If Someone Says "You Complete Me," RUN! (15 page)

Remember, my mother had her advice to me about relationships. When I was younger, she said, “Look, it’s not that you’re not attractive; you’re very cute. But you can’t depend on your looks. So if you want things, you have to go to work and get them. You must do this yourself because you can’t depend on finding someone to do it for you. You may not ever find that somebody.” She taught me that you need to know how to steer your ship because—and this is specific to women—if you get pregnant and your husband passes or your boyfriend leaves you or whatever, you have to know how to support yourself and your child. You have to know how to get up and go and do for that kid.

When a husband would leave or pass on in the 1950s, the women were like, “I don’t know where the money is, and I don’t know how to make money. My husband took care of everything.” You can’t have that today. That 1950s “ideal” was not a good one for anybody, but particularly not for women.

Here is a great time for me to say that if you want something, buy it yourself. Make your own power. Or, since we’re talking about money, make your own money. In these other relationships, where you are just milking off some person, you can get all the gifts and the perks. Yes, you can get all that, but in the end, it was never really yours. Unless you buy it yourself.

You should be able to do things for yourself, no matter how big or how small. You should be able to make yourself happy. If you want to go and get a dozen roses for yourself, you should be able to go and get a dozen roses and put it them in a vase in your apartment and enjoy them. You shouldn’t be waiting for somebody to send you flowers. Those are things you should be able to do yourself. If you’re making money and you see a piece of jewelry you like, you should be able to go and buy it for yourself.

It’s wonderful when people give you gifts, as long as you are sure there are no strings attached, and you each know where the other stands.

T
here should always be a prenuptial agreement (or prenup) in a relationship. Always.

You want to think, “Oh, we’re so happy, we’re going to be together forever!” No. All kinds of crazy stuff happens in life. Just because you find the person whom you’re most comfortable with, whom you want to walk through life with, doesn’t mean it will continue until the end of time. So in the event that there’s a seismic change, get the prenup. Then you can walk away with what you walked in with, and maybe a little more. That’s the way it should be. If you don’t have kids, there is no reason why you guys can’t say, “Hey, this is what I
need, this is what you need.” It doesn’t matter who makes more or who makes less.

A prenup is there simply to say, “This is what I came in with, this is what I’m taking if and when I leave,” and “If we have kids, if and when we get divorced, we will talk about what to do.” But the bottom line is: sign the prenup.

A lot of people get bent out of shape when the idea of a prenup comes up. They think it means that you don’t trust them. They think it means that you are already thinking that you are not going to make it as a couple and that you are eventually going to get divorced.

All I can say is that a prenup is not a romantic thing, it is a practical thing. If you’ve learned anything from this book so far, it is that the points I am trying to make here are to be realistic, to be truthful, to talk about things up front with a partner, and to not let false expectations or immature emotions get in your way and screw everything up.

In the end, a prenup is actually a positive thing. It forces you to discuss money issues up front instead of ignoring them. We’ve already talked about how money is such an important part of marriage, and when you don’t talk about it, or ignore it, it just becomes a bigger issue.

A prenup is an act of love. It allows you to both be clear from the beginning, to discuss things and set things up properly. It creates a framework for your relationship, and then you are both in it knowing where things would
end up on the back end. Also, from then on, you are staying with this person for the right reasons, not because you are afraid he is going to take all your money if it doesn’t work out.

Women, in particular: if you are the breadwinner, if you are making money at all, you need to protect that money in case of divorce. It is a well-documented fact that women and children are the ones who end up financially screwed in a divorce. Their standard of living is the one that goes down. Men have always complained that “Oh, my ex got all my money in the divorce,” or they become bitter about having to pay for her or the child support. That is usually in cases where the husband and wife had an agreement, spoken or unspoken, that he was going to make money and she was going to cut back on her career and take care of the children. Which, as we all know, is a job in and of itself, even though it isn’t paid.

While that kind of arrangement still exists, for the most part, wives and women partners are making as much or more than their husbands or partners. Yet they aren’t thinking about the future and protecting their money in case things don’t work out. That’s just stupid. Is it romantic? No. But neither is working two jobs to support your children and keep a roof over your head because you didn’t protect your own money.

In today’s world, joint custody of the children is the norm, which is as it should be (unless one of the parents
is abusive). Things have changed, and the courts want to protect the children, which means that both parents share responsibility equally. It also means that you may not be getting any child support.

So sign the prenup. It’s a starting point, that’s all. If the two of you ever have to appear in front of a judge, it will be simpler. He says you’re making more money; you can say he’s making more money. Doesn’t matter. Take out the prenup and say, “This is where we are. This is what we said we would do. I came in with this. He came in with that. You keep your shit, I’ll keep mine. Let’s take the other stuff we have together and divide it up.”

What is the use of fighting over it? The only people who make money in the divorce world are the lawyers. I haven’t met anyone who actually liked her divorce lawyer, whose job is to make the two of you hate each other and fight so that he can keep up his billable hours.

So give the lawyers less to do: have the conversation and sign the prenup. It’s not a nasty thing. It’s not preliminary to a breakup. It’s just saying, “Look, we’re both aware of who we were when we came in.” If your old lady is making more money than you do, be happy she’s with you and be happy she’s smart enough to protect herself. Don’t take it personally. Why would you be mad? If your ego is bruised, then get over it; you’re not a complete person yet (and you should probably reread
chapter 5
).

Sadly, even in today’s world, when the woman is the breadwinner, things can shift in a relationship. We still have those 1950s ideas about the man being the breadwinner, even though reality today does not reflect that at all. Two-thirds of mothers work. And I read recently that 40 percent of heads of household are women. More and more women are out-earning their husbands. So if you’re with a guy who has these old-fashioned ideas that he should be the one making more money because that’s just how it’s supposed to be, well, you’re in trouble.

If your partner gets canned at his job, is he going to be pissed off if you’re now making the money? If you don’t know that going in, it’s a conversation you might want to have. Ask him, “Are you going to have an issue if for some godforsaken reason I end up making more money or I’m the breadwinner?”

Interestingly enough, this is not a conversation gay people have with each other. It’s a conversation only heterosexual people have. It’s the craziest thing. I figure whoever is making money and feeding the kid and keeping the house together, how can you bitch? If it happens that your wife is the person who is earning more money, celebrate. Celebrate that she doesn’t mind and is willing to work her ass off to take care of your family. It’s not a bad thing.

This is a subject I’ve always dealt with. I always made more money than most of the men I knew. It seems to
have always been an issue, and I never understood why. “I was like this when you met me; you knew whom you were dealing with. It was part of the reason you liked me, because I was independent and I could go do things I needed to do to take care of myself.”

If your manhood is tied up in your wallet, there’s a problem. Men are smart enough to know that they are not defined by their penises. It’s like women are not defined by their breasts or their vagina. There were women who had mastectomies and believed that their lives as women were done because they were all wrapped up in the physical as defining who they were. “These breasts make me a woman,” or “Having this baby makes me a woman.” None of that defines you as a woman. Just like your penis doesn’t define you as a man. And your wallet doesn’t define you as a man. Your person defines you as a man.

I also feel like a woman earning more than a man is something people wind the man up about. Guys wouldn’t wind themselves up about it if people weren’t whispering around them. A guy’s family can wind him up, when they say things like “Why is she making more money? What kind of man are you?” If you’re not a layabout, then you shouldn’t have any problem with that kind of nonsense. If you’re not a skeevy kind of person who sucks the life out of people, you shouldn’t feel so bad about yourself. Contribute in other ways.

Some people are gold diggers, and that’s just the way
it is. Males and females. Gay or straight. You don’t want to be with those people. They come late to the party, and then they want all the money. If a couple has been married for five years and the man was previously married for twenty years, and the kids have been there since the beginning, why is the five-year wife entitled to any money? Why do you want to be with someone who thinks she is entitled like that? She’s mad that she’s no longer going to have the lifestyle she had when she was married to the guy. But see, she probably wasn’t doing shit to ensure that she could live independently, even though she could. It really pisses me off when somebody dies, and some widow who was late to the game, who arrived late in his life, sits there and thinks she deserves all the money.

If you built a successful company over twenty-five years or busted your ass putting money in the bank or in real estate and then get married, why should that guy get your house, your car, or your cash if you get divorced?

There are plenty of entitled people out there, though, and in some ways the law protects them, unless you have a lawyer who is extremely aggressive. It is better to just say, “Hey, I spent my time, my talents, my energy creating this company and I need to protect that. It is my life’s work.” Or you may want to save your assets for your children or your grandchildren. So just put that down on paper and get him to agree to it. If he doesn’t agree to
it, then that is a red flag and you may want to reevaluate why you are marrying him.

It would make it a lot easier to figure out if you want to be with someone if the guy looked at a prenup and said, “If you leave me, I’m coming after you for money because I think that’s the kind of person I’m going to turn into. So I’m not signing anything.” That gives you the opportunity to say, “I don’t know if I want to be with you then. Why do I want to be with someone who will want to make my life miserable if things don’t work out for whatever reason?” You should have that conversation up front. It’s all good to know.

If you have a prenup, you can show the time line for how shit (meaning assets) got built, making it a lot easier than going in years later without any evidence and saying, “Well, I
think
this is what happened.” You don’t want to do that. If you’re smart, you will put a contingency in there in the event you and your partner start making a lot of money, and how you will deal with that. Put it all down on paper. It doesn’t mean you like each other less or like each other more. It just means you want to be clear. “I’m helping you here, and we’re doing this together. You are the front person. I’m the person in the back who is keeping all the balls in the air to make sure you’re able to get what you need. So I should be entitled to a little something-something.”

I also think prenups are smart because you both go
into the relationship knowing where the other person stands financially and where the other person’s emotions stand with regard to money. What are his issues and what are his expectations? Lay it out. Whatever your circumstances, a prenup is reassuring. It lets you know that you and your partner are staying in the marriage for the right reasons, not because you want his money or think you will get a big payday.

A
s happens in life, more often than not a relationship doesn’t last forever. In the event that it ends, whether or not you can remain friends or at the very least go your separate ways without too many hard feelings depends on what kind of relationship you had. To me, if you can stay friends—even with someone you haven’t had kids with—try to, because there was a reason you were together in the first place. You had a friendship, and people don’t understand that friendships sometimes are the things that last the longest in life.

I have a lot of friends who don’t understand how I can be friends with people I’m not in a romantic relationship with anymore. It’s because it’s not that I hate them. There was something about them I liked to begin with, I know
them well and they know me well, and just because we’re not romantically involved or didn’t meet each other’s expectations, it doesn’t mean we have to hate each other.

I’m a different kind of fish, because I know when I’m done. In the past I was never able to go cleanly. I would always think, “I need to set it up so I can get out of here, and nobody will come following me.” So I would let stuff linger for a couple of years before I made a move. Just because I was lazy. I knew that the relationship was over, and I was just going through the motions. So I would leave all the toys for people to play with, so I could get out of there and leave them happy with the toys.

Sometimes you have very long relationships, and then they are done. I had one for six, seven years. And then it was done. It was just done. “Gee, look at the time, got to go.” It’s hard to let go, but you have to move on when you get to the point where it is clear the relationship just isn’t working. It isn’t making either of you happy, you aren’t having fun anymore, and you’re not growing.

People also get hurt. They get angry. They say, “You did this to me, and that’s why I left.” I usually left because the relationship wasn’t for me. It had nothing to do with what my partner had done. I just knew. And sometimes I get very lazy. (My friends can attest to the fact that I have let shit linger for years.) I also had other houses, so I could escape when I needed some space.

That’s a huge deal for me. I need to be able to get out of town. I don’t want to live with someone all the time, and at this point, not at all. I want to smell my smell in the bathroom. I don’t want to be fighting the funk that somebody else has brought in. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. But when I’m done, I’m done.

You know the Taylor Swift song that goes, “We are never, ever, getting back together”? True, except if you’re somebody I know and really care about. Things have changed, though, and now I want something different from you. I want to be your friend. I know what we were, but we’re not there anymore. You have an option. You can decide to stay my friend or you can go.

So when my friends ask, “How do you maintain relationships with people after you’ve broken their expectations or they’ve broken yours?” I explain how I’m not into lashing out, saying mean things or doing bad things to someone when we break up. It happens because people are hurt and disappointed, so they’re just acting out. But it isn’t particularly mature. Or evolved.

I don’t know how it works for other people. I only know how it works for me. There are men I will still talk to—for one, because I believe that if you’ve been friends or you’ve been lovers, you cannot maintain the anger. He was your friend, and you have to maintain some aspect
of that. You don’t have to see him all the time, but you have to pay respect to what you two shared. Unless he really wasn’t the person you thought he was at all.

So if it isn’t working, you can say, “Well, what is it?” If he says, “Well, I just can’t do it anymore,” you have to let him go. It’s hard, but you must do it, and you can’t beat yourself up for circumstances you can’t change. People grow and evolve, and things change. If you’re lucky, you get to do it together. In the event you don’t, why be pissed? At one point you loved that person. If you had kids with him, you loved him enough to have a baby with him. So why would you want to make that person’s life miserable? And are you now transferring that on to your child, and what does that do to your relationship with her? It’s like rings in a pool. People don’t realize the impact that bickering and fighting and shitty behavior has. (If you’re a famous couple, of course, it’s all over the newspapers. Then everybody is seeing it.)

Regardless, be the bigger person and walk away. If you’ve got to start again, you start again free, with your kid or your life. It’s your decision how you are going to react. If this thing is over, wishful thinking or hammer dialing the other person isn’t going to fix anything. You can drag things out, and yourself down further, or you can try to heal and move on.

This is why I’m saying that as soon as you can go, go.
As soon as you know it is not working and not going to work, be clear with the other person, because leaving someone when he doesn’t know why can drive anyone crazy. Give him the respect of being clear and honest, without being mean or spiteful about it. Explain why you are going. If you don’t know, you can say, “I don’t know what’s happened, but I know it’s not going to be good for you if I stay.” That is a good thing to do.

It’s also a good idea to remember the time before you became sexual, because that’s what fucks everything up: sex. The sex is what fucks everything up. Most of the time, I’d say you could have relationships that would last forever if sex were not involved.

Anyway, think back to that time before sex, and if you still like the idea of being friends with your ex-partner, you can say hello and hang out occasionally. It doesn’t mean you’re going to go to dinner, but you can be civil.

Try to do this no matter how angry you or your ex may be. People do and say things out of anger that they would never normally do or say: “You left me (or I left you), so I’m going to mess up your reputation. I’m going to make your life miserable. I’m going to turn your kids against you.”

Get past the anger. It’s not good for anyone.

A lot of the stuff I talk about in this book is just
common sense. A lot of people ask me, “Do you have any tips on how to get along with your ex?” I say, be polite, be thoughtful, don’t let him suck you into any button-pushing drama. Don’t pick a fight or discuss things that are going to make each of you angry. Just be thoughtful.

Now it does take two people to want to do it, and if your ex doesn’t want to be friends or even friendly, then don’t deal with him. You don’t have to get along; you can just avoid one another. When you have kids, though, it’s preferable that you maintain a relationship that works for everybody.

I guess the question comes down to: Is this person somebody you would have been friends with anyway? If he is, and he did an asshole-y thing, just think, “I’m not going to speak to you for a month or whatever, but I still want to be your friend once I cool off.” It’s easier to behave that way, rather than carry around bad feelings forever.

But if he is not somebody whom you want to keep as a friend, then maybe that’s not the person you should have married in the first place, right? Why would you get into a relationship with someone you don’t want to be friends with? If you don’t want to be friends with him, then what is it exactly that you do want from him?

Again, it goes back to the false expectations and not knowing your own truth or what you want, and it’s some
thing you should think about if you get involved with another person.

When it comes to families, not using children against the other parent is very important. Somehow we forget that if you have children and your relationship has ended, the kids should not be used as leverage. It’s so bad to do it. You will be putting your kids on some shrink’s couch, trying to figure out whom to love, whom to depend on. It’s very hard on children. Be big enough and handle it the right way. If you use a child against your partner, you shouldn’t have gotten into a relationship, much less gotten married—you are not adult enough to know how to handle a fucked-up situation. It’s dumb stuff, as bad as, say, slashing somebody’s tires.

If you feel like one of the characters in
Waiting to Exhale
, you know exactly what to do. If your man is fucking around on you, honey, go and be fiercer. Cut his ass loose, because as I’ve said before, sometimes you just aren’t the one for him and he isn’t the one for you. You can get mad at him for being a cheating bastard or mad at the other woman for stealing your man, but the fact is, if things were right between the two of you, he probably wouldn’t have been running around. Maybe those signs were there and you didn’t really pay attention. Maybe that red flag was there and you didn’t pay attention. Or maybe he’s
just an egomaniacal, self-centered asshole… and that’s okay. You probably just shouldn’t stay with him.

Let’s talk a little bit about folks who find themselves in relationships with people who are in relationships with someone else. Yes, I am talking about affairs. The first thing to keep in mind is that it is quite possible that this lover of yours is not really the person you think he is. Because you have to look at the fact that he is messing around with you. Chances are he is eventually going to mess around on you, too.

I say don’t be the side piece. There’s nothing else to say. Don’t do it, because it’s not going to end well for you. It can be a dark and lonely path to go down. You will be going down that path by yourself, because no one is going to be on your side. Yes, on the rare occasion, it does work out for people, but on the whole, not so much. So if you can, just avoid it.

Occasionally your married lover will leave his wife and marry you, but remember what Oscar Wilde said, “A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position.” Chances are he’s going to fill that job with someone else.

If you do marry him, you are also going to have a whole set of issues in this new relationship if he has an angry ex and kids, has to go through a divorce, and loses his sense of place in the world. He may start resenting you
for messing up his life. Starting out as the side piece and ending up as the wife isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You have to still be the sex goddess and confidante he fell in love with back when you were the side piece, while picking up his clothes off the floor and doing the laundry.

Beyond that, the problem with being the side piece is that the main piece hears about you and it breaks her heart. It’s not your position to know what’s going on in somebody’s else’s relationship.

Still, there is a saying that nobody can break up a good marriage. And I think that is true. I don’t see why, if you had a good marriage, you would break up, though your idea of what a good marriage is and my idea of a good marriage is might be two different things.

If your married lover is complaining about his marriage no longer working, then either he and the main piece are not talking about what’s not working, which is really none of your business, or he is lying to you to get some. Why would you want to be involved in that?

More often than not your lover is going through some sort of change in his main relationship—there is either a problem he needs to address or he is on his way out but not quite there yet. So you become the transition person for him. It is very rare that you’re the person the man ends up with when he leaves his wife for you. I have been there; I have done that. I say this with a certain amount of authority: I have been the side piece and I have been
the transition, and I am telling you, no matter how much fun it might be when it starts out, it is ultimately going to suck for you.

I also have friends who have been in both positions in this situation and found that the transition person wasn’t the right one for them, but the person who came next was just right. It wasn’t done deliberately, but it happened. Of course, that leaves the transition person thinking, “Wow, what is wrong with me?” There’s nothing wrong with you, except that you’re not the right person for that guy. You may be the right person for a period of time, you may be exactly what that person needed at that particular moment, but it doesn’t mean you are the one he will be with forever. So if you can avoid putting yourself in that position, I would suggest you do so.

Just from one who has been there.

Interestingly enough, I’ve never had somebody say to me, “We have an open marriage, so I’m not going to be your boyfriend, but I will do a hit-and-run with you. Are you comfortable with that?” I haven’t heard that, but I like it, because at least it’s honest. It’s better if everybody is in on the story.

But rarely do people do that, because they don’t want to be judged, so they think they’re better off lying. One of the Ten Commandments should be changed to, “Judge not lest ye be judged in your relationship. Don’t throw stones if your house is not in order.”

People choose to live in a bubble of their own creation, and some part of them doesn’t want to address the problems in their relationship or they don’t really want to know what their spouse is up to or thinking. It’s too uncomfortable. It’s easier not to pay attention. But it can be a real eye-opener when you discover that you, and everybody else around you, doesn’t have this perfect thing.

So if you’re not happy in your relationship, or you think your partner isn’t happy, you have to look at what the causes are. If the cause is because you didn’t go into the relationship honestly, it’s going to be an issue. It’s going to be a problem. I say that probably fifty times in this book because, to me, that basic foundation is everything.

There are people who get married when they are twenty, and they wake up one day and they are fifty with three kids going, “What the hell happened?” If you marry someone and you stay married and you wake up and it’s twenty-five years later and you’re going, “I never had my life,” it’s because you didn’t
take
your life. What did you miss? Well, you raised your kids. You had the life you signed up for.

So now, if you want out because you did what you were supposed to do, that’s one thing. Just say that. I think people would be more appreciative if the partner who wanted out said, “Look, we did this for thirty years
and I don’t want to do it anymore.” That’s better than slipping out and finding a side piece or turning your partner in for something younger, man or woman. Honesty is always important.