Steve Harvey: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

Oh, she thought the proposal, the ring, and the wedding would follow shortly after the baby was born. To his credit, her boyfriend did come through with a ring. But she's been wearing it for seven years now, and though she's been hoping, waiting, and praying for a wedding date, they're no closer to walking down the aisle today than they were the day their child was born. They share a home. They share parenting responsibilities. They share bills, schedules, car notes, church pews, and most certainly a bed. But they don't share the last name or a marriage certi.cate.

She can't understand why they're playing house instead of making an of.cial home together. He feels as if they've got a home, and really, there's not much more need to go any further than they already have.

And this is the dilemma.

See, to some men, marriage.ts into the same category as eating vegetables: you know it's something you should be doing, but you don't really want to because, well, the greasy, fat-.lled, salty, juicy burger and fries is just so much more satisfying. I've told you time and again in this book that we men are very simple creatures, and if it were not for women, we'd be living rather, well, simply the money would go to mostly shiny things, our time would be spent watching sports and strippers, and there would be no need for most of us to keep a clean house or dress nice or do anything other than play video games. We're happy living this way it makes us feel young and carefree. Marriage does not. Responsibility and marriage do not.t into that feeling, until all of the playing gets tired and we realize we have to be grown-ups, or something or someone makes us grow up.

But here's what you need to know: men are pretty clear that marriage is what women want that despite your independence, despite the statistics that say half the marriages in America end in divorce, despite the amount of time, work, sweat, and tears you know you'll have to pour into building an imperfect relationship, in the end, you women still believe in the fairy tale of the husband and the house and the white picket fence and the

2.5 kids.

Men are also clear that they can slowly give out the things that make it seem like they're making the march to the altar just to keep you hanging in there. Trust me when I say this: men do everything with a purpose, and in the case where a man dates you for an extended length of time, or moves in with you, or gives you a ring, but still refuses to be pinned down on setting a wedding date? He's doing it to lock you down. He wants you, and he doesn't want anyone else to have you.

And I'm here to tell you, the only reason a man gets away with a lengthy engagement or holds off the proposal altogether is because his woman hasn't required him to set the date; she is stupidly sitting there allowing her boyfriend to dictate to her when he's ready, though she slept with this man, cut off any other prospective husbands, and, in some cases, moved in with him and even had his children.

I simply can't be diplomatic here.

It's just plain dumb.

Get into your man's mind-set here: if a man is willing to be your boyfriend at length, live with you, be an involved father, or give you a ring, he has already taken himself off the player's list technically, he's scratched his name off the sport.shing registry. He can't bring babes to the house. He can't talk on the phone or take any phone calls from babes at the house. He can't leave to go see a babe when he wants to or stay with her all night. He knows he can't give his money to any other woman because he's pooling it with you. Why does a man in a committed relationship with you accept the above list of he can'ts?

Because he wants you and he doesn't want to lose you.

So now there's only one more step to get the marriage equation: the setting of the wedding date. You know you want it, so here's what you do: get some requirements and standards and enforce them tell him, I love you, you love me, we're in a terri.c relationship one that I've always dreamed about. And what I want now is to be married to you. So I need you to set a date, and get back to me in a couple of weeks. If I don't get asked by then, then please know I'm not sitting around waiting for you to dictate when my happiness button gets pushed. The arrangements we have now are not making me happy.

What? This is a perfectly reasonable request. Otherwise, how long are you going to stay in the arrangement where you're not getting what you want four years? Ten years? Forever?

The timeline is yours; stop giving up your power. The moment we see you're willing to put aside your hopes of walking down the aisle, we're going to shelve it, too. And we're going to go on ahead and keep on renting you out, with the option to buy if you let us. Don't be the Baltic Avenue on the Monopoly board game the one that anyone can just roll the dice, land on, and pay a couple of dollars to chill on without any obligations or worries. You've got to go to Broadway on the game board; make your man round the corner and land on that high end property recognize that you're prime real estate that's for purchase only.

Note: This is not about asking your man to marry you. It's about taking yourself out of that 1945 mentality, where you stand around waiting for some guy to beg you for your hand in marriage. You've had it drummed into your head so cold that I'll never ask a man to marry me thing that you've lost all sensibility when it comes to getting what you want. But it's not 1945 anymore! Back in the day when my parents and their generation were courting and getting married, women could afford to wait around for the man to get it together because really, the options for men were limited. If a guy lived in a farmhouse, the next farmhouse was two miles away, and that one might not have a girl in it just two more boys so he'd have to walk another two miles to actually see a potential mate, much less.nd the one. And when they courted, they courted; he had to walk over there, write little messages on rocks on the way over so everybody knew his intentions, leave a note by the tree and send up smoke signals so the girl knew what was up. Oh, the courtship was far more romantic, because the men knew they had to behave properly not just for their intendeds, but their intendeds' daddies. The boys had to go over to the house, ask permission to sit in the room together, and the adults were present because there weren't any extra rooms for them to sit in alone. And that courting culminated in the men pulling the fathers aside and, with their shoulders squared and chins up, asking the fathers for their daughters' hands in marriage. And whatever the father said is what went.

Now women have been taught all their lives that if a man loves you, he will court you and ask for your hand in marriage. The problem with this is that you've been trained to use twentieth-century logic in twenty-.rst-century situations. There's no slim pickings of women out here women are at every turn, working with men, living in apartment buildings with them, riding the bus and trains with them, hanging out at the clubs with them. Technology's such that you can contact a woman without ever even seeing her. It's not 1945 anymore you can't hang on to those old ways. This, If he wants to marry me, he'll ask me thing has got to stop. Because we're not going to ask you when you're ready we're going to play with you until you give us your requirements and standards, and stand by them. I'm not telling you to get on bended knee. I'm telling you to set a timeline for the ring and the date, and tell the man you want to be married to what it is.

I recognize that this is hard. But let me tell you what's really hard: dating/living with/having a baby with a man who has no intention of marrying you and eight years up the road, he walks out and you're left to.nd a new man/pay all the bills after years of splitting them with someone else/raising those kids on your own. Oh, it can be done. But recognize just how hard that will be. All I'm suggesting is that you get the little uncomfortable moments out of the way early let him know now what you want and expect. Make clear to him what you're worth, and that you come at a cost; tell him how much you're worth like you're about to list yourself on eBay for a million dollars. Break down your value: say, I respect you, I adore you, I'm affectionate, I pay attention to you, I'm punctual, I'm kind, I'm loyal, I'll have your children and love them madly and all of this is available for a handsome sum. I need your time, loyalty, support, affection, attention, punctuality, kindness, gentleman ways I need the doors opened, chairs pulled out, your respect, and above all else, your love. I also expect a diamond ring and a walk down the aisle.