Him

by Pierre Alex Jeanty

I am always able to love, I am simply unable to always be loving.

If I cannot be cherished by you, I will not become a burden, I will become a lost treasure. If I cannot be a blessing to you, I will not become a curse. I will become absent.

Unearth his roots before you pass judgement on the fruits he bears. Instead, dig to find what kind of soil he was planted in, the way he was watered, who became the sunlight to his eyes etc., to learn what type of tree he is and understand why he grows the harvest you see. You must care enough to reach deep. We don’t know anything about anyone with whom we only walk on shallow ground.

I am nothing like the pretentious lovers who came before I found my way to you. Our voices do not sound the same, our intentions don’t come from the same place, our burdens do not weigh the same. I say this to remind you not to trap this new love of ours in the box that your old loves handcrafted. I do not look like them, so, don’t look for me in the mirror of your pain.

None of us are without a past. It’s unfortunate that he had been a dog during the days he was the pet to his lust, but that man has grown beyond his foolishness. To hunt down and kill the lion that is climbing out of him with reminders of what he once was, is cruel. As a man graduates from living like a king to being a king, please do not unbury his less honorable days to gain ground on him.

Brothers, we too are emotional creatures. We let anger carry the tone of our emotions. We let silence take all of our words, stealing our voices and desire to ask for what our souls need. We let rejection steal every bit of adventure and risk in us. Whether or not we admit it, we are tortoises; tough on the outside, soft on the inside, and only move at our pace.

I am not a rebound, I am the man who refuses to stay on the sideline when the ball is in my court. I actually want to be a teammate and win with her at this thing called love. “I am your last quarter.”

“How did we fall out of love?” she asked. “The same way ashes are made,” I replied. “We never fed our flames.”

How can he know how to love you when you are clueless about how to love yourself? Giving a man a job that you cannot do shouldn’t make him incompetent. You’ve failed at it, why must you toss away the credit he deserves for trying? Why don’t you help him study you, open your soul for him to learn from the pieces of you that you do know how to treat well?

When you find her, give her the keys to your smile, access to your heart, allow her to hear the voice of your deepest thoughts, introduce her to your fears. How can she offer you the love you deserve when you only speak to her through the cracked doors of your heart without inviting her inside?

You’ve given birth to this idea that showing a man you can fight back is power to win him over, yet he never tried to put up a fight in the first place.

Even if he was God, you would still deem him to be Lucifer because he was born in the flesh of man. It’s not his fault that all you’ve known of men is that they are the best of sinners.

Perhaps you are not his secret, but his protected treasure. Perhaps he isn’t at fault; instead it is your trust issues and insecurities stirring up trouble, clouding your mind with the belief that social media validation is what will prove that he isn’t hiding you. There are some who crave a private life in an overexposed generation. There are people who are silent about their business so they don’t have to master the art of drowning out unnecessary noise.

In the shadow of this hero who seems tough as nails, there is a boy who stares at those in love like the last cookie in the jar, trying to wash out the...

You may use your body to cast spells and throw nets with your appearance, but this fella here is looking for more than bait to the eyes. Despite how many colorful fish float on my explorer page and swim past my eyes, I will need more than that temptation to click, because I want more from the ocean. “I want a mermaid.”

have learned that if you spend enough time letting your eyes indulge in the perfection of women clothed with filters and make-up, showcasing themselves on the internet, it is easy to become disconnected from cellulite, outgrow the idea of body hair, and be unwilling to face a face with acne. The line between skin and presentation will be blurred. I am not condemning the women who do such things but reminding you that you can lose your grip on what a woman truly looks like when you are often looking at them in an altered form. “The commercial always looks different from the reality.”

It is true that a queen without a king is still a queen. It is equally true that a king without a queen is still a king. But a king and a queen seated on the throne is how you build a beautiful and lasting kingdom on love’s continent. “There’s enough space for both.”

His heart wasn’t made to be a remedy to the broken, nor a hospital for the heartless. These are demands they ask of him, not what makes him a man.

It is not a woman’s detective work, her aging beauty, her mesmerizing curves, her talent beyond the curtains, not even her carrying life for him that keeps a man in love. It is becoming the apple of his heart, the flower of his eyes, his sunshine, and his...

They say if you stroke his ego, it’ll make it hard for him to stay. He will come and go because you’ve made him feel too important and too loved. I could not disagree more. If you do not feed the dog that you love, it will die. If you do not water the plant that you love, it will die. If you do not give affirming words to the man you love, his spirit will die.

There’s enough love in his heart to love every single piece of you. For the most part, it will not show through romantic gestures. It will creep through his subtle attempts, it will scream through his work ethics and hunger to give you the world, it will be loud in his consistency, and it will present itself as loyalty. Many men are lovers who have no clue about romanticism.

How can you be the woman of his dreams when your heart cannot gain enough strength to be his back bone while he navigates through his reality, reaching for his dreams? Showing him your support is a child of the love that must come with wanting to be in his life. If you cannot become pregnant with such motivation, how can you be the woman of his dreams?

“What you don’t do, another man will and steal her heart,” they say. What more can I do than to love her with my all? Why should I try to protect something that wants to be taken away from me? How is it my responsibility to make sure someone’s legs are heavy enough not to walk out, especially when hard times visit us and their heart isn’t loyal enough to make sure there are no unlocked doors for their favorite thief to come in? I say, “You will always lose what isn’t meant to be yours.”

Here you are, making accusations that you cannot prove, blaming him for things your friends assume and your insecurities declare. The burden of trying to prove to you that he is not the devil’s first born or filled with bad motives is getting too heavy to carry. You can’t keep putting him down and expect him to stand up for you. How does one stand up for a relationship when they are constantly being pushed down? “Tired”

We do not give women’s existence meaning, we can only be part of why they are more meaningful. It’s no different than how they also give our lives more meaning and make the sacrifices make sense.

He is searching for a woman who will help him find more peace than he has ever known in any relationship. Peace that will help him unwind when he gets home, help him take off his responsibilities, unbutton the thoughts of that last email or deadline, loosen up those tired arms, and untie the stress of dealing with clients. Life itself is a burden sometimes, who wants their special someone to make it harder?

I am not deaf to your needs, I am tired of only hearing your demands. I have never known love to find r...

Far more than enough times, women underestimate the power of just listening to the words that crawl out of a man’s mouth. In the same manner, they themselves just want their words to be heard sometimes without an answer, suggestion...

Son, there is nothing wrong with falling for eye candy, but the model you’re desperately after will have to be filter-less in your presence. You will not be able to Photoshop her true character, and she will have to become the role model for your child. You must keep th...

He will shed a thousand tears before you see him cry.

I must admit, there are times I complete sentences in my head and only speak the first words to you, yet expect you to know where to put the period. There are times I am terrible at explaining, yet expect to be understood. Forgive me for those times, I am working on fixing the signal of my communication. I’m working on pressing send to more texts, and actually grabbing thoughts out of my head and typing them in the reply box or saying them for face-to-face. “Incomplete thought.”

You cannot keep putting words into the mouth of his silence and grow angry when you feel that you’ve wasted too much time on him, drunk on assumptions. He may not yet be good at communicating, but he is great at answering questions. When he says he is fine, keep yourself from treating it as if it’s your version of “I’m fine.” “Believe him.”

Out of your mouth came, “If we ever separate, show me that you love me by fighting for me.” But when I fought, you stormed out of the ring and took one of the judge’s seats, waiving your card with a list of all the wrong moves I made. You beat all the hope out of me, pulled back and shoved me away, only to hint that if I did not get up and endure, that I was not meant to be. I am willing to go through hell to reach heaven, but I am not willing to run to the hell that I want to be heaven.

The games, the hobbies, the time spent with his friends, is escapism. When you become what he escapes from more than you are a part of his escapism, that is when there is trouble in the pot.

His idea of love is to do whatever is necessary for you to have whatever is necessary. “Labor of love.”

I will honor your every need, but I will not sacrifice for all your wants. Not all wan...

Blue balls should never make way for purple marks and bruises on the temple of our women. The pain of restrained excitement cut short does not grant us access to what we long for. We must learn not to put our hands on what does not belong to us, simply because we think it is inviting, simply because we think we should. “Rape can’t be justified.”

He is the exact reason why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The title he shows is false, his pages are written in Braille, the stories are allegorical, and ‘The End’ sometimes means there are more pages in another volume.

A good woman may not find it burdensome to honor the survivor in him, but the right woman will make way for her voi...

I cannot understand how my sisters found ways to justify these terrible titles men call them, only to make those words into nicknames that their mouths know between friends. Only if they knew that what they accept will set the tone for what many others will speak to them.

He feels deeply as a man. Perhaps it is the reason why it takes so long for him to express things. The thoughts and feelings are making their way from a far-off place, before they ever find their way out through his lips. There are lands and seas to cross before his heart gets on board to be united with love.

Why are you allowed to act defensive and be emotional, but when it comes to me, you call it ‘being a puppet to my fragile male ego?’ “Sensitive”

I am too strong to let anything someone says pull emotions out of me that should remain buried. Somehow, for the one who makes me weak, I lose power. Their words can cut into parts I never knew existed. Their actions can awaken the worst in me.

And the pain that I’ve known faded with every moment spent with you, with every “I love you” my ears captured from your lips, with every drop of affection, you poured into my cup. “Undressing my heart.”

He is rare. The more you treat him as ordinary, the more you b...

Maybe he is still warming up to love and trying to put out the flames of betrayal that were left burning inside of him. Fires rarely end with t...

When her face isn’t decorated, when she isn’t dressed her best, when her favorite perfume isn’t on, and no smile is upon her face, that is the best time to find out whether your interest is true, or lust is recruiting again. Everyone is lovable and ...

The longer you live as if you don’t need him as a man, the more you make him believe that exact truth. No one finds enough comfort to stay where they don’t feel needed. Treating people like you don’t need them only rushes them to find someone who does.

naming. I will show you how much a man can love you in many different ways, so that when another man tries to use “I love you” as a trap to capture your ears, you will be able to differentiate the voice of love from the tone of manipulation. “Being a loving father.”

If only he took the time to tell you about every single opportunity that came his way to betray the relationship. But he does not find pleasure in telling you how many women tried to cross the boundaries. When he was a lost boy, he used to love the attention of the women who did not respect relationships. It dug up examples for his woman to see that other options were knocking. It was a fear tactic, a way of having the upper hand, he once believed. But now, they aren’t worth mentioning, they aren’t worth entertaining, his attention is committed to this relationship and staying grounded in love. “This is what maturity does to people.”