Ain’t No Sex in the City (originally posted in 2019)

I’m not even sure what I was searching for initially, but one day while on Youtube I found myself going down a rabbit hole of random couples videos and found an interview between Oprah, Meagan Good, and her husband Devon Franklin. In the video, Meagan and Devon discussed their relationship, revealed that the two of them had been practicing celibacy,  and that God spoke to them both about marrying each other. I didn’t care too much for Oprah’s condescending tone when she asked Meagan if God really told her who her husband was, but I was curious about this concept that God actually speaks to us, especially when it comes to relationships.

Next thing I knew, I was binge-watching all the interviews I could find with them and was reading their book “The Wait”. 

During my senior year of highschool, I met one of my best friends, Yetty. Yetty was never here for my Tiny Terror shenanigans and didn’t have a problem letting me know. She was also my only Christian friend at the time and told me that she was saving herself for marriage. Whenever Yetty would give me her list of standards for men, I thought she was being ridiculous. She tried to convince me that there’s a such thing as a man who loves God is educated, fine, and willing to wait until marriage to have sex with someone.

I repeatedly told her that such men don’t exist and she would have to compromise with her list. Nothing she was waiting for seemed attainable in my eyes. I found it very hard to believe that a man with all these qualities would abstain from sex. Surely, he would have a large pick of women and would take advantage. I felt like if she was serious about waiting until marriage, the best option was to settle for someone unattractive who no woman would want to sleep with anyway. This just showed how low my expectations were. I had never before come across such a man so I assumed they did not exist. My own experiences had also taught me that if a woman wanted a man to stick around, she had to have sex with him and it was non-negotiabe. Looking back at all this now, I see how trash it was for me to think this way and then try to persuade her into seeing relationships through my toxic and ignorant lense. 

But THIS changed everything. Here these two were, both obnoxiously fine, and they waited. And Devon had already been celibate ten years prior to his relationship with Meagan. 

Could it be? There are actually attractive men who refuse to have sex with a woman before MARRYING her first? What in the---

For the first time, I started to feel like maybe this was something I should try. The only problem: I kinda had a boo and we were already having sex. I really wanted to do this but I had no idea how I would tell someone who I had already been having sex with that we couldn’t do it anymore. How was that going to work? The deed was already done so despite how I was feeling at the time, I figured it just wasn’t right for me. I decided it was a cute thought, but I was already in too deep.

Still, this whole situation started having me question what I was doing in this relationship in general. It had been four months of both us traveling across state lines to see each other and there was no title. If we were going to be having sex, I at least wanted to know that we were being intentional. So after drafting a lengthy “what are we” letter in my notes, I finally mustered up the courage to text it to him. My heart instantly dropped when I pressed ‘send’ and I threw my phone across the bed.

Girl, WHY? Yall had a good thing going and you just made it weird!

I instantly regretted asking because deep down I knew that this was not going to go the way I wanted it to. We had never even talked about the meaning of our relationship during the last four months. We had both just been riding the wave. But I couldn’t help it. I was spending my time and my coin for this man and I needed to know that it wasn’t in vain.

Then, I heard my phone vibrate.

Okay, calm down. Maybe you’re overreacting. He’s probably about to tell you exactly what you want to hear and everything is going to be okay.

Nope.

I won’t get too much into details but his response was basically the lyrics to ‘Where I Wanna Be’ by Donell Jones. I had really spent the last four months texting this man 24/7, catching feelings, sitting on the bus for 5 hours to DC, spending luxury weave-type money, all for him to hit me with the “Sweedle deedle deedle dee dee, I don’t mean to hurt you baby” ?????

How many times was this supposed to happen to me? From ages 17 to 24 I had hopped from relationship to situationship to friends with benefits, to relationship again...the cycle never ended and I could never seem to find what I was looking for. 

Enough!

The entire exchange triggered a series of flashbacks of all the times I came up short when it came to men. I was so used to getting less than the bare minimum that I had completely disregarded any red flags from someone because they were “decent enough”. There had never been a time where I wasn’t more emotionally invested than the other person. There had never been a time where I wasn’t putting aside my own needs in order to keep the other person around. There had never been a time where I was even made to feel worthy enough for someone to want to choose me and only me.

But instead of directing my anger towards myself for continuing to aim so low, I told myself all men were trash and in yet another lightskin emotional fit, I found myself giving God a list of demands I needed Him to fulfill before I ultimately gave up on relationships for good. I created a list of what I thought would be the perfect man, most of which consisted of physical attributes and completely avoided the real issues at hand. But the last and final thing I asked for was the only thing that actually made sense. I asked for some type of internal alert system that would let me know immediately if a man was even worth giving my time to from the very beginning. This way, I would be protected from wasting my energy and creating even more soul ties that I didn’t need.

You already know a good way to do this…

“If only there was a way to let man know from the jump that I wasn’t playing games anymore. I wasn’t trying to date just date. I been there, done that, bought a T-shirt.”

You were kind of already considering it, just try it…

“Like forreal, I’m ready to settle down. I don’t want to keep wondering if we are on the same page or spending time trying to change someone’s mind about the status of our relationship.”

What do you have to lose? You already done played yourself…

“Quite frankly, I’m tired of feeling like I’m good enough to stand next to someone and be cute, but that’s it. And why would this guy want to travel from the DMV just for play-play?? Who even does that? Clearly I would assume he wanted something serious if we were both going out of our way to see each other. How am I supposed to know whose serious under these circumstances?”

Be still. You’ll know who I have for you when you stop laying it low and spreading it wide.

“Jesus???”

For weeks I had battled with whether or not the voices in my head were from Jesus or myself. I immediately thought of what Meagan said and wondered if this was happening to me as well. Did Jesus even speak to people like that? I mean, maybe back in the days but surely not in 2018. And the manner in which it was done! I felt clocked, like I had just been called dumb. Would He really do that? (See Matthew 15:16 NIV...the answer is yes).

After speaking to a few close friends, I had to come to terms with the fact that there’s no way I would've given this suggestion to myself. I don’t even say “be still”. Who talks like that?

Then came making the decision to follow through with it. I mean the idea of celibacy seemed cool, but was it something I could actually do? 

Sidebar: When I was 19, a guy I had been “seeing” told me he wanted to try to see if we could be in a committed relationship. I was excited because up until that point, things had only been physical and I knew I wanted more. I suggested that we go on dates and spend the summer getting to know each other on a different level, and then once we became official, we could have sex again. He told me I was being extra and he had a new girl on his snap story the next day...

Celibacy was easy to agree to in this present moment considering I was no longer involved with someone, but what would happen when that changed? What if I met the perfect man and he had every great quality I could ask for, but he wasn’t down with this? Was I expected to just cut him off? The more I thought about it, the more it felt like I was being punished. I didn’t want to risk going through the same situations again that left me feeling used and discarded. But I also knew this decision would severely limit the amount of prospects coming my way and I’d probably go through an extended period of time where I wouldn’t be dating anyone at all. This was the part that scared me the most. Since highschool, I had never been completely alone. I mean, what did single people even do all day? I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself or how to spend my free time. 

That’s the point.

 “Ugh. Okay, fine. Let’s do this”