Why do women have to say their male friends are gay to calm jealous boyfriends?
Why do women have to say their male friends are gay to calm jealous boyfriends?
I'm never going to defend Sharon Palmer's gay accusation against Usher
I’d gone on one date with this guy. We briefly chatted on a very popular online dating app, but I chuckled when he told me I was “really cute” but lived “too far away” for him to date. I moved on to my next swipe and didn’t think much of it. A week or two later, he came back into my messages and said the app kept pairing us together, and he could “look past the distance” because he wanted to meet me. I rolled my eyes at that one ‘cause I damn sure had zero plans to move. I’d just bought a condo unit, so it wasn’t like I was going to tell my mortgage company to let me out of the contract so I could date a random on OKCupid.
Our first (and only) date was cool. Nothing special. No big spark. No sexual tension. No razzle dazzle. It felt like hanging out with one of my homeboys from my childhood neighborhood. Additionally, and to be completely honest, I still missed a guy I’d been dating exclusively for a couple months before him and crossed my fingers that he’d reach out on Valentine’s Day. The prior guy had no idea I’d moved out of my condo rental and bought this new condo unit several miles away, so there was no way for him to stop by; my phone was the only option. Instead of focusing on either of them, I went to Happy Hour with a few co-workers, came home slightly tipsy and settled in to relax for the evening.
Then I looked at my phone, which was full of mobile alerts from this dating site. The messages summed up to “Now I see how you are” and “Oh, I learned my lesson about you early.” Startlingly confused, I scrolled through earlier messages to see if I may have tipsy-dialed him or done something else to offend him. Turns out I did nothing. The guy I went on one date with was angry that I hadn’t contacted him on Valentine’s Day. I blocked him immediately after reminding him I was not his girlfriend and changed my phone number. (Coincidentally, that also blocked the old flame from calling or texting, but ah well. Life goes on.)
Jealous boyfriends should have padded walls glued to their clothes
Some would say that reaction was extreme. But if you’ve ever dated someone who is the jealous type, you recognize the signs early on. I’d already been down that road with the guy who called nonstop, wanted to know my location, got upset when I got off the phone with him to talk to my own mother, constantly called to see what I was doing even when he was at work and was pressuring the hell out of me to have sex with him. The entire experience was exhausting. (I didn’t budge on the sex part for a couple of months while he kept calling me “Joan Clayton.” All I kept thinking was, “If this is how you act now, I’m very hesitant to see how you act when it gets physical.” To make matters worse, it was absolutely wackity wack wack when we finally did the do. I was holding L’s left and right.)
That still didn’t stop him from smothering the hell out of me. The final straw for me was his anger every single time a platonic friend called. One was a friend of mine from my alma mater, who still lived eight hours away and made the jealousy even more bonkers. (How can someone do much cheating when they need two tanks of gas to get to you?) But the real problem was a second male friend — a former co-worker who I knew since I was 16 years old. He was married and lived next door to my grandfather, and somehow that boyfriend acted like this man was Idris Elba with Thanos’ strength. In his psychotic mind, he just could not comprehend the idea that a man and a woman can be friends. He also seemed to be too paranoid to realize that both guys were longtime friends (one for about four years and the other 10 years). If we hadn’t hooked up all this time, why would we start now?!
Recommended Read: “Can men and women truly be platonic friends? ~ While my immediate answer is ‘yes,’ attraction level can be a barrier”
For someone who is used to seeing platonic friendships, this isn’t a foreign concept. My godfather was in my parents’ wedding and bought me my first car. He’s known my mother since they were in eighth grade together and bought a plane ticket for a family member when someone was sick. I absolutely looked at him as a father figure — but never my actual father. Plus, he too was married with a couple of kids. I was even friends with one of his daughters at one point. The dynamic between my mother and my godfather was about equivalent to me and my actual blood brother.
Recommended Read: “He brought a bat to a gunfight ~ Two lessons I learned from black fathers”
Fast forward past many shouting matches, many arguments, numerous ultimatums, a demand to use my credit card (yeah, that really happened) and so many “you’re not a good girlfriend” lectures, and I was right back at it with a number change, an email block and moving on with my life. I think jealous people should only date other jealous people who understand their brand of crazy.
Sharon Palmer’s accusation that Usher Raymond IV is gay
I hadn’t thought much of any of these old flames until the last 24 hours, when the entertainment news cycle was going back and forth with women justifying a comment made by Sharon Palmer, Keke Palmer’s mother. In a one-sided phone recording, which is illegal in two-party consent states, the father of Keke Palmer’s child let Sharon Palmer unleash on him about domestic violence allegations. But she didn’t just keep it about her child and the child’s father. She randomly started talking about Lauren London not liking Sarunas Jackson (Darius Jackson’s brother who is well-known as a cast member of HBO’s “Insecure” and BET’s “Games People Play”) and then repeatedly stated that Usher Raymond IV was gay.
Wait … what? Why did these two people (one of which damn sure had nothing to do with a Las Vegas concert nor the “Boyfriend” video) have to get dragged into this? More importantly, what does Usher’s sexual orientation (although he’s been documented for dating [and marrying] a few industry- and non-industry women) have to do with anything at all?
From The Neighborhood Talk post, commenters are acting like this is the norm. Majority of the women in this Instagram post have either lied and said their own male friends were gay to their jealous exes, or they were only “allowed” to have gay male friends. And I’m over here scratching my head — because in every single long-term friendship I’ve had with men over the years, it just never occurred to me to lie about their sexual orientation to make another man feel better. If I have to do all that, the relationship was dead on arrival anyway.