Just days ago, I read an article that focused on relationships, sex, and side chicks that I found quite disturbing to put it mildly. I read articles, posts, blogs, quotes, etc. on love and relationships all the time for personal and professional reasons. Some of them are very informative, insightful, and empowering. Others perpetuate certain damnable and damaging ideologies that provide little more than entertainment value for those who have been socialized into a mindset that even allows them to view such sources of pain and heartbreak as entertainment. That’s a conversation all by itself for another time and place.

This brings up a very important question that must be considered whenever such conversations/dialogue about relationships is engaged upon. What is the purpose for such engagements especially when these conversations are set to appear on various main stages, platforms, and other media outlets? Are these discussions intended to incite meaningful dialogue to solve problems or for entertainment. The exploitation of relationship issues is big business. Celebrity “experts” make guest appearances to provide useful guidance to help their adoring fans.

I can’t say with any degree of certainty what the purpose of the panel was from which the aforementioned article originated. I can only say that the topic of love and relationships is a very serious subject and should be handled with the highest level of care each time the topic is broached. The stakes are too high for our relationships. We must make the best of each opportunity to speak on such subject matter that can help us gain a better understanding of one another in our male/female relationships.

Here, I take the liberty this space allows to address the 6 Biggest Myths about sex and side chicks.

1. If you want a man to respect you, you must make him wait for sex. I agree, but for very different reasons. A woman should never make a man wait for sex to gain his respect. When a woman is abstinent, her purpose is not the sexual deprivation of a beau or any other suitor; not that they are entitled to sex from her anyway. A woman, who chooses to abstain from sex until marriage, does so because she holds true to certain foundational values that govern her life.

It is not a woman’s responsibility to cause a man to respect her. In fact, it’s not even possible. Respect is only given based upon the value one person places on another. To respect someone is to place a certain value on them and respond to them in kind. The value placed on that person may or may not match the value they place on themselves. Respect is given from within and not controlled or manipulated externally.

2. Cheating destroys the primary relationship. Cheating may or may not destroy the primary relationship. The primary relationship may be able to withstand the damage that follows once infidelity has been discovered. Cheating is not to be taken lightly. Its effects are severe and long-lasting. Even if one had good reason to believe that their relationship would survive cheating, that does not make it any less an act of treason nor does it lessen the pain of the woman who suffers from this heinous act.

3. A man cheats because he’s not getting something at home. The biggest problem with this idea is that it makes a woman complicit in her own victimization. It suggests that the woman is the cause of his cheating because she’s not satisfying him at home. This is problematic on many levels. From a premarital position, these entitlements are non-existent.

Even within the context of marriage, a wife does not bear the sole responsibility of sexual satisfaction though the woman is usually made to feel this is her burden to bear. Such phrases like, “Other women are always willing to do what you won’t” always reinforces a woman’s insecurities and place her in position to compete for the favor and attention of her man against all the women that he could choose from. This is patently wrong.

Read the final 3 Myths About Sex and Side Chicks ….