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 ….
4. The friends with benefits/no-strings-attached relationship will NEVER develop into something meaningful. No woman should ever have to gamble with the prospect of elevating from “spare booty” to a meaningful relationship with a man. To even suggest that a woman suspend her dignity for meaningless gratuitous sex is a gross underestimation of the value of a woman. More importantly, friends with benefits and no-strings-attached relationships are misnomers.
Benefits are inherent in all friendships. Genuine friendships are inherently beneficial and mutually rewarding. A sexual relationship is a specific relationship with a totally different dynamic than platonic relationships. Friends with benefits are a category that’s used to combine two mutually exclusive relationships for the purpose of reaping the benefits of one without the responsibilities of the other.
5. Side chicks are 20 somethings looking for a sugar daddy. Even if this were true, what difference would it make? Side chicks only enter relationships by invitation of another woman’s uncommitted disloyal man. There are no age limits or financial limits for these unfortunate women who buy into their own exploitation and allow themselves to be the second-string coming-off-the-bench women in the lives of unsuitable men.
6. The side-chick is just a sex partner, nothing more. A side-chick is a woman who is a willing victim of a very selfish man. The fact that a woman willingly agrees to be used for sex does not change the fact that she is a victim, “nothing more.” It’s possible that a side-chick could become a “main chick”, but this “upgrade” is a gamble not worth winning. How could any woman trust a man when she was the other woman in his life? What would make her think her “promotion” would not leave a space for a new side-chick to fill? A woman should be pursued by a man who has chosen her above all others.
What’s left unmentioned in these 6 myths (in addition to what has already been presented) is that there is no accountability for the behavior of the men who benefit the most from these “arrangements” (it would give far too much credit to legitimize them by calling them relationships). These discussions always seem to focus attention on the women and rarely, if ever, the men. These women are either blamed for “allowing” men to use them or their relationships are written off as “fair exchange” which seeks to absolve men of any responsibility for the emotional damage that results when the relationships come to a crashing end. That is the biggest myth of all that somehow did not make the list.
BMWK, What do you think about these myths?