Podcast Episode:
This week we’re joined by writer and poet Terrance Brisbon. If you think Frank has been delivering the message with too many frills, and not enough candor … stay tuned … this is one guest that does NOT believe in lubricant.
Link to this week’s guest(s): http://www.theonlineloveexperience.com/
FRANK RELATIONSHIPS: A POET’S PERSPECTIVE ON RELATIONSHIPS
Guests: Terrance Brisbon
Date: November 29, 2012
Frank: This week we’re joined by writer and poet, Terrence Brisbon. If you think Frank has been delivering the message with too many thrills and not enough candor, stay tuned. This is one guest that does not believe in lubricant.
Welcome to Frank Relationships where we provide a candid fresh and frank look into relationships with goals of acceptance, respect and flexibility. I’m Frank Love and you can find me, my blog and my various social media incarnations at franklove.com.
Once again I’m joined by my co-host Dr. Gayle. She has a doctorate in psychology and ain’t afraid to use it. What’s up Dr. Gayle?
Dr. Gayle: Good morning Frank, what’s up?
Frank: All is well, this week we’re joined by a writer and poet. He’s an introspective and soul searching man who admits that he’s inspired by the trials and tribulations that he’s endured. His audience is those who have gone through the ups and downs of relationships. In other words, you and me and he is oh so captured many of his thoughts, experiences and insights in an awesome collection of work, which we’ll discuss at length, during the next hour. So, if you want to know what some men might want to say before, “I do,” how that man might feel trapped and what’s on a man’s mind, concerning cheating, join me as I welcome this extraordinary poet and my frat brother, Mr. Terrence Brisbon. Welcome.
Terrence: Welcome, sir. How are you bro?
Frank: I’m great. How are you?
Terrence: Good. How you doing, Dr. Gayle?
Dr. Gayle: Good morning, good morning.
Terrence: Alright, I’m worried about you. We’ll see how this goes.
Dr. Gayle: Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m a *(inaudible) 2:18. So, you know.
Terrence: Okay.
Frank: I want to start off with a segment of a recorded version of one of your poems, titled, Say a Prayer:
Don’t say a prayer for me when I am dead and gone. Pray for me while I’m living in a world of sin. Pray for me, because I might lose my way. Pray for me, because I need your prayers to get me through the nights. Pray for me, because I don’t know where my soul will be tomorrow.
Frank: Very nice.
Terrence: Thank you, sir.
Frank: How’d you get started writing poetry?
Terrence: I’ve been writing for awhile. I’ve had a lot of stuff that I’ve put down over the years. I used to do a lot of traveling overseas, so I had a lot of time on planes and the hotels and that type of stuff. And I just got—with all that free time, you just start thinking and start thinking about your life. Where you want to go, what’s important. And it came about out of necessity— because out of boredom. So, I found something that I really locked into and I really enjoyed saying the things that I couldn’t verbally say. And with pen and paper or a laptop, I could put my words or my emotions on paper and that it was easy, it was crisp and it was one of those things that I needed.
Even now, over the years, I’ve been writing for a little, I’d say about 15 years now, it’s been one of those things that have been therapeutic in times of need. When I struggled with the words, I could actually sit down and just let it go through my hands and let it go through my spirit and get it out.
Frank: How do you find yourself able to balance writing the words on paper, getting it out, because you aren’t able to articulate it and then having someone read it and needing to articulate it with that person, because they want to talk to you about it?
Terrence: It’s been a good thing, because I think a lot of times when you write it, it takes the emotion out of it, it takes the anger out of it, it takes the sorrow out of it, or the thing or whatever you’re going through. And when someone looks at it in black and white, it is what it is. You can’t sugar coat it. And then once the other person reads it and they come back to you and go, “Okay, I see where you’re going here.” Especially if it’s a rational, calm thought and something that hits home. They can usually attach themselves to it and then it opens up the discussion. I don’t have a problem with talking, but I have a problem with holding that emotion back sometimes and losing my point with emotion.
Frank: How do you deal with pissing someone off?
Terrence: That’s not my problem, that’s theirs. I don’t mind pissing you off—if I have to sacrifice my truth for your feelings, well you’re going to be pissed off.
Frank: I understand. In your poem, Testify, you say, “You really want to know why I cheat. It’s simple, I cheat because of you. I cheat because of you. I cheat in spite of you. I cheat because I love and hate you at the same time. I cheat not to hurt you. I cheat because, I cheat because I like the smell, touch and taste of someone new.” Independent of that content, why do we cheat?
Terrence: I think we cheat, because we face situations, and if you’re going to be honest about, where we see in the other person, a lack of effort, a lack of—
Dr. Gayle: The person that you’re with?
Terrence: Yes.
Dr. Gayle: Okay.
Terrence: Yeah, I put that together and I’ve been around a lot of people, a lot of men. I’m in a business where I hear a lot of conversations at dinner, at lunches, golf courses and I myself had that situation, that urge in me and I’m saying
“Okay, I have someone, but they’re not showing the effort. They’re not being everything that they promised to be. Now, I’m trying to make this relationship work. Here’s what I need. Here’s what I want. You’re the person I want it from. You’re the person I need it from, and it’s not a priority. It’s something that you don’t want to do or something that you want to go.” It’s not about being greedy or a man can go out and do this and that, because there are women who can get down just as nasty and as hard as we can.
Dr. Gayle: So, if that doesn’t happen or you don’t get what you want from your mate, do you then step out and say, “Okay, well if you didn’t give me x, y, z, these are the reasons why I cheated?”
Terrence: No, I will come to you and say, “Okay, what’s the problem? What’s the problem, because evidently you can’t do x, y, and z, either you don’t want to, you don’t know how to or you don’t care to.” And I’m not that quick to just blow up a relationship. “Why don’t you move on?” There are no victims in a love game as far as I’m concerned. Either you’re all in or you’re not. You can’t go back and say, “Well I wanted to—” You can’t soft serve it. Step up—if you’re asking for a commitment of someone’s life, you can’t play around. It ain’t no games.
Frank: It’s safe to say that if you’ve told someone that you wanted x, y, and z and they don’t do it for whatever reasons, maybe they got to work, maybe their hand hurts or maybe they’re just not interested, it’s safe to say—
Dr. Gayle: Did you say their hand?
Frank: Yeah, hand hurts or whatever. Whatever might be the case, it’s safe to say that they didn’t want to do it. Now, I’m not putting any judgment on that. However, if your partner doesn’t want to do something, is that a problem or is it just they’re living their life as they see fit?
Terrence: It seems to me if a person just doesn’t want to do something and they have you as “a soul mate,” or they’ve made that commitment of getting married or taking those vows and then you get in and you go, “Oops I want to live my life the way I want.” Step up and say, “You know what? Frank, Gayle, I’m not the partner that you want. I’m not going to be able to give you these things, so why don’t you let me let you get out of this?” But they won’t. They never do.
Frank: Don’t we always—doesn’t everybody in a relationship, isn’t there something you don’t want to do that your partner wants you to do?
Terrence: I have a big house and I hate vacuuming. I don’t want to do it, but I know that it has to get done. You tailor yourself for the relationship you have. You should know, I think, before going in what your partner will or want do. Now, there have been situations where I’ve had partners that started off like a house of fire. Every day 10 times a day; all that crazy stuff that you want and then over time it’s not an issue for them or it’s not a concern of theirs and you should get over it. I think a lot of times, and I understand this concept very well, it’s always my fault. It’s my fault she stops sleeping with me five days a week. Now, we’re down to three. It’s my fault that—
Frank: Sleeping with you as having sex with you?
Terrence: Sex, any type of relationship. It’s my fault.
Frank: Are we slaves to each other’s wants?
Terrence: I think I don’t see a problem with it.
Frank: Okay.
Terrence: I would love to be a slave to my wife’s wants and needs.
Frank: All of them?
Terrence: All of them.
Dr. Gayle: Frank completely disagrees with you; I just want you to know that.
Terrence: Huh?
Dr. Gayle: Frank completely disagrees with you on that.
Terrence: Okay, so I mean within reason. I mean if someone says, “Hey Frank, I want you to take $60,000 out of the bank, because I want to build a new kitchen or I want to just blow it all.” That kind of stuff, you got to blow out of the window. That kind of stuff. But as far as the wants and needs of a person, if they’re saying, “Hey, I need you to be more commutative. I need you to talk to me. I need you to express your feelings. I need you to make me feel like a woman or if the roles were reversed, make me feel like a man.” Those are things that are hard to do, if you want to put in the work.
Dr. Gayle: So, it sounds like you believe in monogamy then?
Terrence: I believe in monogamy, but as a person that cheated and knows the ins and outs of it, I understand it well. I know why I did what I did?
Dr. Gayle: That’s interesting. You believe in the monogamy as a person who cheated. How’d you get to that state of mind?
Terrence: It’s called growing up and then realizing that I got to a point in my life where I didn’t want to live the rest of my life alone. So, in order not to live the rest of my life alone, I had to make some commitments to myself of what kind of man I wanted to be, the responsibilities that I wanted to take and the things that I wanted to do. Once I said that, I said, “Okay, there’s certain things in my life that I’m going to have to put to the side in order to pursue that. I want a wife, I want children, I would love to grow old with someone.” To do that, I had to cut those things a loose alone. But I do know, I didn’t get married until I was 40. So there was a 35 year run there or specifically where I did what I wanted. So, I know how to cheat. I know why I cheat and I know why other people cheat. At least I think I have a good idea on it. But to get to the monogamy side of it, you have to be willing to make that commitment to yourself first, then you can make that pledge to someone. But if you can’t make it to yourself first, and it’s a hard thing to stop that, especially when you get in a relationship, where you see that this person is not what you thought she was and then you go, “Oh, my God. What did I get myself into?”
Frank: You noted that if you express a need to your partner that you basically expected to be complied with. Did I get that right?
Terrence: Yeah.
Frank: Okay, isn’t that a way of being manipulative? Where all you have to do in order to get your partner to do something or at least to hold it over her head is to say you need it. Now, whether it’s an actual need or not, remains in question and we can all say something is a need verses a want. Where do you draw the line?
Terrence: Okay, well my needs and wants, I put in very simple terms. I need someone—and I tell everyone this, take care of me mentally, physically and spiritually. That’s all I need. I need to see the effort in those three areas and I’m good. I don’t need your money, because I got that. I don’t need a house. I got that. I don’t need a car. I got that. I don’t need a trip. All of that stuff I have, but I need to see a regular effort on taking care of me mentally, spiritually and physically. And I’m not saying, be a crutch, but expand those things. Develop those things with me, especially if I’m being open enough to communicate these are the areas that sustain me as a man or as a person on this earth. That Say a Prayer that you player earlier, that was my old pledge. Say, “Hey, live with me now. Love with me now. Let’s not take anything for granted.” Needs on a material basis and all that, hey you can throw money at it and it’ll go away. But I’m not trying to manipulate anyone, I’m just saying, these are the things that even as a woman, you would say, “I want a man to take care of me in those ways too.”
Frank: When you cheated in the past, were you wrong?
Terrence: Was I wrong? I slept very well after it was over.
Frank: So, why do you call it cheating instead of just you conducted yourself as you believe fit or that you did what you did?
Terrence: I cheated to make it comfortable for the women in the room, because a lot of them want to label a man that does what he wants to do as a cheater and a liar.
Dr. Gayle: Don’t make it comfortable for the women in the room, just say how it is?
Terrence: Alright, well that, that’s what it is.
Frank: And you just—
Terrence: I’m—
Frank: You already told us that you’re not trying to sugar coat anything. So which is it going to be? Is it going to be cheated or I had sex with somebody other than you?
Terrence: I had sex with somebody other than you. You can label it what you want. Whatever word makes you feel comfortable.
Frank: Alright.
Terrence: I looked at it like this and like in the very—I liked the taste, the touch, the smell of something new and any man in this world—and I was just joking with a friend the other day, I said, “Women don’t really understand. When they start to take their clothes off, take their tops off and get down to the bra and panties and they finally get their panties. It’s like Christmas.”
Frank: Sometimes. You might have something up under there that’s not so much a gift. I remember—and this is not a slight to larger sisters, but I remember an old quote with Al Bundy, on Married with Children and he was talking to his son Bud. He said, “Son,” and Bud was going off to school. He said, “Son, beware of the girls with the big drawers, because those with the big drawers have big things under their drawers.”
And just a few questions before I say, “I do,” you asked, has my role in your life, already been cast? Have you given me the part before I accepted the role? Am I really your first choice? What made me the answer to your dreams this time? What makes me so special? Can I truly fulfill your every want, need and dreams? Why should I forsake all others? What makes you so special? Why should I change life for you?
Some might say that you’re cynical about what a woman wants in a marriage. What’s up with that Terrence?
Terrence: Well, isn’t a marriage 50/50, supposedly?
Dr. Gayle: Most of us think that way. Frank has a whole different view.
Frank: Let Frank speak for himself, please.
Terrence: You know what though, and you know, Frank and I may be on the same page. You know what? It’s my life that I’m committing. You know what? I’m not in this, “What a woman wants.” My stake in it means just as much as hers.
Dr. Gayle: Uh-huh.
Terrence: Okay, just because you have between your legs doesn’t entitle you to my life. It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t entitle you a damn thing.
Frank: Ouch.
Terrence: I said when you look at the questions before I say, “I do.” When I was in the dating game, and I got young bros in the frat and everywhere that look at and say, “What are you asking her? What is she going to do for you?”
Frank: Are you saying the penis is as equally or not less valuable in the relationship than the vagina?
Terrence: Look here, what was that old show they had? The Vagina Monologue? The only way you can make a vagina talk is to put something in it to make it speak.
Frank: Come on, Dr. Gayle. You’ve got something to say. I know you got something to say to that. Alright, maybe not. Is it okay to have two women?
Terrence: If you can pull it off, more power to you.
Frank: Can you pull it off?
Dr. Gayle: He did in the past. He said he did in the past.
Frank: I’m asking him about right now?
Terrence: I got—you know what right now, I don’t have the time or the patience for it, to be quite honest with you. I have a good one. I have a damn good one. It’s taken some time to get to that point where I can say that, but I have a good one.
Frank: Does—
Terrence: Trust me, if I could pull it off—there’s a producer. The guy that did, Oceans 13, they did a special on him on HBO. He pulled it off. He has his wife and his girlfriend and everybody knows and everybody’s happy. I don’t know if I could pull that off. If I could I would.
Frank: Does that mean you don’t have the financial resources or the mental capacity? Or does it mean that your woman wouldn’t go for it?
Terrence: I would say the financial resources and she wouldn’t go for it.
Dr. Gayle: Well listen, Terrence. Let’s go back to Before I Say I Do, because it seems like maybe my womanly / interpretation—
Frank: / Yawn.
Dr. Gayle: Here we go. I just thought it was interesting that you put the question—a couple of questions in there. Have you given me the part before I accepted the role and what makes me so special? I thought those—especially what makes me so special. I wouldn’t think that men, particularly would think, would have those thoughts. I would think that it’s primarily the women has those thoughts, because a lot of my friends that I talk to—even myself, like “Wow, this guy actually—someone actually wants to marry me or someone. I never thought that someone would actually want to make me his wife.” And I never thought that men would think that too. Like, “What makes me so special?”
Frank: Let, let me jump in on that?
Dr. Gayle: Please jump in.
Frank: I find it fascinating that women don’t think men have emotions, yet men commit an ordinate number of crimes of passion. Women do to, but it goes both ways and when you can look at just raw numbers like that, it’s clear that men have emotions when it comes to relationships and it sounds to me, that many women believe that it’s only them who are invested in the relationship and maybe—
Terrence: Absolutely.
Frank: Yeah, maybe that’s the financial side that the man feels invested. So, if the split comes, she’s the only one that’s hurt and he should be hurt equally by taking all his money. I mean, when that’s appropriate.
Terrence: I couldn’t say it better, I mean—
Dr. Gayle: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Terrence: Hold on, hold on. And I agree with him, because the way I looked at it is, “Have I already, you know, accepted the role?” I think women have a video tape or a movie that they’re starring in and directing that’s the way life should go and theirs should be everything. You should’ve loved me, adored me, praised me and this—
Frank: And you should act this way, particularly in front of my friends.
Terrence: Please.
Dr. Gayle: Can you put your personal feelings to the side?
Terrence: I will tell you this. I will tell you this. If a guy goes into a relationship and not look after his well being first, he’s a fool and he deserves whatever she does to him, because if you know there’s a snake in the room, you just have to say, “I got to keep my eyes on it,” all the time. And if you want to say I’m comparing women to snakes. Is it a stretch? Not really.
Dr. Gayle: What do you mean not really?
Terrence: You do what you need to do to get what you want.
Frank: I’m even it out and say it goes / both ways.
Dr. Gayle: / It definitely goes both / ways.
Frank: / I see snakes on both sides.
Dr. Gayle: But getting back to the emotions—
Terrence: Getting back to it. Some of it is, that once—and this is my opinion. Once a guy sacrifices and he gives and he commits, he just wants you to do right by it. Women do too, but our thing is, you have to understand the sacrifices that we made. I believe that not every man walks around thinking about getting married. So, it’s a sacrifice. It’s a commitment for him to do those things.
Dr. Gayle: But both people make the same amount of sacrifices.
Terrence: How many times have you had the love of your life? A woman is in love in and out all her heart and soul repeatedly over a lifetime. A man only falls in love once or twice in his life. I mean hard; hard, hard. And that’s it. And then once that’s it, we can’t bounce back next week and go, “Oh, I found somebody else and I love them more.” Yeah, you got a couple goofy guys out there that’d do that kind of stuff. But for the most part, solid guys, it’s only one or two.
Dr. Gayle: Well, that goes back to the feelings of the emotionless male or women saying to their friends, “Wow, I’m actually getting married, someone actually wants to marry me.” Can we just talk about the conversation you and Frank had a few minutes ago, about, “Do you have it in you? Could you cheat? Why wouldn’t you cheat now?” Come on, women don’t sit around and talk about that.
Terrence: And why don’t you?
Frank: They do.
Terrence: Because, if you talked about it, I would think you’d understand what. You know what? This is some preventative medicine and we can talk it out and I see this in my relationship I can cut it off. If you read all the cheaters, if you read all the cheaters—if a woman just comes around with, “Oh, he’s a dog and he’s this and that,” she’s missing the point. In that poem I’m writing, “Hey, here’s what I feel. Here’s the way to prevent it. Do your job.”
If I do mine, you’re happy. If you do yours, you can stop a lot of stuff from happening.
Frank: My experience is, men and women talk about “cheating” differently. Women often talk about doing it as a response to what men have done to them or that their man has done to them, meaning they justify that it way. And many ways, it’s the same way you have justified cheating, but what I see men doing, that I think goes more to the root of—if cornered, they may also say, “Hey I’m cheating, because she’s not doing x, y, z.” But I think most men cheat for the same reason that you—
Dr. Gayle: Because it’s there.
Frank: Put in your poem. That they want to feel something new and men when cornered and not—I think cornered is not the right word to / say it.
Dr. Gayle: / Cornered is not the right word.
Frank: When cornered by a woman, a man will say something to the effect of, “I cheated because she didn’t do x, y, and z.” If a man’s cornered by a man, he may very well just say, “I cheated because I wanted something new.” So, it depends on who’s cornering him.
Dr. Gayle: Like Terrance said. He and his friends were talking the other day, “Hey she was there. She was naked. So why not?”
Frank: Hmm.
Terrence: Now see, if you’re getting back to the cheating thing. I’m like, if I need to cheat right now in my relationship, I can justify it 10 different ways, but at the end of the day, it’s something that I’m not getting in the relationship that I have. You can say, and some women would say, “Frank, do you have any female friends that you counsel with, that you talk to?” Some women believe that you shouldn’t even talk to another woman, in any way shape form or fashion. You should just go to work, come home and not speak to anyone.
Sometimes that other conversation with another woman is what you need to make being with her a little bit bearable, to hear another voice. For guys who actually get down on the physical part, he may want to be touched in a different way or do another thing that he’s not allowed to at home, after asking for it. And then you go back. There are guys that are just freaks. “Hey, she was naked. I went to the strip club, I, I was horned up. I was ready to go. Somebody had to take this charge off me.”
Frank: You’re listening to Frank Relationships with Frank Love and Dr. Gayle, and we’re talking to writer and poet, Terrence Brisbon. Terrence would you tell our guests how they can contact you or find your work?
Terrence: You can find me on the web at: theonlineloveexperience.com. Also I have a Facebook page. It is called, “The Online Love Experience,” and we are working to develop the Twitter account, which isn’t so strong right now, but the website has a feedback box. You can leave a comment or shoot me an email and I will get back to you.
Frank: A few minutes ago, we were talking about sacrifice and you and Dr. Gayle were going back and forth. I personally don’t like the word sacrifice, particularly as it pertains to relationships and I really don’t think it occurs. I’m going to read a segment of a blog that I wrote sometime ago and I would like you two to chime in on it.
I recently participated in a relationship exchange with a young lady related to my blog called, “Thank God For Affairs.” The exchange had to do with the sacrifices that those in relationships make. My partner in the conversations said, “I’ve certainly sacrificed my own personal happiness for for other’s at times, and I see my close family members doing that for others too. My dad taught me to grind it though.”
Now, there’s a long standing tool of manipulation that many of us use to get others to do what we want called, sacrifice. We’ve all heard or told someone to act in a given manner, because someone else or maybe you sacrificed for them to be able to go to a good school, eat or whatever. It’s a very convincing effective form of manipulation. In fact, when it occurs, it’s generally a form of give and take in action. The speaker in this case has been told that someone sacrificed for him and now, he uses the sacrifice card when he wants someone else to do something, thereby dishing out what was given. This tool is alive and well in many relationships.
Alright, here are your tomatoes. I’ll sit here and let you throw them.
Dr. Gayle: I just want to say that I do not like the fact that you used the word manipulation, when saying sacrifice. I don’t like that. You say that all the time. I don’t think that manipulation is the correct word. You’re choosing—manipulation, I think, is when you’re using it as a tool to get someone else to do something, wherein I feel like sacrifice is, this is what I’m choosing to do, for whatever outcome in this relationship or you know. I’m going to sacrifice money, I’m going to sacrifice time, to make this relationship better or this is what I want to do, not because I want to manipulate the other person to do what I want them to do.
Frank: What you got, Terrence?
Terrence: I believe that the word manipulation is exactly what it is. I think people use it as a tool and get what they want, unfairly, and especially in relationships. Because, a lot of times, the person doing the manipulation has the upper hand, they keep that upper hand and they force the relationship in a direction that they want it to go each and every time. And you can either try to fight it up front or you just fall victim to it. I think it plays on both sides; men and women do it and I wonder, does that come from a place of insecurity within the person that they feel that in order to control, they have to manipulate?
Frank: I’m a jump to another segment of the same blog. “I’m not saying that we do not do things that benefit others, nor benefit from actions that others do for themselves, quite the contrary. Everything that is done, benefits someone else, but the primary and most basic beneficiary of everything that we do, is ourselves.”
“There’s a difference between sacrificing and investing, we invest, we do not sacrifice. Investments can go both ways. We may be praised or resented for them. We may make or lose money. There’s no guarantee that our energy will be rewarded the way that we hope. Seeing the give and take of relationships in terms of investments rather than sacrifices transforms our prospective in a healthy way.”
Dr. Gayle, what you got to say? We do not sacrifice, we invest.
Dr. Gayle: I just think it’s actually a difference in using the term. I’m sacrificing sleep, because I want to say up or wait for you to get home or spend time with you.
Frank: That’s an investment.
Dr. Gayle: That’s a sacrifice.
Frank: You’re investing.
Terrence: That’s investment.
Frank: Yeah, you’re investing in—you get something out of spending time with me that night. You’re not sacrificing; you’re investing your sleep so that you can get your fun out of interacting with me.
Dr. Gayle: If I’m good on going to sleep and seeing you in the morning, I’m sacrificing sleep for you, because you want to have fun with me when you get home. That’s a sacrifice. Investment is, “I’m going to stay up. I’m going to invest in this relationship by staying up, because we both want to see each other or because I want to spend time with you and have fun with you when you get home, because in the morning I have to go and do a million things or whatever.”
Terrence: See that’s self-serving though. Be fair. I mean, the bottom line is, you stay up late because you know in your heart that’s the right thing to do. That’s why you stay up.
Frank: And you’re getting something out of it, either way.
Terrence: Absolutely.
Dr. Gayle: Okay, but at the same time, I still think it’s how you, it’s just a choice of word use. If I’m staying up—
Terrence: You’re going to do me a favor by staying up to have sex or whatever it is. So that’s the favor you’re doing for me? That’s the sacrifice? You’re throwing me a bone, by not going to sleep, when you’re really cheating yourself. I look at it like this. I’ve had that come up recently in a conversation. Women go, “I’m tired. I’m sleepy.” I say, “Well, here I am, trying to rub you here, kiss you here, lick you there. Make sure all your little wants and needs and you mean to tell me that you have a problem with that?” I’m putting in an effort to make you happy and you’re like “Well, I wanted to go to sleep or my head was hurting. Really?”
Dr. Gayle: Right, but wait a minute, Terrence. At the same time I believe that sacrifice goes both ways. If you would rather “Lets get it in, get it out, let me go to sleep,” rather than let me rub you, “Do this x, y, z, then both people are sacrificing.”
Frank: If both people are sacrificing, it’s not sacrifice.
Terrence: It’s sacrifice when it’s supposed to be based on love anyway. You do it because that’s what’s in you to do it. If you got to coach yourself into coming up with sacrifices, you don’t want to do it. You don’t want do it.
Frank: Tell us how your poems have affected your relationship with your wife?
Terrence: Initially Cheaters hit her in the face pretty hard. She Were In Trap. It hit her hard. Questions Before I Say I Do, hit her very hard and before I put it out, she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, we need to talk.”
Dr. Gayle: How long you guys been married before Cheaters and Before You Say I Do? How long you guys been married?
Terrence: We’ve been married maybe two, three years.
Dr. Gayle: Okay.
Terrence: So, it caught us right in the middle, because we’d been married six. So, she had big problem and I said to her, quite frankly, I said, “If you read all this stuff. If you know you’re doing your job, it wouldn’t affect you. If you know you’re shortening on something, then you have a problem and your problem—that’s an internal thing with you, not me.”
Frank: Can you say or will you say that you honestly will never have sex with another woman to your wife?
Terrence: I could never say that, no.
Frank: My man, that’s quite a—
Dr. Gayle: Nobody can say that Frank. So what.
Frank: I’m saying that in the context of your marriage, as long as you’re married?
Terrence: I can’t say that, because I’m thinking back old school. I don’t trust anyone as far as I can smell them. Forget seing, smell them. My wife is supposed to be at work today, supposedly. So, do I call her job, do I drive by, do I send text messages? I just have to take it on blind faith. I hope what I did last night, this morning was enough to keep her from being at the The Quality Inn or the Ramada with somebody right now.
Frank: Well, before we go any further, was it last night or this morning?
Dr. Gayle: Or was it both?
Terrence: I said, “The job that I did last night,” in this point.
Frank: Okay.
Terrence: Okay?
Frank: Let’s say your wife showed some inkling or desire to do something else, would you follow her? Might you follow her to—
Terrence: No, I did all that long ago. Long ago I did all that and I’m not dying over a woman, because I had a family member that went and played that macho role and got killed.
Frank: Wow.
Terrence: And, my uncles at the time told me—and I hope I can say this, “Boy don’t you die over no pussy. Because you don’t own it and you never will.”
Frank: Here, here.
Terrence: And based on that, I love my wife, but if it gets down to—I can’t blame the other guy, because he’s doing his job. He’s doing what he’s supposed to do. Knock off every straggler that comes his way. That’s what he’s supposed to do.
Frank: Is that what a man’s job is Dr. Gayle?
Dr. Gayle: That is his job.
Frank: Okay, continue Terrence.
Terrence: I can’t get lost in that.
Frank: You wrote a poem called, The Man I Never Knew. Please tell me about it.
Terrence: It comes from a situation where mom and dad put it in early when they were in their teens. I grew up without him. It’s been one of those things where I was driving through a park and I saw these kids playing football and their dads were there and I was like, “I never had a father-son moment.” I never had that. You know, dad picks you up and hugs you after the game. If you lose, he’ll wipe your tears and tell you, “You got to try,” and all that stuff. I never had all that. So, part of my education from men, came from various places.
So, in the process of going through maturation, I’ve seen my dad on occasions. I reached out to him and for a long time I hated him, because he hurt my mom and he wasn’t there for me. And then I hit a point where I was like, “You know what?” As I became a man I started to see things differently. “Yu know what? It’s not his fault. He did what he had to do, I can hate him forever or I can try to make him a part of my life.” And what kind of man I’m going to try to be. So, I said, “I want to get to know you. I want you to know me and let’s try to forge something going forward.” But for a long time I was lost without him and stepfather stepped in, he’s a great man, I think. But raising me, but when he came into the picture I was already in college. So, those early years he wasn’t there.
But as far as my real father, it’s one of those things, even to this day, I’m still trying to get him to come up here to visit me and he won’t.
Frank: What do you say to a young man and who is listening or to even—you say, you struggled with some of this to this day or you didn’t say struggle, but you work with some of this to this day. What do you say to a young man or someone your age that is dealing with similar issues?
Terrence: I’d say—and this has worked for me—face it. Face the reality of it. I even talked to my mom and asked her, “Okay, what was the relationship? What did you expect from him?”
Frank: Was your mom angry at him?
Terrence: No, early on she was when she was younger, but it’s a real unique situation. His family loves her, they love me. I spent a lot of time with them and here’s the trip part of it. His brothers acted on his behalf instead of him. So my uncles helped raise me. They came to the football games every now and then or they would send me a note. “Hey, you got to do better in your grades,” but never their own brother. And I was like—that’s something I’m writing about now and I’m starting to talk to them about. Like, “Hey, that’s your brother. You ever asked him, ‘Hey man why don’t you love this kid?’”
Dr. Gayle: Terrence, let me ask you this, and to me I think this is psychology 101. Also, in my church last week we had a guest speaker, he talked about the lack of young men or women forming good quality relationships with their same sex parent. Where it sounds like you had a lack, with your own father and then throughout development, especially sexual development, you seek those things elsewhere. Like with young women, they began to promiscuous. With men have a lot of sexual partners, in and out of bed with different people, do you think that’s what caused you to maybe cheat or even—you said you didn’t get married until you were 40? Do you feel like that’s what caused you to taper off and be like a bull, let me fall back?
Terrence: No. In my case, it was probably one of the best things, because if I followed in my father’s footsteps I would have kids all over the place. I don’t, because I made a conscious choice not to, because I said if I was going to have kids, I was going be there for them.
Dr. Gayle: Right, but you think—
Terrence: Okay?
Dr. Gayle: That the lack of the relationship—
Terrence: He had a lot of kids.
Dr. Gayle: / But do you think the lack—
Terrence: / I choose not to go down that path.
Dr. Gayle: Of relationship with him early on like that bonded with him early on. Do you think that’s what caused you to wait until you were—later in life to get married and decide, “Okay, I’m going to commit to this one person right now for the rest of my life?”
Terrence: No, no, no. Not really, but I see where you would go that way. But no, not really. Early on I became a widow of business. I love my job and I used to travel. If they said relocate that became my relationship. So, I would go for the money every time. The reason that I waited so long was because I knew I wasn’t ready. I knew between the ages of 27—looking back now—27 to 32, I would of destroyed a woman’s life, because I just was out of control and I knew it. I was traveling. I was working in the Caribbean and doing some stuff overseas, so it was just too much fun to try to sit there and say, “I want to be committed while I’m traveling around the world.” It wouldn’t have been fair to anybody.
I’ve waited because, I had hit the point of maturity where I said, “Okay, I’ve seen a lot of different women. I’ve seen a lot of different stories. I’ve seen a lot of different games. Now, I can kind of be little bit more selective; boil it down to what I want and what I need.”
Frank: What did your surrogate father moments, those that you had with your uncle, what did they mean to you?
Terrence: Everything, everything, I mean, my uncles, all of them, they taught me how to get up and fight. You know, taught me how to put up your dukes. Don’t let somebody see you cry. When you write your name on a piece of paper, write it clear so people know who you are, because that represents who you are and what you think of yourself. When you shake a man’s hand, how to tie a tie, I mean all of those things, yeah women can teach you, but it doesn’t mean as much as it does when it comes from a man who when he looks at you, you know he wants you to be better than him. He’s giving you all—I teach my God son, I want them to be better than me. So yeah, I try to take them out and show them, “Hey, open a door for a lady.” I’m doing this for them now. “Open the door for the lady.” Say, “Yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am, no ma’am and keep a handkerchief in your pocket, just in case you may need it to hand to a lady.” I do little things like that, that was taught to me. If I didn’t have that, yeah a lady—my mom did a great job. Don’t get it twisted, but coming from a man, you can see yourself as a man. You can see yourself in a suit and tie and you can see yourself with a briefcase going to work. You can actually see, “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.” You know, a woman can tell you that, if she’s raising you by herself, but unless you can see that, the visual—it helps you tremendously I think.
Frank: Last week we had a guest, Cynthia Chauvin. She’s a psychic and hypnotist, and I want to read an excerpt from her book, The Ten Ways. I’d like to get the two of you to weigh in on what you think. “Once we give a man our body, we want him to care, share and be there for us. We use sex to close the deal. If we can’t sleep with Mr. Man out of love, letting go of all conditions, we shouldn’t do it, or we should do it knowing that it’s commerce. Commerce in sex is prostitution. It doesn’t matter the means of payment. We’ve all been prostitutes; men and women selling ourselves to have our needs met. We must say, “No,” to relationship commerce. If you’re having trouble determining whether your relationship is based on commerce, you can make an easy assessment. A telltale sign of the relationship commerce is the inability to hear, “No”.
“Women are notorious for hearing a man’s, “No,” as a personal insult. They’ve linked it to a lack of respect. For example, Mr. Man invites you to attend a lecture on his favorite subject. You have no interest in attending the lecture, you can’t find your “no,” so you say, “Yes.” He thinks he did something nice by including you. You think you did something nice by attending. In this scenario, however, your attendance comes with the expectation of reciprocation.”
What you got, Dr. Gayle? Prostitution, commerce, happens all the time.
Dr. Gayle: I’m not going to say prostitution. However, I completely agree with what she said.
Frank: You completely agree, but you’re not going to say prostitution?
Dr. Gayle: I’m not going to say prostitution, but I agree with what she’s saying.
Terrence: Why do you hate words? You hate, you hate—you don’t like sacrifice, you don’t like prostitution. They are what they are?
Dr. Gayle: I like sacrifice. I don’t like how Frank uses the word manipulation. It’s not that I don’t like them. They are what they are, but—
Terrence: Get the emotion out of a word and just deal with them.
Dr. Gayle: As I was saying, Terrence.
Frank: Now I got two co hosts.
Dr. Gayle: No, I agree with what she’s saying. Oftentimes, women tend to sleep with a man too quickly and then the next day you’re wondering, “Man is he going to call me? Was it too soon? Now what? What does this mean? Is he my boyfriend now? Why isn’t he calling me?” You know, all these things wherein if you’d have just kept that, either, “We’re going to have sex and is this going to be a sexual relationship and that’s what it is,” or “We’re not going to have sex and we’re going to have a emotional relationship which leads up to that,” then you have to determine what that is from the get go. And me and my friends were sitting around the other day and it’s funny, because girl talk, we were saying, at some point, we’ve all been—I don’t know if I can say this, but we’ve all been in a ho or we’ve all been in a relationship where it hasn’t been what we wanted it to be and you have these false glasses on thinking that, “Oh we did x, y, z. Oh, he held my hand,” or “Oh, he introduced me to his friends.” That meant that we’re together or it’s more than what he thinks it is. So, I agree with her excerpt. I agree with what she said and what she wrote.
I was talking to another guy friend the other day and he was saying, at different stages in life women use sex or they use sex differently. Like late teens and mid-20’s, sex is so important and we have sex and that means so, so much. Wherein like maybe 28 to I guess mid-30’s, is like, “Well, listen, If we’re going to have sex, we’re going to talk about it beforehand, hopefully, it’s gong to mean something a little bit different,” and we’re able to say we just had sex and it’s just sex. It’s just a sexual relationship, wherein if you’re like 18 to 25, you can’t really say that as a woman.
Frank: Why?
Terrence: There, there—
Dr. Gayle: Emotionally is very different. Emotionally it’s very different early on verses later.
Frank: I’m listening Terrence.
Terrence: You know the story. There’s a string that’s attached from the heart to the female place of joy and if you tapping one spot good, the heart comes a long with it.
Dr. Gayle: Where the men tap it, they just keep tapping to the next thing is that what it is?
Terrence: If I ask you this question, if you had sex up front, day one, like, “Hey, I see you, I like you. Let’s go. Boom. After the sex is over and the guy never calls you, can you live with that?
Dr. Gayle: You have to.
Frank: No, no. Can you be okay with it, not that you have to. Are you able to look at the situation and say, “That was what it was.” we either had good sex, bad sex or you know, whatever, but just characterize it as sex and be okay with it? She’s looking at me like I just cornered her and—
Terrence: I think you see where I’m going, because once you say, “Well, let’s get the sex out of the way,” there are no more hoops to jump through. There’s no more prize at the end of my journey.
Frank: Ouch.
Terrence: I don’t have to pay for dinner. I don’t have to go to the show. I don’t have to deal with all the nonsense that I’m playing your game to get laid. Let’s get laid up front, get it out of the way and then I can decide on my own if I want to call you, if I want to spend time with you, then it’s fair.
Frank: Any final thoughts from you Dr. Gayle? We’re closing out.
Dr. Gayle: I think I’ve said enough this show.
Frank: You’ve been listening to Frank Relationships with Frank Love and Dr. Gayle. We’ve been learning about the harsh realities of love, from a poet’s prospective. One more time Terrence. How can our good listeners reach you or find your work?
Terrence: The onlineloveexperience.com; we’re going to be updating the site. Also, you can reach me on Facebook, the online love experience.
Frank: Along today’s journey we’ve discussed cheating, manipulation, and sexual commerce. I hope you’ve had as much fun as I have, chopping it up with our New Jersey native and opinionated poet, Terrence Brisbon.
As always, it’s my wish for you to walk away from this conversation with a heaping, helping of useful information, that will help you create a relationship that is as loving and accepting as possible. Let us know what you thought of today’s show at facebook/relationshipflove; on Twitter at @mrfranklove or at franklove.com. Until next time keep rising. This is Frank Love.
