Go Dutch? We Ain't In The Netherlands!

"Going Dutch" is a term that indicates that each person participating in a group activity pays for himself, rather than any one person paying for anyone else, particularly in a restaurant bill.

Miss Tammy: Damn girl, I can't wait for payday
Saz: But didn't you just go on a date on Saturday?
Miss Tammy: Yeah, but I didn't pay for it.
Saz: What if his card got declined?
Miss Tammy: Then I'd have sent out a broadcast for money transfer asap.
Saz: And if noone had money?
Miss Tammy: I go die o!

This is an extract from a recent BBM conversation that I had with Saz, I am very 21st century and I believe in going dutch. I also have a rule that I never leave my house to go on a date if I can't afford it but there is an exception to every rule since this date was not the first date and who am I to pass up a good date because the balance in my bank account is not speaking the language that I'd like to hear? I should say though on this occassion I did not do the whole "reach-for-your-purse-in-hopes-that-he-would-say-he's-going-pay move" because what if he decided that we should indeed go dutch? What would I do then? Tell him the truth that I was just being polite and actually had no intention of paying because my card will probably get chopped up if I gave it to the waiter because the balance is well below zero?

But let's think about the situation that Saz had talked about. What if his card had got declined and he looked at me to bail him out, what could I have done then? Honestly, I'd have started laughing and in the words of Cilla I'd have said "I can't help you!" and made my way home. Standard. I'm cool like that.

For many women going dutch is a dangerous zone, I am yet to meet a woman who is willing to go out on a second date with a guy who would have made her pay. And they say it's not about money, what is it about then? If a guy asked you to go dutch on the first date, is it a done deal? I have noticed that paying for a date is the one act of chivalry that women have refused to let go of. They will open their own doors, drive around town with their man in the passenger seat but will not accept going dutch. Why? Does it prove that he's not cheap or that he's not a douche bag? A fool can still wine and dine you and he can also ask you to come out of the pocket. I don't know, I tend to bump heads with men and women when this topic comes up over birthday dinners and random get togethers. I almost got stoned to death at Saz's birthday when I expressed that I didn't mind going on a first date with a guy and he used vouchers. I don't. As long as he gives me a heads up prior to the date then it's cool otherwise he'll just look like a cheapo who's trying to get one over on me. If a guy stepped up to me and says that he's got vouchers for Pizza Express, I don't mind! Judge me if you like, whatever because at the end of the day if he's stingy with his cash whether he pays full price on that first date or not you are going to feel the burn further down the line. Be real with me, show me that you care about your money and I will send you the link to vouchercodes.co.uk or even sign you up for groupon so you can get more than 50% off deals. *kanye shrug*

Tell Me If He's Cheating So I Can Fark Him Up!

Baby! It's not what it looks like!

If you found out that your friend's partner was cheating on them would you tell them?

I asked a few of my friends what they'd do if they found my man cheating. A few said they'd tell me, some wouldn't and others would tell him to tell me. If I was cheating and my man's friend caught me and told me to tell Bob that I was cheating, how would that conversation go?

"Hey babe. You know John. He's not my cousin y'kno"
"What d'you mean he's not your cousin?"
"Well, we're kinda getting it in. I'm sowwy."

Call me crazy but I'd prefer it if he approached me and asked me if I'm cheating on him to which I will deny it unless he has visual evidence to show me otherwise its deny, deny, deny. Anyway, this is not about me.

"I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman!"

If you are my friend and you're reading this right now, I'd like to tell you that if I catch your man cheating I am going to video record him and take pictures. Then I will arrange a Starbucks lunch (because I love their chicken and tomato panini) and tell you about his triflin' ass. When you do confront him about it, feel free to drop my name in there or better yet I will be there with you swinging my baseball bat in case he tries anything funny saying "that's right, I saw you motherf*cker. I saw you!"

One of my friends that said she wouldn't tell me said it was because she knew I'd go crazy. Yes. Yes, I will. I will be sitting there in Starbucks arms folded, biting my cheek and shaking my left leg under the table thinking "where is that fool? Let me go and get that nucca!"
But I do understand where she's coming from, I might go cray and get done for murder but there are also some women who prefer to stay ignorant if their man's cheating and if my friend told me that she preferred not to know if her man's cheating then I'd respect that and not say anything if I caught him cheating on her. There are certain situations, like marriage, you got kids, you don't believe in divorce etc where you know you're not going to leave your partner so if they are creeping you'd rather not know because it's only going to cause heartache for you. Fair enough.

I personally do not think that cheating is the end of a relationship (like I wrote in Monogamy the myth.) People make mistakes and move on. If you were my friend and withheld that information from me I'd be very hurt because maybe he was going through some things that made him cheat and the discovery of his infidelity would allow us to address those issues and move on, possibly make our relationship better or stronger. When I do find out, I will not bust his windows because his windows might be my windows but there will definitely be some furniture movement in the house and I will beat him til the white meat then we can talk about why the hell he did it.

If we break up, we break up and if we stay together and work it out then that's my prerogative. You might be sitting across the table from us thinking that I stayed with a fool but at least I'll know he's a fool and dammit he'll be my fool! The last thing I'd want is for someone to know that my man is cheating on me and I don't. Tell me, let me deal with it. I promise I won't kill him and if I do I will plead temporary insanity.


Disclaimer: I do not condone violence, in fact I can't even fight. I just have a big mouth!

Don't Just Engage Me, Marry Me!

I love those little moments when people call, text or bbm me telling that their man has just popped the question. I love it! I also love hearing about wedding plans, bridesmaids, cakes, venues to a certain extent. Don't go on about it, I got things to do instead of listening to you rumble on about your wedding.

BUT what really gets me going is when you get engaged with no plans for a wedding? What are we doing getting engaged for two years? If a man asks me to marry him, he better believe that I'm going to start googling Vera Wang dresses and finding out which horrid dresses I'm going to put my lovely girlfriends in. Don't ask me to marry you if you don't want to get married right now. I had a man, lovely guy, a bit too light skinned but lovely nonetheless. He decided that it was a good idea to ask me to marry him and it was. So he does his thing and asks me to marry him and I asked him if he was asking me to marry him because he was ready to get married. He said he wasn't ready but he loved me and wanted to spend his life with me. So you want to hook me nucca? That's the male equivalence of pregnancy. They don't want you to leave so they hook you by dangling marriage in front of us.

The next thing you know you wake up one morning five years later wondering how you're still Miss and not Mrs Jones. You were the first one of your friends to get engaged but they've made their walk down the aisle and you're still waiting for the money to be right. Maybe I'm wrong, I dont know but since I'm not pro-marriage when I bend my beliefs a little bit to marry you cannot tell me that it's going to be a long engagement. No, you go down on one knee and I say yes; you best believe that I'm going to start planning our wedding that same night! Google never sleeps!

*drops mic*



No, really. He's A Baby!

I love him just like I raised him
When he call me Mama
Lil Mama I call him Baby - Nicki Minaj, Moment for life

I have always been fascinated by cougar relationships. I sit there asking questions about what it’s like to do it with a younger man, kind of like the questions you ask when you hear that your friend did it with a white guy: “What does it look like? Is it really pink?”

I have plenty of friends who date younger men, from a year to seven years and the thought is like a foreign subject to me, I just don’t get it. The funniest thing about my ignorance, yes I am aware that I’m ignorant when it comes to this subject, is that so many relationships that my friends are in are with younger men and they are fine. They never complain about the age gap and it never seems like an issue. I think the problem with me is that at the tender age of 25 the younger guys I will be meeting are 24 and below which is in my opinion young. If I was say, 30 and dated someone who is 25-27 that will be different because by that time they would have matured a bit more, played the field and MAYBE be on the same level as I will. I can imagine dating someone who’s say two years younger than me and telling them some kind of predicament I would be in just to make conversation because to be honest I do not trust the advice of a 23 year old even though when I was 23 I thought I was pretty smart. Any little thing I can see myself saying “oh what do you know, you’re only a child.”

A while ago, one of my friends set me up with her “friend” the quotes are necessary because she thought he was 26 when he was really 20! They are not real friends! So we start talking, we vibing, you know that whole thing. He asks for my bbm pin, I give it to him, he’s calling, he’s texting, he’s falling, lemme explain. So one day I was telling one of my girlfriends about him and she asked me how old he was and I drew a blank. I had no idea so I quickly picked up my phone and sent him a bbm and boy, did he avoid the question until he said 20. Eh? How old now? Dude wasn’t even 21! He couldn’t even drink in America! I decided not to let that throw me because we were getting on quite well and didn't act like a 20 year old despite numerous insults from my friends asking me if he was going to take me out with his EMA money, if he had curfew or all the other insults I suffered.

He finally asked me out to dinner and not only was it my first date with someone four years my junior; it was also my first ever blind date. This was going to be interesting. We met up at an underground station and headed to a restaurant nearby. He ordered pineapple juice, I ordered orange juice. We ordered our food, ate my steak and tried as hard as I could to forget his age. After a while he finished his drink and naturally I expected him to beckon the waitress for another drink but this young brother went in to his “man bag,” pulled out an orange Tropicana and poured it into his glass ever so nonchalantly *bbm shocked face* and to make matters worse he made me pay half!

My friend was right; we should have gone to Pizza Hut!

Can You Really Be Friends With Your Ex?

A lot of people call me cynical but I think I'm a realist. I hear some people saying they friends with their ex. Now, I'm not talking about that person you linked once or twice or Tyrone that you flung a few years ago. They don't count as exes and you can become friends with them because the foundation was not deep. They don't know you like that. I'm referring to exes that you were together for two or more years but things didn't work out so now they're friends. You done met each others families, been to family reunions together and even talked marriage and kids, now you're "friends". We don't believe you, you need more people! I find it very hard to believe that me and my ex can be good friends. I'm not buying it. You can be civil, yes but friends? As in if you were to mention who your friends are you'd count them? I can't see it. You both might start off with good intentions of actually being friends, you're catching up, laughing and joking and one day it only takes one day when one of you is gonna say "remember that time...?"

"Yes, I remember that time! We ended up buck nekkid and fooling around, that was a good time *sigh*"

"So, uh, you think we'll ever do that again? I'm not saying I want to, I'm just asking"

*Tekken voice* Game. Over.

Immediately you've jumped from being "friends" to "reminiscers" (I know its not a word, I just made up.) At some point someone is going to catch feelings because once again you have the relationship without the stress and the booty (if you're getting some ass from your ex, you're not friends) but somewhere down the line you're going to get hurt, don't say I didn't warn you!

Maybe I am cynical or maybe I just don't have the time to be entertaining my past so I don't even give them the time of day or consideration in such foolishness, I have enough friends and we broke up for a reason, keep walking my friend.

The Numbers Game

First things first, we're now on Twitter! Yay! I know it was about time so follow us @avgoodblog to keep up to date with all my relationship cynicism and the random things I go through every now and then.

Ok back to the topic at hand, I'm a firm believer in telling the truth as much as possible but there's only one situation when the truth won't set you free and that's when your man asks you how many people you've slept with. Its always two isn't it? No? Just me? Ok, moving on. How many women actually tell the truth though? I'm referring to the non-virgins. What I've always found strange is why men ask. Why? Why do you want to know? Because whatever number I say is going to be too much for you.

I was having a conversation with one of my girlfriends and asked if she'd slept with the new guy she was dating (they're now official, yay!) and she said she hadn't, she wanted to see where this was going before she went ahead and opened her legs and at the end of that sentence she said "besides, i gotta think about my numbers! Now, this friend of mine has the lowest number ever! Use your imagination if you're really that nosey but even at such a minute number we have been programmed to keep our numbers as long as possible which is why we end up lying. Yes, I said it. We lie. Right to your face! They say that you're supposed to divide by three for men and multiply by three for women. Multiplying by three, really? Makes it a lot, doesn't it? And to be honest I don't think that men have a reason to lie any more about their numbers because sugar walls are so easy to get these days.

Us, women have been put under so much pressure on our numbers. Shoot, a lot of us have to recycle mushroom tips just so that you don't up your number. You know one of them times when you're feeling a bit frisky and you want to do it with this new guy, you really do but you can't because when you look at that little list you have, c'mon I'm not the only one! You look at that list and you know you're not ready to add another name to it so what do you do? You call Tyrone. You can't stand Tyrone but hell, it beats adding a number.

I need to clarify something right now for the masses, the number is a sensitive subject. No, we don't count Bob from Aya Napa, he doesn't count. We only count domestic tips and if it didn't go all the way in or if he was small we don't count that either. If he's in a different city it might be debatable too, different area code and all that. We definitely don't count one night stands or one hit wonders. If we hooked up five plus years ago, unfortunately you've been wiped out of memory. Only meaningful relationships, the ones that you called boyfriend for a bit longer than 3 months. Mistakes have already been erased from memory so they don't even come into the equation.

In an ideal world we'd all love to have slept with our prince charming. One man, is all we would have loved but somewhere down the line that man turned into a real mushroom tip and had to let go. So did the next one and a few more after that. Things don't always work out the way you want them to and it is so unfair to call SOME women hoes because of her number under the stress that we do because of how many men would have stuck their mushroom tips in our sugar walls. If I were a virgin I swear I'd have a 100 t-shirts made saying "Virgin and Proud" and wear them everyday. That'll be my thang.