Reality Check: Don't wanna be a player? Stop playing...

Reality Check Week, also known as Sometimes Life Ain't Fair Week, also known as Wake Up and Smell What's Cooking week. Today: Stop Playing. Read and learn...

I'm not going to put specific people on blast today but er, uh - you already know who you are. Five of you, three men and two women reached out for relationship advice/counsel. I'm thrilled to be able to tell you - you are dead azz wrong.

At some point, good people - perception becomes reality. If you continue conducting yourself in a certain way, no matter how much you say "I'm not that person"... you kinda are. Where there's smoke, there's fire. The proof is in the pudding. Actions speak louder than words. What you do speaks louder than what you say... I have a million of these, I can do this all day. But I think you feel me.

Let me just take one example from each side to illustrate my point.

Had a young lady (we'll call her Sally) tell me that her last four relationships have ended badly. She said she's tired of men telling her that she plays games. Really? I asked. What kind of games? After a bit of hemming and hawing, it appears that Miss Sally uses the cocoa as a relationship weapon. She promises cocoa and doesn't deliver until she gets her way. Then she withholds cocoa to show her displeasure. Worse yet, she dangles hot chocolate; waits until someone is really, really thirsty and then barters. 

I said, "Oh so you're a manipulative tease who uses the chocolate cupcake as a bargaining chip." Needless to say, she did not agree with my phraseology and said she just had a different way of viewing power in relationships. Le Sigh. 

Sally, sweetie - there's a not so nice phrase for women who put the good-good on a yo-yo like that. Really, anytime you promise and withhold something that your partner wants as a means of control and power grab - that's manipulative game playing and just plain no bueno. On a serious note girlfriend; I wouldn't try this trick with the wrong guy. Could end very poorly.  

Had two guys come to me with the exact complaint: women thought they were players and they swear they aren't. I'll go with the case of the gent I'll call Phil. Phil has a lot of female friends, purely platonic. He has pictures of himself with all of his platonic female friends on his Facebook page. He is looking for Ms. Right and is openly flirting and dating and hanging out in the spots but not picking any one person for something serious. He has had a few cocoa encounters recently but not in realm of leading to a relationship.

But sir, um... methinks thou dost protest too much. Your actions are a wee bit playeriffic. It may not be fair but when a woman sees a single man with a lot of female friends and he's displaying pictures of himself hugged up with those friends... we think player. We don't know the story. All we see is a round robin of plentiful women. If month after month you are one-two dates and out, we assume it's because you want it that way. You say you're not a player but you're out playing. What are women supposed to think? We think you're either a player or picky or both. 

Phil - truthfully if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck? AFLAC be thy name. And fellas, ye with the multiple platonic female friends... stop. You can say you don't want them all day long, we know that the Friend Zone is merely a gateway and three shots of Patron away from Cocoaville. And for the record, if your girl has a ton of male friends and tells you they are all platonic... please reference Chris Rock's joke: To a woman, a male platonic friend is like a d*** in a glass jar. Break in case of emergency." I'm not saying it's true... I'm saying it happens.

Moving on. My point to both Sally and Phil is that once is a fluke, twice is a trend. Continuing a pattern of behavior becomes a modus operandi. If you don't like the label, peel it off and be something else.

I'm just putting these out there for your commentary, BougieLand. What say you to Sally and Phil? And what should they do to change the script? Advice, thoughts, commentary? The floor is yours...