out? I need something from you." Sara says. 

Her mother comes out of the bedroom and says, "If you're asking for some more money, I am sorry I can't give you."

"Mom. It's not that. I was just wondering if you have any condoms. I need some condoms."

The mother does not believe what she has just heard. Did she say candles?

"What did you say?" she asks her.

"Do you have any condoms?" Sara said.

Sara is a sixteen year old girl. She is beautiful and the only child in the family. She is smart and likes reading a lot of books and watching teen movies on the Disney Channel. 

"What?" her mother shouts leaning towards her. "Are you out of your mind? You are asking for condoms from me? Your mother? And when did you start using condoms anyway?"

Sarah is caught by surprise at her mother's angry reaction. 

"Mom, I have never used any condom before. I'm sorry that I have asked but I thought you've heard."

"Heard what?"

"Just a moment," Sara says as she goes into her bedroom. A moment later she comes out with her laptop and connects to the Internet. 

"What are you doing?" her mother asks.

"I want to show you something." Sara says. "I am really sorry if I offended you but I thought I was doing the right thing." 

The web page finishes loading and Sara hands over the laptop to her mother. On the screen, there is a page with a blue background and a heading that reads "First Lady seeks condom availability to Youths".

Sara's mother starts reading:

"First Lady Christine Kaseba has called on relevant authorities to make condoms and contraceptives available to adolescents and young people.

Dr Kaseba said adolescents and young people should have access to condoms and contraceptives.
She explained that her call to have condoms and contraceptives made available to young people and adolescents is not aimed at promoting promiscuity among young people.

Speaking in an interview yesterday, Dr Kaseba said there was no need to turn a blind eye to the fact that young people are sexually active, hence the need to avail them sexual reproductive rights.

Dr Kaseba said HIV and sexual reproductive health are inter-linked and HIV should be re-integrated into sexual reproductive health if countries are to achieve zero HIV infections.

She said there is need to look at the root cause of HIV, hence the need to look at it through sexual reproductive health and that although there has been a global decline in HIV infection, there is need to re-strategise.

She said introducing sexuality education in schools will help the youths to make informed decisions....."

Sara's mother does not finish reading the story because her hands are shaking uncontrollably and she drops the laptop on the floor.

In the evening Sara's mother explains to her husband about what happened. She complains that the government is failing to come up with better solutions to problems faced by the youth. 

Her husband responds by saying "That's not government but Dr Kaseba's opinion. You know what? Maybe we should just leave this country and move to Uruguay."

"Uruguay? Because they have legalised marijuana? No no no no. You can't be serious. I thought you stopped smoking that stuff many years ago?" Sara's mother says.


Image courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee, freedigitalphotos.net

THE GREEN EYED MONSTER

“Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base, for one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.” So wrote Aristotle.

Robert A. Heinlein also wrote, “A competent and self confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.”

Many people may agree with Robert A. Heinlein’s opinion and that could be the reason why so many books and articles have been written on how to handle jealousy. Jealousy is perhaps one of the most difficult emotions to control. It comes when you least expect it and it completely takes control of your reasoning. There is no man or woman in the world who can say that they have never been jealousy at any time.

Jealousy is the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something of great value. When someone is jealous, that person experiences other emotions such as anger, resentment, helplessness and disgust. In relationships, if jealousy is not well handled, it can pull apart the relationship and bring it down.

Shakespeare described jealousy as a green eyed monster. “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is a green eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on ...” (Iago, Act 3 scene III).

But is jealousy really a green-eyed monster as depicted by Shakespeare or was Aristotle correct when he implied that jealousy is reasonable and can be used to get good things?  

Many people will agree that it is normal to feel jealousy in some situations. To some extent jealousy is an essential ingredient in a relationship but it must work hand in hand with trust. If there is no trust, the green eyed monster will completely take over and eventually cross the line. In most cases many people do not know where this line is and once in a while they will cross it and realise a little late that they went too far.

If you love your partner and you feel someone is threatening to take them from you, it is normal to feel possessive and jealousy. Sometimes your partner may have a history of cheating and you have a reason to open your eyes. But there are times when you may be wrong and after creating a scene, then you find out there was nothing going on after all. 

Trying to control jealousy is the same as trying to control hunger. You can not control hunger without taking in some food. You cannot control jealousy without being assured that everything is alright.

If your partner likes to flirt it is going to cause you to feel jealousy. So it is up to the other person to know how to behave so that she or him does not cause you to feel jealousy. 

Sometimes the flirting partner may not even see any danger in what they are doing. It could be just an innocent interaction left to cross the line because they have become too comfortable with your mildness. This may eventually lead to serious implications like fornication. If you had acted earlier even by just showing that you do not like what you're seeing, you could have prevented that from happening. I guess this is what Aristotle meant.

When you see that your partner's interaction is causing you some kind of discomfort, let her know your feelings before the green eyed monster comes out.  

The only bad thing about jealousy is that sometimes it causes you to loose your control and you just bulge in and shout "who is this you're talking to?" Usually there is always a good explanation and that may cause you to look like an idiot. It is natural to feel jealousy but don't just let it become violent. After all even God is a "jealousy God" according to the bible. 

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick / freedigitalphotos.net