Tionna Tee Smalls, star of the VH1 reality show “What Chilli Wants,” brings her straight-up relationship expertise and no-bull attitude to women everywhere in “Girl, Get Your Mind Right” — offering the tell-it-like-it-is advice your love life has been missing. Here's an excerpt:
Introduction
Girl, It Is Time To Get Your Mind Right!
It is time for you to stop feeling sorry for your love life and look into why you are attracting the wrong guys in the first place. We don’t realize that most of the times we are in bad relationships because we want to be in bad relationships.
I learned a long time ago that life is all about choices and we live and die by the choices we make. If you choose to stay and stick it out with a loser, then that’s on you. If you choose to try to change someone that you already know is not right for you, then that’s on you, because it doesn’t take a genius to know that people don’t change unless they want to. Most of the women I meet are pretty good women who dream of finding the right man. They are beautiful, motivated, employed, and most of all, they want love. But they are looking for it in all the wrong places and many of them don’t know what they want from a relationship. Some women say that they want a nice guy, yet they are the same ones who like when a man pulls their weave, smacks ’em up, and disrespects them. That right there is a contradiction in itself and a confliction of thoughts. He can’t be nice if he’s going to whip your ass (point-blank period). It’s time for us women to know exactly what it is we want from the men in our life. If we want a good man, it’s time for us to get “good” ourselves. We have to understand that we are what we attract. If you are constantly attracting the wrong man; chances are you are giving off something that is allowing for these people to come into your life.
You also need to get rid of the “super-save-a-ho” attitude. Yes, I know you want to help a man and bring him up to your level, upgrade him but can’t. You meet a guy with no job and then try to hook up his resumé and send it out to employers for him. He doesn’t have to do anything but wear a button-up shirt and go to the interview. Or you offer a man who suffers from “walk-itis” (my word for a man who doesn’t own a car) a car. You try to make yourself feel better by saying, “Oh, I just got him a hooptie.” Yes, it’s a hooptie, but a hooptie is still a car; a car he didn’t have until he met your nice ass. You got him the car thinking that he would be able to take care of his business better if he had a ride, but he doesn’t do that. Like the guys who drive their girl’s car all day while she’s at work, he uses that old automobile to take other chicks to work and to go and get his freak on at another broad’s house.
The sad thing is the game never changes, just the situations, and you, my friend, have been in the same situation time after time with guys who weren’t even worthy of smelling the coochie, much less being the main thing you live your life for. You gave a loser man mobility and there is nothing worse than that. He dupes you and you continue to ask yourself, “Why me?” not ever asking, “Why not me?” Sister, what are you doing to avoid getting into the same ish every time you meet a potential new boo? Ask yourself, are you giving up the booty too quick? Are you letting him know what makes you tick too soon? Or are you just falling for every guy you give your drawers up to? For most of us, one of these problems is the reason why we don’t have a good man, and some suffer from all three of these love fallacies.
I am tired of women accepting bullcrap from these two-bit effing men. I understand it’s a man shortage and all, but it’s really time to put your Gucci-shoe-wearing foot down and say, “No more.” It’s definitely more easily said than done, but right here, right now, we are all taking an oath of strength because we are all the shit and we all deserve better. Yes . . . fat, skinny, bald headed, it doesn’t matter. You can step your game up and get yourself together and bag the man you want to have. Get him right, train him, and keep him as your man. Sit down and allow yourself to be tasted and enjoyed. Aren’t you tired of being duped and taken advantage of? I know you are, because your friends are tired for you. It is really time for you to be the chick you always wanted to be, because you, my friend, deserve it and the new you is reachable if you just take the time out and get you together.
You can’t get the guy you want, be a good woman to a man, or be in a relationship with anyone if you are not the person you really want to be in life. You can’t live up to other people’s standards or views about yourself.
If you know you haven’t quite loved yourself the best in a while, sit down and relax, because you are just a mere work in progress, and things will work out for you in just a jiffy as long as you be real with yourself and accept the things you do negatively within yourself. Now if he doesn’t love and appreciate that, then it’s definitely his loss. When does a woman say, “No more”? Ladies, no matter how many men have done you wrong, your time is not up. I don’t care how old you think you are, there’s somebody out there for you, but you have to be ready for it. Yes, I said it, you have to be ready, because some of us wouldn’t recognize a good man if he came and smacked us on the head with his penis.
The right man may be right under your nose, but are you mature enough to receive him or are you still running the hills looking for a man who you think may be able to one day be Mr. Right? Well, I am going to help you find Mr. Right and help you keep him. All men like coochie, and you, my friend, are the person who has it, but don’t think you can snag that guy just because you have that coochie. You can only snag him if he cares about you and wants to be with you, and that, my friend, takes getting into that man’s mental, and getting into a man’s brain is one tough task, but you can do it if your game is tight.
It is time to get your mind right and you won’t be happy until you make yourself happy. We often look at men to make us happy, but every woman who does this ends up unhappy. A man can never make you happy; besides, making you happy eternally isn’t his job (believe it or not). It’s your job, as you need to find joy outside of him and if he’s the only source of your happiness, what are you going to do if he’s gone? So let’s get our minds right, each one of us, to heal ourselves, make us better women, and help all the little girls who look up to us.
I wrote this book not only because I wanted you to be able to get over all of the things that are hindering you from love but because I wanted you to be able to be strong enough and confident enough to enjoy love in your life. Sad, but most women who go through stuff with no-good men are so afraid to share their love.
As I always tell women who are hanging on to heartbreaks they had over the years: if you never allow love into your life after him, he’s winning. Yes, most people who have broken your heart in the past get off on your misery. If you become happy their impact isn’t valid. Once you are happy, you forget everything bad that has ever happened in your life. So I want you to become happy. I want you to revive the faith you once had in love because true love still—and will always—exists. You just have to have an open heart.
Time for a little tough love . . .
Rule 1- Stop messing up your mind
A “mind wrecker” is a man who will do anything to mess up your soul and make you feel mentally small. He is a manipulator, a liar, a lame, and overall a game player. You have been dealing with this man and still you don’t know your place in his heart. He compliments you sometimes to cover up his real jealousy and ill will he has against you. He will take any chance that he has to make you feel down, because he knows how to make you tick. This Mind Wrecker will make you feel like you’re his queen in front of other people, but when you two are alone, he does little things that make you wonder what his true intentions are. This is a man who wants to isolate you and keep you all to himself without any of your family or close friends around that can catch him and call him out on his bullshit.
The Mind Wrecker wants to break you and control you
This Mind Wrecker may not physically put his hands on you, but he will verbally bash you in every argument that you have by calling you a slut, a whore, a side bitch, an ugly bitch, a fat bitch. This Mind Wrecker knows that you’re a good catch and secretly admires your drive, your motivation, your confidence, but all the while he hates you for those very same qualities. This man’s main goal is to break your brain so that he can take over and conquer you. He will constantly break up with you and only wants to get back when he feels that you’re on top and you could live your life without him.
This man loves the way you look but will still go and screw an ugly girl on the side just for kicks because it makes him feel more powerful and less pathetic. This man loves to see you cry and loves to hear you talk smack about your friends and family. He will urge you on even more to get rid of your friends so that he can have the upper hand and therefore be the only source to your heart, happiness, and laughter. He will want you to come home after work, but will be the first person to break his dinner date with you just to go chilling with his boys. He never lets you know his plans ahead of time because he doesn’t want you to know his every move, yet he requires that you call him every time you step foot out of the house.
This Mind Wrecker seems confident on the outside with his expensive gear and nice hair, but inside he really doesn’t feel worthy of you and knows that he’s not on your level, so he will try to knock you down a notch. All he does is bring havoc to your once peaceful life because he likes to see you fight emotionally and physically for his love; and you work with him anyway, hoping it won’t be like this is forever, but the very sad thing is that he is never going to change.
He will screw your emotions up so much that you will not be the nice quiet girl you once were; you will be a mad bitch to everyone around you, while you will still bow down and take his bullcrap. Before you dated him, you saw life as one big, beautiful, adventurous place; if you didn’t get something you wanted, you said, “Oh well, let me try again,” but after messing with this negative ass man, you’re miserable and the glass is no longer half full to you, it’s half empty and you see everything as one big black hole.
This Mind Wrecker makes you so paranoid that every time he’s away from you, you believe he is doing something sexual with another, yet you’re too afraid to ask him about it. He loves when he gets you crazy so he will play on it even more by not answering his phone and pretending to be asleep when you call only to piss your whole night and early morning off. Therefore, you go to work upset and worried about what’s he doing and not focused on what you’re supposed to be focused on—your money. He is a Mind Wrecker, so he likes taking over the only place that you can’t control, because believe it or not, you can’t control what you think about. Then what comes next is a phone call or stupid text saying, You know I love you, why would I hurt you? Then you two make plans to meet and talk after work only for him to be back in your bed penetrating your catbag. He’s groaning and telling you sweet nothings in your ear, all the while trying to get a nut and think of another master-of-disaster plan on how to get your fine ass off of that pedestal.
The Mind Wrecker uses sex as power. He knows that when you’re crying while making love and promising him that you’re not going to go anywhere, he’s fucking not only your body, but your mind as well. He knows that he’s still in charge even though you are on top riding his dick like it’s the last thing smoking. And why is he in control? Because we are women and we wear our heart on our sleeves, and many times we mistake sex for love and get gassed up by those four-letter words especially during intimacy. Why else is he in charge? Because he understands that in any love relationship, there is the Lover (the person who gives the love), which is you, and there is the Beloved (the person who receives the love), which is him. He knows that you would do anything for him and that no matter how much he messes up you’re always going to take him back after he begs for your forgiveness, and he will be a good boy for a week or two.
This manipulator doesn’t love you; hell, he barely takes you seriously. He just wants to get in where he fits in just like everybody else, and it’s no longer about sex. He may smile like he believes in you and may taste the inside of your walls but he’s waiting for your downfall so that once you’re down he can step all over you and make you feel like you never had any existence in his world in the first place. He looks at you as the person who once tried to oppress him and make him feel unworthy with your achievements.
Welcome to the sick world of the man who sleeps with you every night, been with you for years, but still can’t stand your freaking guts. It’s him, the Mind Wrecker. You love him, you’re cosigning his bullshit, but most of all you’re fucking him! So ladies, without further interruptions, it’s time to stop crying and start doing, because only you can prevent yourself from being a victim of love.
From "Girl, Get Your Mind Right!" by Tionna Tee Smalls. Copyright © 2011. Reprinted by permission of Harper Paperbacks.