For most of my twenties, I've feared several red flags that I felt signaled I had unfortunately left the "young, fresh and fly" building and had my swipe card ready for the boring bus to adulting.
Some of these warning signs included not being able to tell the difference between rappers like Lil' Yachty and Travis Scott (are they a part of The Migos?), starting sentences with, "Back in my day…", and finally scheduling sex with my spouse.
First off, scheduling sex means you're clearly not having enough of it. You don't hear people who are bumping up more than a teenage boy with a Proactive regimen talking about scheduling oral for Thursday at 3:00 pm. Also, sex drives aren't quite that cooperative. At 2:55, it's not like your body is like, "Time to get horny. Sex is about to happen."
But juggling sex with marriage, parenting, and career is hella hard and social media star Devalle Ellis recently got real on his Instagram about why he and his wife Khadeen choose to focus on the quality of intimacy as opposed to the frequency. The couple are parents to three boys and are featured on the second season of OWN's Black Love. In his post, Devalle shares that real intimacy in any relationship is about taking time to genuinely connect and that even if you are having sex 24/7, it's not necessarily an indicator you're winning at love:
"Spouses owe it to each other to remain present sexually. And so often people believe intimacy is defined by frequency. So wrong."
Devalle shares even if it's five seconds of grabbing his wife's booty, maintaining a sexual connection doesn't always have to be solidified with a the grand act of penetration. It was a statement that resonated with me, especially given the guilt I've experienced lately at the realization that having sex with my own husband has become a novelty itself.
Believe me, when you get married, you swear you're going to be that same woman your husband fell in love with. The same one with her hands in his pants not even five minutes into the previews in the latest Marvel movie. The same one who actually made an effort to match her lacy black panties with an accompanying bra and shave her whole damn body because you just know it's about to go down.
But then, something happens called parenthood.
And you better believe that the same Ciara that was slithering, twerking, and having a whole "Body Party" in front of Future shortly before her first child is born, now two kids later is turning over in bed in a durag some nights and telling her hubby Russell Wilson "not tonight" because she's too tired.
It's because toddlers are the ultimate birth control.
While deep inside of me there still lives a woman that literally would suck on my husband's finger to indicate I wanted some, a whole c**k-blocking three-year-old later, and he can't look at my draws without her crying, "Mommy!" from the next bedroom. With this said, parents who are in the same boat as me, or on the sinking Titanic of sex because they have more than one child, might see scheduling sex as the only way to ensure that their genitals don't dry up and completely fall off.
Honestly, it's not even that you don't want to have sex, but when you become a parent, sleep will win over sex drive on the hierarchy of needs every damn time. And let's not forget that most days, especially as a mom, there's a toddler whose mission in life is to make sure their limbs are touching you in some way at all times. So when you do get a few moments to yourself, the last thing you want is to be touched. But Devalle is right. There is something about scheduled sex that just nails the coffin shut on my idea of what being grown and sexy would be like.
As I said before, my libido can't be scheduled.
And much of being sexually active while married with kids has to do with reinventing your idea of what sex has to look like. I had to abandon the idea that every hair had to be plucked from my body for sex to be enjoyable. It even took constant reassuring from my husband that sex with my hair wrapped in a scarf was just as sexy as "fresh from the salon" sex. As a result, we may not get our Skinemax on as regularly, but every few weeks, there's a moment when the kid is asleep or away and we realize that we still have some damn energy and the sexual urge to match. And to be honest, that sex is way better than any session that starts with an Outlook reminder because it's organic and based on passion and not a need to check something off on a list because we think that's what a perfect marriage involves.
A healthy sexual connection doesn't always have to come courtesy of some bomb penetration complete with the perfect climax.
Shoutout to the people that can maintain Grade A sex while juggling full-time jobs AND parenting. For the record, I don't know anyone that works 40 hours a week with toddlers that still get it on like a season of Power, but when it comes to sex, I truly believe that it's better when your heart is in it.
The other parts of your anatomy are nice, but if you're having sex just to say you did it, in my opinion, it's not really worth having.
That goes for whether your sex drive has you constantly pulling over to bump and grind in the backseat or for spouses like me who are forced to put it in park so you can do things like pick up salmon for dinner and pay bills. However, a girl always appreciates a nice booty slap while frying chicken, a lewd comment on the ride home from work that goes completely over the kids' heads but right between your thighs, and just any genuine reminder that her husband thinks she looks like Beyoncé in booty shorts even when she's in sweats and bubble facial.
Because when it comes to making a real sexual connection, if the body party can't get started without an Outlook invitation or before my clothes even come off, what are we really doing?
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While speaking to xoNecole, Eva shares that she’s a lot like the beloved 1994 character in many ways. “Lyric is so me. She's the odd flower. A flower nonetheless, but definitely not a peony,” she tells us.
“She's not the average flower you see presented, and so she reminds me of myself. I'm a sunflower, beautiful, but different. And what I loved about her character then, and even more so now, is that she was very sure of herself.
"Sure of what she wanted in life and okay to sacrifice her moments right now, to get what she knew she deserved later. And that is me. I'm not an instant gratification kind of a person. I am a long game. I'm not a sprinter, I'm a marathon.
America first fell in love with Eva when she graced our screens on cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model in 2004, which she emerged as the winner. Since then, she's ventured into different avenues, from acting on various TV series like House of Payne to starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Je-Caryous Johnson Entertainment
Eva praises her castmates and the play’s producer, Je’Caryous for her positive experience. “You know what? Je’Caryous fuels my audacity car daily, ‘cause I consider myself an extremely audacious woman, and I believe in what I know, even if no one else knows it, because God gave it to me. So I know what I know. That is who Je’Caryous is.”
But the mom of three isn’t the only one in the family who enjoys acting. Eva reveals her daughter Marley has also caught the acting bug.
“It is the most adorable thing you can ever see. She’s got a part in her school play. She's in her chorus, and she loves it,” she says. “I don't know if she loves it, because it's like, mommy does it, so maybe I should do it, but there is something about her.”
Overall, Eva hopes that her contribution to the role and the play as a whole serves as motivation for others to reach for the stars.
“I want them to walk out with hope. I want them to re-vision their dreams. Whatever they were. Whatever they are. To re-see them and then have that thing inside of them say, ‘You know what? I'm going to do that. Whatever dream you put on the back burner, go pick it up.
"Whatever dream you've accomplished, make a new dream, but continue to reach for the stars. Continue to reach for what is beyond what people say we can do, especially as [a] Black collective but especially as Black women. When it comes to us and who we are and what we accept and what we're worth, it's not about having seen it before. It's about knowing that I deserve it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Fortunately, five simple words have simplified my dating process and ushered in clarity faster: “Would my husband do this?”
A couple of years ago, I met an entertainment lawyer who was tonguing down a twenty-something-year-old woman for breakfast while I slurped my green smoothie and chomped on a flatbread sandwich. Okay, Black love, I grinned and thought as I sauntered out of the Joe & The Juice. As soon as I stepped down from the front door, a torrential downpour of Miami summer rain cascaded and throttled me back inside to wait out the storm.
I grabbed a hot green tea and vacillated between peering out the wet door and anxiously checking my watch. My lengthy agenda started with attending the Tabitha Brown and Chance Brown’s “Black Love” panel, and I was already late. That’s when the lawyer introduced himself to me, after he made a joke about neither one of us wanting to get soaked by the rain. His female companion had braved the storm, leaving us to find our commonalities.
We both lived in L.A. and had traveled to the American Black Film Festival to expand our network. He represented various artists, including entertainment writers, while I was working as a writer/creative producer in Hollywood.
While there is no shortage of internet advice on how to strategically meet a prominent man at conferences, if I spend my hard-earned funds on career growth, I have tunnel vision, and that doesn’t include finding Mr. Right. So, I stowed his contact details away as strictly professional.
Keep It Cute Love And Hip Hop GIFGiphyAs the humidity and mosquitoes were rising around L.A., two months later, another suitor-turned-terrible match cooled off after three unimpressive dates and a bevy of red flags. I posted what some of my friends called a thirst trap, but it was really me wearing a black freakum jumpsuit with a plunging neckline to my friend’s 35th birthday soiree despite feeling oh, so unsexy and bloated on my cycle.
I’d been waiting to post a sassy caption and finally had the perfect picture to match: “You not asking for too much, you just asking the wrong MF.”
That’s when the entertainment lawyer swooped into my DMs and asked me to dinner. I was quite confused. Is he asking me on a date? Or is this professional? Common sense would’ve picked the former. Once it clicked that this would in fact be a date, I told my mentor, who’s been happily married for over twenty years and has often been a guiding light and has steered me away from the wrong men.
Upon telling him about how we met, he emphatically stated, “He ain’t it.” He followed up with a simple question, "You have to ask yourself: Would my husband do this? Would you tell others that you met your husband, tonguing down another woman, and later married him?"
Aint It No Way GIF by UFCGiphyOuch. The thought-provoking question cleared any haze. Prior to going out with the lawyer, the first thing I inquired about was the woman.
“You saw that?” He said, taken aback that I’d witnessed his steamy PDA. Surely, anyone with two open eyes peeped him caressing her backside as he kissed her in the middle of the coffee shop.
He brushed her off as a casual someone he’d gone on a couple of dates with but had since stopped talking to. He said he hadn’t been in a serious relationship in over three years. Though I was still doubtful, dating in L.A. is treacherous and ephemeral. Making it past three months is considered a rarity.
With my antennae alert, I dined with him at a cozy beachside steakhouse restaurant where we were serenaded by a live jazz band. I’d emphasized forming a platonic friendship first.
Break Up Friendship GIF by TLCGiphy“I’ll come to you,” he obliged. I liked that he had made me a priority by driving over 50 miles to see me. I also liked the effort he made to check in with me daily. But I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he initiated on a professional pretense and then alley hooped through the back door on a romantic venture, which bombarded me with confusion.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my dating life, God is not the author of confusion; any man who brings confusion, rather than clarity, is simply not The One. It doesn’t matter how many boxes he checks–eventually, that confusion will manifest itself into bigger problems, in time.
After diving into deeper conversations on the phone, post our first dinner date, I quickly realized this man was indeed not The One for me. But I’m grateful for the valuable lesson I learned.
I don’t expect some unattainable fairytale of a husband; we all have our own flaws and conflict is inevitable, but after dating for two decades, through failure and success, I’ve realized that the person I ultimately marry must mirror the values I exert into the world. He must reciprocate kindness, patience, and respect. He must be quick to listen and slow to respond. He needs to be forgiving and trustworthy, practice healthy communication, and be a man of his word at the bare minimum.
If I’d had “Would my husband do this?” in my toolbox when I was dating and floundering in stagnant relationships, in my twenties, it would’ve saved me a lot of precious time. But now that I’m equipped with the reminder, it’s allowed me to ground myself in my non-negotiables and set/maintain the standard for the special person, I’ll one day say, “I do,” to.
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