Someone please cue up Prince’s version of "How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore" and hum along with me, won’t you? No? Okay, I’ll get to my point.
Over in BougieLand, we have frequent (far too many probably) discussions about relationships. Recently we had a girl write in and ask for advice. No I’m not a relationship advisor, I sometimes play one on the blogosphere. This young lady met a guy, they vibed, exchanged phone numbers. He texted and called for four days straight and then… nothing. It was a few days later and she had heard nada. She asked what she should do.
A seemingly innocent question erupted into chaos in the comment section. A majority of the females said for her to forget about him and move on. If he wanted her, he would call. Since he hadn’t, he didn’t. They further went on to caution her not to call or initiate anything so that she wouldn’t be stuck in the role of aggressor. The men overwhelming thought she should at least call and say “Hey”. They said sometimes if a man has done all the initiating, he would like some sort of a sign (like a phone call) that he’s not the only one with some stake in the game.
I wrote a post called Who’s the Rabbit? in which I shared my thoughts that men should be the hunters. Women shake a tailfeather, men chase – basically. If a rabbit jumps in a man’s lap begging to be stew meat, that’s one desperate rabbit. It was a metaphor. Please don’t come at me y'all – where’s your feminism?
But a phone call? That seemed a simple enough request. But then I recall the lifelong drama over phone calls. It was bad enough “back in the day” when a man said “I’ll call you” and didn’t. One of my all time pet peeves. Don’t even put it out there if you don’t plan on calling. Just say, “It was nice seeing you” “Had a great time” or even “Drop dead” – all of that is better than “I’ll call you later” followed by silence.
But now with the advent of texting and tweeting and emailing and whatnot… you have to conclude that if you don’t hear from somebody – they are just not that into you. Other red flags? If you leave a message for someone and they return it with a text. And now you have the young ‘uns that say they “don’t talk on the phone” at all. They only text. What part of the game is that? You can’t get the same inflections, tones and nuances from 140 characters that you can infuse into a five minute conversation.
But I’m old school.
Question: Does the balance of power in a relationship really hinge on who initiates the most phone calls? Ladies, if a guy suddenly stops calling, do you call him? Fellas, how long do you typically wait to call/text a lady after you meet her for the first time?
