Steve Harvey: Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man

But I got a lesson that day.

“So, Daddy, when can I start dating?”

In my head, I was screaming, “Who in the hell is this big-headed boy trying to take you out? You’re thirteen-a baby! I’ll kill him with my bare hands!” In real time, though, all I could manage was a slow count to ten, some swallows, and a couple of blinks. Finally, when I was sure I would neither shake nor stutter, I dove in.

“How old do you think you should be?” I asked innocently.

“Oh, maybe fourteen or something like that,” she said.

I swallowed hard. Again.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but nobody can come by the house for you when you’re fourteen to take you out. That’s way too young.”

“Well, my friend Cat dates older guys,” she said matter-of-factly.

Of course, in my mind, I had a vision of myself sharpening knives and loading guns and yelling from the front stoop in a housecoat and slippers that anybody named Cat should be forewarned not to so much as step on our block trying to corrupt my baby girl. Little fast butt. Out loud, though, I kept my remarks as calm and measured as I could muster.

“When you say ‘older guys,’ ” I asked politely, “what do you mean?”

“She likes guys who are, like, fifteen or sixteen years old,” she said.

I blinked a couple of times and did a few more hard swallows. “Well, baby,” I said between sips of ice water. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

By lunch’s end, I was real clear on this one thing: Lori is not a little girl anymore, and we are in the middle stages of that dance-the delicate tug-of-war between age-appropriate attraction to the opposite sex and all-out boy craziness. I now understand that our conversation didn’t mark the first time my daughter’s thought about boys and dating and even marriage; if she’s anything like every other little girl on the planet, she’s considered down to the most minute details what her husband-to-be would look like, what kind of wedding they’ll have, where the wedding will be, what kind of material her wedding dress will be made of, and whether she’ll smush the wedding cake in her new husband’s face. She’s probably considered, too, how many kids she wants to have with this dream husband of hers, what their names will be, and whether she’ll hyphenate her last name with his.

You know I’m right. This is what girls do; they dream about the Happily Ever After-the wedding, the kids, the married life. Everything they watch-from their Disney movies to their tween television shows to popular music, magazines, and other cultural bellwethers-tells them that while it’s okay to be independent, smart, and strong, it should be their priority to meet, get, and keep a husband. And the moment the biological clock starts ticking, whoa! Finding a man to settle down with and have babies becomes quite the priority.

Rest assured, it doesn’t work this way for little boys. Ever. There’s not a man I know who’s sat around dreaming about his wedding day. He may dream of certain women-more specifically, what he’d like to do with them-but trust me when I tell you this: boys and men don’t care about marriage the way women do, and we certainly don’t sit around fantasizing about it or worrying about biological clocks. Indeed, the way we look at relationships is so far the opposite of the way women see it that it’s a wonder, at all, that we even figure out how to be together.

But we do. It just takes a little while for the two of us to get on the same page.

To help you understand why, I thought it only fair to give a decade-by-decade breakdown of what’s on the minds of men as it relates to relationships-a guide, of sorts, that will go a long way in showing women what it takes for a man to get into a marriage state of mind.

A MAN IN HIS TWENTIES…

Is just starting to discover the cornerstones of manhood-who he is, what he does, and how much he makes. He’s deciding whether to go to college or not, whether to pick up a trade or not, whether to go to grad school or get a master’s, or not, and none of his decisions, at least in his early twenties, will help him come to any real conclusions about his future, himself, or his direction in life. Basically, he’s using this decade to figure himself out-to work out the kinks before he settles down to the awesome responsibility of being a husband, a father, a homeowner-a man who is responsible for the well-being of not just himself, but other people he loves. In most cases, you simply cannot expect that he’ll be ready to provide financial stability and family direction for you when he’s still trying to figure out how to make money, get solidified in his career, and make it on his own.

By his midtwenties, he’s going to be looking around in the workforce and noticing other men who are homeowners, have cars, and are taking care of families, and his financial clock is going to start revving up. It ticks as loudly as a woman’s biological clock does; we hear the calling to start proving we’ve got the who we are, what we do, and how much we make in order to prove that we are truly men. This isn’t nearly as important in the college years because money isn’t really all that relevant; everybody there is broke and making their mark by becoming members of social organizations, playing sports, joining fraternities, and being a part of the fabric of campus life. But when he hits age twenty-seven or twenty-eight and he starts seeing his boys drive up to the bar in the fancy car and step out in the fancy suit and whip out a business card featuring both his name and an impressive title in raised lettering, a man in his late twenties is going to want a piece of that action-a fancy car, title, and money of his own. This is critical to him, and nowhere in the playbook is marriage a part of the moves he feels he needs to make to get to where he’s trying to go financially and careerwise.

In fact, he may discover on his journey toward figuring out just who he is that he’s not responsible enough, yet, for a committed relationship. Or he may have practically every man around him-from his father and brothers to coworkers and friends-telling him that he needs to play the field and put off for as long as possible settling down with one woman. We simply don’t preach to our sons the virtues of fatherhood and family-don’t tell them that there is a cutoff date for the foolishness and that creating a lasting relationship with one woman is necessary to complete him as a man. He is being driven solely by his financial clock at the same time your biological clock is most likely driving you, and trust me when I tell you, the alarm on his clock isn’t set to remind him that it’s time to make babies.

What This Means for Your Relationship

Sure, there are examples of men who can get their careers together, make an adequate amount of money, and be happy enough with their station in life to settle down at this age, but it’s more likely that a man at this stage is not going to take any relationships with the opposite sex all that seriously. You can determine whether he has potential, though. The key here is remembering that the word potential implies he’s capable of taking action. A man who has potential isn’t sitting on the couch; he’s got a firm plan for what he wants to do with his life and is on his way to being what he says he wants to be. He’s got a short-term plan-maybe it includes school or earning enough money to start a company that he’s thought through and for which he’s created a business plan. And he’s got a long-term plan-one that cements how his goal will play out in the future. If he’s got no plan, can’t articulate his future, and doesn’t appear to be working toward any goals, this isn’t the guy you want to hang on to.