It's time to have THE TALK.

EVERYTHING YOUR PARENTS DID NOT TELL YOU ABOUT CHOOSING A MATE! 

Photo from Managing Teenage Behaviour

THE TALK... whew.  That's the one moment in time when parents are the closest to having a nervous breakdown.

What to say?  What not to say...Kids are getting older now.  The opposite sex is about to start sniffing around.  So mom or dad or both, work up the nerve to tell kids where babies come from.  And to use protection or abstain.

Photo from abcnews.go.com

Do you remember when your parents had "THE TALK" with you?  What did they tell you?  How open was the discussion?  Did you even have the discussion at all?

For one of my homeboy's the talk went like this:

Mom calls Dad, "It's time that you talk with your son about women."  Dad comes over picks him up, they go for a drive.  The conversation was one sentence long. "Do you have condoms?"  Dad takes him back home.  And the rest is history.

Wait a minute? Say whuh?! Where is the part about meeting the right girl?  How about how you should talk to girls? The conversation about how to understand the opposite sex?  Umm....yeah..something was definitely missing in that conversation.

Funny thing is...many of us either never had THE TALK, or the talk stopped at sex.  And you wonder why as grown people, we now think sex is the most important part of a relationSHIP?  Welp...think about it. During those times when you were maturing and impressionable, the information about relationships usually came from other people who were maturing and impressionable.  YOUR PEERS!

And what in the world did another 13 or 14 year old know about picking the right guy or girl?  Shoot picking a girlfriend or boyfriend at that time was based solely on a "feeling".  I feel like he's cute.  Or he felt her booty.  lol.  Now y'all grown people are still acting like that, because you didn't take time to learn better.

Sad aint it?

So many people are out here dazed and confused about what a good mate is and how to find one.  Well you know what NOT to look for, as that has been repeatedly battered into your head:

Don't bring home no *fill in the blank*

She ain't 'bout nothing if....

Be careful around boys who...

If she's not giving up the...

If a man can't....

Basically you know absolutely nothing about what to look for because you spend so much time thinking about what you don't want!  You don't know how to have a good relationship, because you focus so much on the bad relationships of other people. 

Photo from "Getting Teens to Talk about Sex-Eww"

Now what do you do? I mean, since I am talking about this, I should have some solutions right?

• Think about what you have to offer someone and how you can work cooperatively in a relationship
• Figure out what type of RELATIONSHIP you want to have
• Seek out people who have the knowledge and wisdom to clarify how positive relationships work
• Stop listening to people who have terrible relationships. Clearly they don't know how to have a healthy relationship so that's not the place to go.
• Know what you WANT in a mate.  You have already spent enough time knowing what you don't want.
• Date with a purpose.  Getting caught up in the shallowness and repeating the cycles of your past won't work.  Treat it like an interview (just don't be all rigid and business with it...ease up and be comfortable.)
• Step out of your comfort zone.  If you keep dating the same type of person. It's either your signals you give off, your environment, or your mindset.
• Look at the person's actions, activities, attributes, etc.  Look for deal makers instead of deal breakers.

What do you have to add? If you had the talk today, what questions or answers would you have?