The Love Playbook: Rules for Love, Sex, and Happiness Read online

  He got a job as a flight attendant that took him all over the world. He would call my mom during a layover in Paris and tell her he was staying for a few days to hang out with friends. My dad is a social butterfly. He loves people and makes friends easily. I’m a lot like him in that way. By the end of his first year as a flight attendant he had friends all over the world and was determined to visit them every chance he got.

  He would be in Paris one week, England the next, Switzerland another week. He was having the time of his life, while my mother was left with the responsibility of taking care of the home and my younger brother and me. And she had a full-time job, working at Brooklyn Hospital. She figured since she was basically doing it all alone, she might as well make it official, and she left him.

  I never resented my dad for being who he is, for living his truth. To this day, no one can say a bad word about my dad. I love him to pieces. Choosing to live his life the way he did didn’t make him a bad person or even a bad dad. It made him adventurous. He is who he is, and I always accepted that.

  And he never ran away from his responsibilities to us. He always paid his child support—never missed a payment. He was also there whenever we needed him.

  I guess I didn’t miss him as much when he was traveling because we had so much family around us. My uncles, my grandparents—they all filled in whatever blanks we might have had with my dad not being around.

  A few years after my mom and dad split up, my mom introduced us to a man I’ll call John. He was a nice man. I know now he was a good man. But he wasn’t my father.

  They had a whirlwind romance, and before we knew it they were getting serious.

  My mother and John took my brother and me to Friendly’s and announced that they were getting married. I lost it. I went into hysterics. I crawled under the table and cried at the top of my lungs.

  They got married anyway, despite my strong reaction, and made it official shortly after at the courthouse. And we were whisked off to Jersey. Culture shock.

  We went from the gritty streets of Brooklyn with my very Puerto Rican uncles and grandparents to the bucolic manicured lawns and white picket fences of Piscataway, New Jersey. I was miserable. But it was probably the best thing that could have happened to my life at that time. It both helped me know myself—what I liked and what I didn’t like—and gave me the kind of boundaries and restrictions that had me figuring out how in the world I would break free. Because I was determined to break free.

  I refused to accept John. He was not our dad—something I reminded him of every chance I got. He was our anti-dad. John had a corporate job. He was an accountant, which I thought was totally boring. He was going to his office every day, while my dad was sending us pictures of himself in front of Buckingham Palace with the queen’s guards. Totally cool.

  But John made good money and he was able to provide a good life for us. And my mother loved him. She also knew what she wanted for us, and that meant having a male figure in our lives who was stable and would always be there for us. He was also the kind of man who set boundaries and was big on children having discipline and structure.

  My stepfather was a very strict man. He had all of these rules. Like when the phone rang, we were to answer, “Jones residence.” Who says that? I couldn’t hang out after school until all my homework was done, until I watched the six o’clock news and read several chapters from whatever book he assigned to us and completed the pages in a workbook associated with that book. By the time I finished all that, I had no time for hanging out with my friends! He was a stickler for education. He wanted us to know everything that was going on in the world, and he would even quiz us from time to time.

  My mom certainly wanted us to do well in school, but with my stepfather there were no options. He wasn’t mean or abusive or anything. I don’t even remember him punishing us. But we just knew what he said was law. I wasn’t a particularly rebellious kid (at first), so I went along with whatever he asked. I hated doing it, but I did it anyway. As I got older, I started to really resent it. I felt like I was in jail. And that there was always a deal being made. I couldn’t just be a kid and have fun. My fun was always tied to something. I could go and play, but first I had to watch the news. I could go to the movies, but not before I did these pages in a workbook.

  I was miserable, and my mom knew it. Well, I wouldn’t shut up about it. So she started lying to my stepfather and sneaking behind his back to let me do things. She would tell him I had a doctor’s appointment and would drop me off at the mall or the movies for a couple of hours to hang out with my friends. When he would leave for work or if he came home late, I got to watch whatever I wanted on TV. He monitored everything we watched. I even got to stay up later than he allowed. My mom would do things like that often to try and make me happy. This was her way of keeping the peace.

  He seemed so unreasonable to me back then.

  When the junior prom rolled around, all of my friends got together and their parents rented a stretch limo. I wasn’t allowed to ride in the limo with my friends. I was furious.

  But I have grown to appreciate the discipline and focus he introduced into my life. I did so well in school that I had many options when it came time for college. I even had a couple of scholarship offers. He also encouraged my love of sports. He was a basketball fanatic, and I got involved in playing and watching basketball with him. I played basketball in junior high and high school because of him. That was one area where we saw eye to eye.

  He also sat me down and told me never to date a ballplayer. Never. I was thirteen and wasn’t thinking about dating anyone at the time, but I kept that advice in the back of my mind throughout my teens. In fact, Carmelo didn’t stand a chance initially because when I met him all I could think about was my stepfather’s warning: “All ballplayers are dogs and they only want one thing!”

  My mom loved that man, and my brother grew to love him, too. For some reason, I just never warmed up to John. Eventually, our tension became too much for my mother. She was living a double life trying to keep her husband happy and her child happy. The fights between my stepdad and me started to escalate, with me getting bolder and bolder in expressing my disapproval of his rules. I started mouthing off and being disrespectful, and my mom was caught in the middle. When she was faced with a choice between her child and her man, my mom chose me. They were married for about six years and I was sixteen when we left.

  We had a comfortable life with our stepfather. We didn’t want for any material thing. But our mom decided that there was something more important than money. That’s another lesson I learned from her: There is no amount of money that can replace peace and happiness or your family.

  There is no amount of money that can replace peace and happiness or your family.

  We moved from a big house in the New Jersey suburbs to a cramped town house with my aunt Edna (Titi Edna) and my cousin Dice in Atlanta. And I couldn’t have been happier. Titi Edna was fabulous. She loved to dress and decorate and was very over-the-top. And I loved living there, especially because of Dice. She was the sister I’d never had.

  Looking back, I can appreciate the life I had with John. I know I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without him. He taught me discipline; he forced me to know more than I ever wanted to know about what was going on in the world. While my dad was traveling the world, John was forcing me to learn about these places. He would have the map out and would test me. I needed to know where Turkey and Bora-Bora and places like that were on the map in relation to where we were. And watching the news every night kept me abreast of what was happening in the world. That knowledge base came in handy when I was a young girl breaking into TV and radio. I had a depth that not many kids my age had.

  I can also thank John for my love of basketball. He allowed me to feel comfortable exploring being an athlete and a bit of a tomboy. He empowered me in that way. I got comfortable in my own skin because th
ere was a man in my home who made me more than okay with that.

  I had two men who gave me that sense of confidence. John did it one way. My dad did it in another way with his example of living freely. He gave me another kind of confidence that I could, that I must, try anything I wanted to put my mind to.

  If my dad weren’t the man he is, I probably would not be the woman I am. My dad allowed me to dream and see the big picture and understand that life is about getting out there and living. He lives his life in a way that’s very free. I don’t think I have ever seen him sad or depressed.

  My mom says it’s easy to be happy all the time when you don’t have any responsibilities. And I hear her. But I think it’s more than that for my dad. He sees life in a much different way. And it has helped me to not accept less in my life. It has helped me to pursue my dreams and goals—and to dream big for myself in the first place. And it has also helped me to demand that any man I’m with must honor and respect who I am and what I want to do. This took me just a minute to actually live out, but the seeds of this kind of independence were planted by my dad a long time ago.

  I looked at my dad’s life as something I wanted to pattern my life after. He lives in Sarasota, Florida, but he really lives wherever he is at that moment. We didn’t visit him often, but when we did, all I remember was how small his apartment was and that it wasn’t super lived-in. He always seemed to be living out of his luggage. He was either packed to go somewhere, or unpacking from his latest trip. So we never stayed long. Most of the time we would see him when he was on a layover in New York or Newark and later when we moved to Atlanta. We would have him for a couple of hours and we would go to a restaurant and he would fill us in on all the exotic and wonderful places he had visited. I thought that was so cool.

  The men who raised me taught me about what I could expect from men in my future. I got to see two very different men who both loved me and wanted the best for me and showed me that they could do that in very different ways. I didn’t appreciate my stepfather then. But I do now. My stepfather was all about boundaries and rules. My father was all about freedom and exploration. And I value both.

  I also am grateful to my mother for selecting these two men. Women need to be very careful about the men they choose to be with as it pertains to their children. When you’re considering being with a man and you want to eventually have children or you are bringing children into the relationship, whether that man is fatherhood material or how that man relates to your children is probably more important than how he relates to you.

  This is so important, especially for little girls. Because Daddy will be the first relationship she has with a man—it will shape every relationship she has with every man who comes after.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Assist:

  Lessons from Mom and Mami Nina

  Assist: The last pass to a teammate that leads directly to a field goal; the scorer must move immediately toward the basket for the passer to be credited with an assist; only one assist can be credited per field goal.

  I believe that many of us model our relationships on what we’ve seen our mothers or other women do in our lives. Either we do exactly the same thing and end up in the same kinds of relationships, or we watch the hell our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers went through and vow never to let a man do x, y, or z to us.

  Often we still end up going through some of the same drama no matter what.

  Just as I had two different kinds of male role models, I also had two very different female role models. The first, of course, was my mother. She was the kind of woman who would put up with some hardships, put on a good face for a while, keep things to herself, make a plan. Then she’d bounce.

  With my dad, he was perfect until they had kids. My mom, who had a full-time job, understood that she needed a partner who had the time to also be a parent. She wanted a man who would be there day in and day out, not traveling all over the world. So she packed up her kids and left. When she felt that the environment with my stepfather was getting unhealthy for her kids (mostly me), she packed us up and left. She didn’t have anything to fall back on—not a job or money—but she knew it was more important that we had a healthy environment than material things.

  We went from having just about everything we needed, including a great home, neighborhood, and school, to starting over.

  We moved to Atlanta and moved in with my aunt, Titi Edna, who had a small town house. Her home was fiercely decorated with high-end furniture and knickknacks. If you look up the word “diva,” that’s my Titi Edna, minus the attitude. She loves nice things, jewelry, clothes. It’s kind of ironic that Dice is her daughter. My aunt is the epitome of glamour, while Dice is more comfortable in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt.

  We invaded their space when we moved to Atlanta, and they welcomed us with open arms. I shared Dice’s room, which was small and had only one bed. Dice is an only child and it’s unusual for an only child to just be so open to sharing. I was moving in on her territory, sharing her bed, sharing her closet. And she didn’t hesitate to make me feel at home.

  Dice, who is a year younger than me, also helped me settle in to the new neighborhood and the new school. She was popular and an athlete. The very first day, she took me around and introduced me to everybody. So I wasn’t that strange new kid. When school rolled around, we went to school together. We would blast our music in the morning and get ready together. Mark, one of the first people I met when I moved to the neighborhood, would pick us up and drive us to school. He had a red Camaro. His family had money (they owned a restaurant). It was great going to school in style with my buddy. Dice made what could have been a scary and difficult transition so easy and fun.

  It was the same with Titi Edna and my mother. They, too, have this unbreakable bond. Titi Edna is older, and when they were growing up she was my mother’s protector and best friend. If kids picked on my mother, Titi Edna would be there to beat up those kids—boys or girls. Titi Edna was that bridge for my mom when we moved to Atlanta until she got on her feet, which she eventually did. She found a good job at the local hospital, and we were able to move to our own apartment at LakePoint, right across the street.

  My mom didn’t leave my stepfather just because of the tension between John and me. She also left because she wasn’t able to be her true self around him. She loved him, but she held back a lot around him, especially when it came to her family, whom she didn’t spend as much time with as she’d like when she was with John.

  When my uncles would visit our house in New Jersey, my mother would be on pins and needles. Her brothers are very Puerto Rican. They drink hard, they smoke, they talk loud, they love to have fun. And they speak their minds. My mom would always be worried that John would judge them or say something that would create a whole dramatic situation. So she didn’t have her family over much while she was married to him.

  I learned a lot about relationships from my mom during their breakup. I saw firsthand that if you can’t be yourself with a man, you can’t be with that man. If he can’t accept you—and that means accepting your family, your kids (if you have them), and your dreams—he can’t be a part of your life. I also learned that you can’t be afraid to leave a bad situation and start over. Or maybe you can be afraid, but don’t let your fear stop you. I know my mom had to be afraid to leave the stability and financial comfort of her marriage without a job. But she had people who had her back. I also learned that you need a safety net. For my mom, it was her sister Edna, and the rest of her family. She knew as long as they were there for her, she’d be fine.

  The other woman who had a huge influence on me and how I developed in my relationships was my grandmother, my mom’s mom. My Mami Nina. She had such a powerful impact on my life. She was humble and loving. She was the kind of person who tried to help everyone and would give you her last dime if you needed it.

  You could come into her house off the streets, filthy, and
she would say, “Are you hungry?” And she’d fix you a plate. She never judged. Not even her own kids.

  If you can’t be yourself with a man, you can’t be with that man.

  If any of my uncles had an issue, Mami Nina would always be there with a hug and a kind word. You would never know about any problems because she never treated them as if anything was wrong. She had everyone’s back.

  When I was fourteen, I had long, beautiful hair and I decided to just hack it off. I wanted it to look like Cyndi Lauper’s. I came to my grandmother nearly in tears.

  “My mom’s going to kill me!” I said.

  She looked at me and my edgy ’do, and told me to sit. She did some kind of braid and somehow made it look good. When my mom came home, Mami Nina said, “Look how pretty her hair looks. We tried something different. Don’t you like it?” and she winked at me.

  She had my mother convinced that my new ’do was nice. My grandmother turned it around and made it okay. She even helped me see my stepfather in a different way. Mami Nina really loved him, and she explained that it takes a special man to raise two children that aren’t his own. He didn’t have any kids and he took us in and gave us everything we needed.

  At the time, I couldn’t stand all of his rules. Mami Nina would say, “He’s just making sure you’re prepared for the real world. He wants you to be successful.”

  She had so much compassion and understanding.

  Mami Nina taught me how to roll with the punches—something I’m still learning. She was from the old school, where you stayed with your man no matter what. My grandfather had his crazy ways, and they even slept in different bedrooms, but my grandmother was there for the long haul. No matter how hectic things might have been, she always had a smile and a sunny disposition. You would never know if she was going through any kind of drama. And I know she had to be. But her attitude was always the same—loving.