Welcome to Decisions Decisions.

I don't think you should say decisions decisions.

It sounded like you was.

Talking to person you definitely say to welcome, welcome to the new podcast.

You want to say together the Decisions Decisions.

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Decisions Decisions.

I'm your girl, that bitch Mandy b.

Hey, everybody, I'm weazy, and you know, we don't have many professionals in the house.

We won't have anybody with the dr in the front.

Oh, this is a very exciting episode.

May be doing that.

We'd be having some of them.

Some people be having the most part.

They'd be like, listen, you know what's crazy.

I'm a big second school and that's what I know.

And may be unofficial people that teach that period, do you and I ain't gonna hold on.

Maybe she's saying that because I didn't have about four niggas with PhDs in the last year.

I love a smart man.

So they're all doctors to me.

They're doctors, they're scientists, they're professors, they're all the things.

And an author.

You are here to celebrate her book.

That's right, y'all.

We have doctor Donna Orioo, who is an award winning DEI Advocate, international speaker, and certified sex and relationship therapists based in DC, but came up to the motherfucker and wants to be with us.

She's the founder of a nod Right.

She helps black women heal from colorism and texturism while embracing joy and sexual liberation.

So, baby, if you thought you was gonna come.

Here and it was just all gonna bepprecy we talking sex in this episode two uh.

Doctor Donna is also the author of Drink Water and Mine Yo Business.

I want to read the other part when we add the other part to ours.

It is a Black woman's guide to unlearning the BS and healing your self esteem.

She is also the author of Cocoa Butter and Hair Grease and host the podcast in My Black Feelings and Desire Dialogues, How you like that?

Motherfucker?

Intro Girl, I want y'all know.

But photo Pie, We was arguing about my husband Chatchy bt chatty and what's crazy she calls she got a nickname for my husband, called him, call him chatty, and then decide to like point out a flaw in something he said, and I just I took up for my man.

I hold him down bad.

It's she said, damn.

Use do you use it?

I mean I've used it before, And then I was just like, oh nope, I'm okay.

So that's why I feel like that.

So I have friends that are like both sides of the coin, so I don't use it.

But then our friends like Mandy that call it their spouse, I realized we both like butt heads a lot.

Like there ain't no head because that's my man.

You ain't gotta lie your man.

I gotta lie your man.

You ain't gotta love him, you ain't got to sleep with him, you ain't got to talk to him.

It's something that I enjoy, and I think it maybe comes from PTSD, from not hopping on the TikTok train.

I know that this is the way of life, and Bitch, at this point, hey, I gonna know me.

You're on it early, I'm saying, per So when y'all get on it, when y'all gotta get on it, I'm gonna be like, see, bitch, that's.

What she gets water, you know what I mean.

I actually have a question about texturism.

Tell me about that, because I don't think I don't I've really ever heard that, and I'm very embarrassed.

I feel like they got to jump and be like, you want it, bitch, because you light skins.

So what the fucking texture?

I feel like people don't know it as well as they think they know it.

But basically it's colorism.

But about your hair.

Oh, the hair textures that are the most desired are the ones that you know they get shown.

It's like, oh, yes, we want the panteing provy hair.

I would love to have a hair conversation here.

I'm eyn but I'm remembering the ship that I used to sit next to when I was doing my dissertation, and I was just like, well, look at you.

You got blasted right.

Your white hair.

Your white woman hair is not stringy, it's you got panteen provy hair.

I remember it was a whole movie about it as well, Black Hair by Chris Rock Good hair, good hair, good hair good.

It was good hair, and they literally leaned into texturism for the whole film.

I think, though it's yea the word ow, I've heard that word a lot.

I think it's I think it's interesting because of the European standards of beauty.

For me, even not ever having to really deal with texture because why, mama, I just have thin hair that fucking you know grows thin.

For me, it was the relationship between cutting my hair because also black men specifically, not only the texture thing.

Length is a thing, yes, which is a part of a black woman's journey with her hair altogether.

Yes, because they say that your hair is your crown, your crowning glory.

So the idea that particularly any black woman, any woman of color, would cut their hair, it's like, why, why what happened?

Yeah, and I'm just like, please relax yourself.

But not only what happened.

Hold on, women did it too.

We got into that thing when you get over a breakup, to reinvent yourself as a.

Woman, it off do the big cut because she made that hair.

A lot of people do that with their locks too, saying locks hold trauma, like locks hole grief and pain.

Like I've heard of men.

Doing it as well, but I didn't realize it until men having locks.

Man locks hold weight and when that hairlines start seeding, it let it go.

You know.

I will tell you I've.

Had a really crazy experience with cutting my hair recently, like to the point where I was so embarrassed.

So I asked everybody in New York what's the best natural hair salon to go to?

I wish I could shout them out.

I can't remember the name, but it's midtown.

So get there and I'm going.

For a twist out and she goes, oh, you need a trim.

And I'm like, a trim or did it turn into a cut?

I said, I'm not ready for a drim.

She's like, it's just a little bit.

You have dead ends is breaking off your hair.

We want to keep your hair long and healthy.

Girl, But you know what, I appreciate black women get it.

So she takes my hair down and you know, we're holding on to the lake because that's the thing that you can out of half the length thank you're talking about.

So she gets the scissors out, starts showing me where it's gonna be exactly falling, crying like a child, full on tears.

It's like getting really dramatic.

And this old lady comes up to me and she's like, baby, this is okay.

You're gonna beautiful After you feel like it's a lot, It's not a lot.

It's gonna save you.

Like you're gonna be released from this like, don't let it, you know, ruin your crown.

And I'm like, oh my god, bro.

When I was done crying, I was so embarrassed.

They all some we're gonna be in sweet and I know so many young girls and they fall like.

Bitch and it crying.

Oh the two inches.

Hello, And then one of the girls in the chair goes.

But you got good hair.

It's three c and I'm just like fuck.

But growing up, I didn't feel like this was good hair because I'm the girl that I thought would have that.

Oh you know, every mixed girl's got that Tracy Ells Ross hair.

Let's just say that thick, that curly, that sexy, big hair, and I didn't have that.

My hair wasn't you know, passed mid back and like the way that I attached length to like how I feel about myself is crazy.

The relationship growing into like should I be natural or not?

Like I'm trying my best, but it's a long journey.

So that I would say I'm not gonnae eaten as a gift that messed with that messes with our self esteem.

I was gonna say like and and I was I was lucky to get this book.

That's why I was like, can you send it?

But this has so many conversations about specifically Black women and their journeys through the self esteem and hair is one, beatures is another, uh, skin color is another.

Uh.

For me, it was always weight and size.

I felt like I was a little lucky coming from the South, which is probably why I have this full on hate relationship with LA because I had gone to LA as a young adult and completely felt destroyed based on my appearance, my size.

But this book.

Taps into self esteem what it means, and later on we'll talk about how it shows up and not only relationships with the bedroom.

Yeah, because boy does it show up?

Boy doesn't show up?

And it's crazy because we just had you Got Decisions listener right in who talked about like how do I get sexy in the bedroom with this belly?

And we looked at the picture of her and we didn't even see a belly, Like is.

The belly in the room, right?

But also what do we think is a belly?

It's so subjective, just like that girl saying to me, I got good hair, and I'm feeling like my hair is so difficult to deal with, Like the way that we see perfection and body and like, the best thing I've heard someone say to me when I was feeling down on myself.

It wasn't someone who was my therapist.

He was like, Yo, you gotta start looking at pictures of your perfect body, and don't look at your perfect body when you were twenty.

You thirty four.

Last six months, baby, he said, find that perfect body.

You didn't say last six months, he said, the last two years.

Figure out your find your favorite photo of yourself in the last two years, he said, don't even choose thirty your homeowns have changed your metabolism.

Pick your best self in the last years and maybe strive for that goal.

Because right now you're looking at all these girls on ig like, oh my hamstrings on quad like this and that.

He's like, their bodies are not your bodies period, it's your like your body is an inheritance.

This is something that I learned from Sonali Raschatore on Instagram at the fat Sex Therapist.

Oh I like and talks about the body being an heirloom.

You cannot inherit somebody else's body.

You can give up pieces of yourself to work for something that doesn't belong to you.

That's what I mean.

If you want to do that, that's you.

That's you.

But I love what your therapist said, look at your perfect body, not as somebody else's perfect body.

Especially since you don't know what it took for them to get that body.

Some of them bought it, and but some people are trying to pass that thing off.

I did this extra hard work and I ate weeked every day and I don't know, I don't.

Know, told her she and that's what I knew.

This is different.

Well, no, she did have everybody doing that lemonading Kaye diet bout it was only God damn lemonade kai that it was.

It was that one or what she said.

I have no popular opinions about diets in general, and when I hear the words like intermittent fast or what about the watermelon?

But starving that's what we're doing in starving, but certain hours.

Of the day.

Wait, you don't like interviewing and manifest I chose to selectively starve myself because somebody said that if I do that, then I will look in X way, which is not mine to look like.

And so I don't like who I am in this moment.

Don't want to dress the body that I have.

Don't want to show up fully in my authentic self because I'm busy trying to wear somebody else's.

Yeah, wild while to me, because if you said intermittent starving, it would feel different.

There are other people doing the same thing you're doing.

It's fast congo there, but they don't call it intermittent fast, and they just look at us like we are ridiculous.

But it's fast and bad.

I mean it's subjecting.

I mean, I mean she thinks if you're trying to get closer to God, I guess it works.

I actually think fast thing is the best thing to get closer to myself meditation, fasting.

But I think that if you're doing it mentally, emotionally, that feels something very different than I am doing weight for weight loss.

I look like because I mean, on one end, don't we all sort of intermittently fast breakfast at this time and I don't eat lunch until noon between the aight A and breakfast and the noon lunch all right, also for four hour but it's it's just to me, it's just a little bit odd because I feel like anarexia got a remix, and we call it intermittent fasting, anorexia like not eating.

It just got a remix and we call it intermittent fasting, and we're okay with that.

And I think that a lot of things got a remix to and they become these things that we put between ourselves and ourselves we are asking where is our self esteem?

How come we don't feel it?

We are blamed for if we don't.

You know that if we don't feel it, like, oh, well, if you don't have it self.

Ustaement is about your motherfuckerself.

So if you don't have it, it's a you problem.

I'm looking like, no, it's a week problem.

If everybody you see has a self esteem problem, then at what point does it stop being an individual problem.

And start being a systemic one.

I agree with that the system is all a in it.

It tells us which skin tones are desirable, It tells us which hair textures are desirable, which bodies are desirable.

It told us bbls are out right.

Now you're looking like they said, you don't see that.

All the girls are doing reversal.

Kardashians are getting Oh, I thought that was just mad, because Drake, you know, it returns to white and I thought they just did it.

There's a reclamation of like being white is COOLi in and I think it's started from the ozentbic era because what we realize is body positivity wasn't real and that actually kind of sucks because oh yeah.

No one likes Lozzone anymore because she lost weight, right, But the problem I mean probably the lawsuit, but I digress.

A little bit.

But now it makes you wonder does anyone really love themselves at that weight?

And it's tough because it's like there's a skinny girl fight of like, oh well, it's hard to be this way too, which I understand maybe you're super super small.

But at the end of the day, like even many antidotes to get bigger, people.

Are not People are not discriminating against people with bodies.

They may be there's interpersonal violence, right, like there's the fuck you skinny bitch, whatever, but there's not systemic There are not systems in place to discriminate against people with skinny bodies.

I've said that I love anyone who.

Is trying to say it probably also believes in reverse racism, also believes in reverse colorism, believes in reverse sexism, and I'm just like, if you're if you're going to go ahead and believe in the reverse, then why don't you put on your Sandy Clause hat too while you're at it, and maybe buy me some gifts and just pretend.

Because if you want to live over there in the land of make believe, that's your business.

You can do that.

But it does not exist.

Don't exist.

I said the same.

I'm like, people literally cannot fit.

Literally.

I lost the argument.

Like I had a conversation, especially like when I was bigger.

I ended up having weight loss surgery.

But when I talked about like the plight of the things that I had to go through being two hundred and thirty pounds at five foot one, regardless of how y'all think it was distributed, and it looked like whatever, because I've heard that too, while you were shapely whatever, Like there were things like I literally at one point was the size eighteen.

So the conversation of what that experience looked like, from getting into clubs, to how people treated me at restaurants, to what partners thought of me, to all the things.

When I spoke about that, and she's like, oh, well, you know that skinny folk like skinny people have skinny phobia too, and they're discriminating, the discriminated against and all that, And we had to have the conversation and it didn't go well, and our friendship never was the same after that, and she did end up dealing with her own interpersonal things.

But literally I wasn't gonna allow her to she really she was, and she had an eating disorder at the time, but regardless of whatever, her again, interpersonal relationships with her body looked like, Bro, it's.

You're not gonna It's not a worldwide issue.

It's just not so.

And I don't want to get too deep on that because that's a debate all on this thing.

I don't want us to appear like a red pill.

I think it's a easplination.

You said about interpersonal there's an influencer that someone just sent me.

Her name is Hallie Bachelor.

She's a really popular white girl.

She has a podcast as well, and she was sharing a clip with me about the girl talking about having to eating disorder, and there was a TikTok to me.

She's like, I know, I look disgusting.

She's very very thin, and she doesn't look disgusting.

She just looks like, oh, it's like an alarming spinny, and she's.

Like, I get it.

I know what I look like like.

I don't need you guys to tell me every day I'm trying.

And the next week, for the next time I saw her face, she was at a fashion week show, and all I could think to myself was, Okay, there is a skinny thing.

You are going to feel like.

Shit, someone's gonna talk shit to you.

But you're still in the rooms, You're still, you're still you still have the access.

So I don't tell them that they shouldn't be visible, that they shouldn't be there, right.

And you then have to take what they can get in terms of dating.

They like all of.

The things when I say it, but eat that exactly.

I'm just like, quite frankly, there is a fat body genocide going on outside and nobody wants to call it what it is.

I'm just like, we don't want to see fat bodies, and so we believe that those bodies should not exist in space.

How do we celebrate the body?

Then, in the body positivity movement, in letting people know that they look amazing as they are.

But then still, because that's the little thing that just happened to all of the internet, right, do you love it or do you not?

And I think that's what aspect.

Are we going to believe that the body's positivity movement is real?

Now?

That's basically what the internet is going through.

They're saying Lizzle is a liar because she decided to lose weight, and honestly, to me, I think there's a difference from weight loss journey health.

I think they.

Both weigh Like, I don't really care that Lizzie said she was on Ozimpic.

That bitch was posting workout videos damn near every day, like you know what I mean.

So it's like, okay, so you couldn't do both.

So I think it's just this whole thing of like where is the juxtaposition of your big stay that way?

And also you can do this thing for your health and we celebrate it too.

There's a difference between what society is saying about you and how you should exist and your own self esteem.

That's just what it is.

And may you all seem like it's about health, And I'm just like, okay in that case, if I want to make it true, if I want to make all problems about appearance about health.

You can argue the same thing about colorism, right, that it's actually healthier for.

You to be lighter skinned.

That's the science.

You are less likely to be harmed or discriminated against, You're more likely to be in spaces, more likely to get paid the money that you should for the job that you are doing.

They do not wholly discriminate against you in the same way.

In a hospital setting, for example, we just went through this whole lovely panini and they what they found out is that the pulse oximiter doesn't actually read very well through melanin.

So or they were sending people home who died at home.

So I'm saying that the world is set up also for white people and for white people.

Then from that you can argue that you should be bleaching.

I don't think that's true.

All right, cho hard on this one, but I'd like some people would.

We are in the era of my six hundred pounds life and motherfuckers with them pizzas on top of their ass and that shit.

Actually, you know what, I would even say, the most unhealthy thing a lot of my friends do, fuck big is the drinking.

They have habits where they just don't give a fuck about their body.

It's the drinking, it's going out, it's the like what even what they want?

Just not caring.

And it didn't hit me until I turned thirty that like, oh, I actually got to give a fuck while I'm putting in there.

However, what I will tell you, you know, all true honesty is I just.

Started giving a fuck like a week ago.

Which about your what you went in my bigger homegirls are actually not the most unhealthy ones I know.

No, I'm the most unhealthy one.

I know.

Like it's just.

Everyone that's either in the middle or either super skinny and just not paying attention.

But like, I think health could have something to do with it.

I just think we don't round it out to everybody.

I think that we live in a culture of health ism.

We've turned it into another ism.

It's another thing to judge people by.

It becomes a conversation about the morality of a person, whether or not we perceived them as being a healthy person or an unhealthy person.

I mean only and what we believed us that it's at we ask you who getting tested and who fucking wrong?

But thereabout it?

Want to be healthy until you ask nigga if he wrape it up.

It's so funny because me and my homegirl, we're just having this conversation and we literally just had she hit someone recently.

And when I say recently, in the last six months, we had both recently had somebody that we were casually having sex with.

Both of these men asked, so, how long do we have to fuck until I could take the kind of all?

Not not when will we get together?

How long until this goes to the next step?

The question was literally, so, how long how many times do we have to do this before I could fuck you?

Row?

What?

And we literally just sat on the phone and was like, bitch, you guys asked that too, And I had to tell her who asked me?

And I said, what's crazy is we're not even fucking now.

He said this by maybe the third, third, or fourth time we fucked, and it was just like and then, well, maybe that's the next step.

Well, I mean, well, I guess everyone wants to live like Stefan disposed to ask that question.

You're not supposed to ask that question.

No, wait about fucking raw?

Hold on, wait, wait, wait, wait, that conversation comes up.

Yeah, but that shouldn't be a question that you asked like that, that's my I'm saying on the conversation about being healthy, Like to be fair, it's the same thing.

Let's just call everybody at this point a hypocrite.

If you said someone believes in a skinny phobia, that means.

They believe in reverse racism verse all this.

At that point, it's a hypocritical, dumb ass question to ask if you are casually having sex with someone that you possibly have no intention on being with, marrying, co parenting, with having children with, when can I find I'm.

Actually really serious?

I mean, some people want to be with you, maybe with other bonding.

How what is the appropriate way to tell somebody like can we do this up?

I don't think it's a hypnop.

We how often are we geting?

How often do you want to get tested?

Do we need to get tested in every month?

Are we exclusively having sex together?

Like the idea that anyone would.

Casually want to have unprotected sex with you without wanting to further the relationship, to me is nuts.

The fact that we were casually having sex.

I'm casually having sex with other people.

We're talking, I know you're having with other women When the when the conversation is that we're both out doing our thing and not really looking to be serious.

To me, at no point until you're ready to have some sort of an exclusive conversation, should you even have the gall to ask me when you can fuck me?

What if you guys are each other's main partners just because you don't want a relationship, even if I think it's absolutely okay to have conversations about what level to take the.

Set, Yeah, so cool, have the conversation.

I'm saying, it's it's that in no way is a question.

Like me and my friend responded the same way.

If we're casual partners, I don't care if you're the main and I fuck you ten times a month, but I only fuck another guy wants every other month.

That's an open relationship to me.

But that's what I'm saying.

And as for as long as everyone is fucking other people, I personally don't want any man, any of my boyfriends, any of my casual partners to ask me, so when can I fuck you?

Rong, especially as a woman who has chosen not to want to have children and does not want to catch anything out here like bro Like, I don't know to me cool.

It could be a conversation for all of y'all out here that I think it feels so much better.

But to me, if you're in a casual relationship as a man, to ask a woman, when can I get in them guts raw?

As a man who's not pursuing anything further, I think it's a disrespectful question to ask.

That's he asked you disrespectfully, But the conversation does come up between casual partners like that.

To me, I think it's a disrespectful question nonetheless, like for you in parentheses, and it's okay that it's disrespectful for you.

For other people, it's not disrespectful.

For me.

It's a conversation of how do you communicate?

When do you communicate?

And what are you communicating?

A lot of people they be they talk, but they don't say shit.

So and there's a lot of people who never get to the point.

And someone asking you outright like hey, when would it be cool for me to have sex with you without a condom?

I think that that's a pretty good question to have if they have it, But it doesn't mean that it's a good a good question for you to receive on your end without the added piece around commitment.

And I think not only people don't know that until they know that, if you don't say it, they don't know, which means they've got to ask not only commitments.

And I guess I can only speak so strongly about that.

You have a chapter in your book that talks about communication with yourself, yes, right, and how that folk is self.

Self talk is a real thing, And so I guess, like where wanting to allow all of y'all if y'all out here fucking multiple people raw whooped de doo in my goddamn young Doug boys like, good for you, you know what I mean.

But for me, I think why I can feel so passionate about that is because I've had those talks with myself.

I'm very confident in how I feel and treat my body, and like, to me, I know I don't want pregnancy, I don't want an STD.

I know that I'm out here with multiple partners.

I know that you have multiple partners.

Actually, because the communication between me and my partners is so open and honest, the question about when you get to fuck me raw to me is crazy because if that's a conversation with me but other three you don't know well three or four times into fucking me, and I know you're fucking other people.

I have to assume I'm saying, well, but he don't know you write anyone, anyone that is encountering you, you have to assume that, assume that they're encountering you for the first time.

This is my first time in a room with y'all.

Like I have been aware of y'all.

You have never been aware of me.

Right.

It's like when people be like, oh, I know Obama, okay, but Boo, you know TV Obama, you know over there Obama?

You know you know that one.

You don't know Obama right right like, And even then even if you know them, they don't know you, right Like in my mind, I know Beyonce, Beyonce does not know me, and I'm just like, true, that's okay, that's okay.

So that means that they have questions.

They're going to have questions.

So however you do your sex life stuff, actually, however you do stuff in general.

The point is this, no one can ever read your mind.

And if you are expecting people to be able to read your mind and thus to perform according to what they presumed about you.

Y'all are always going to have a miscommunication.

There's always going to be a misfire, And really those are some of the seeds that sprout up these type of relationships that everybody says that they don't want because no one wants to take actual accountability, which is different from responsibility.

Responsibility and accountability.

Responsibility is task oriented.

Accountability is outcome oriented.

If the shit don't work out every single time, are you doing the same shit?

Like when is your role in the thing?

Nobody wants to talk about their role.

We just want to talk about somebody else's role.

So where it comes to that piece of it, I'm like, well, nobody knows whether or not it's okay to fuck you raw until they are.

So he did what is responsible for him to do?

If you do, if you don't even like the outcome that someone would ask you this type of question, that's where you leave, Like, Hey, you and I are going to be sex partners.

I am having sex with other people.

You're one of seven or however, and I do not have sex with anybody wrong who I'm not in a fully committed relationship with.

So please do not ask, and do not stealth because that is illegal.

Oh we talked about sealth, and y'all can read about myself and storry in the No host Bar to doing manifest those sex talks pering it.

I read it and I was just like, both of y'all were very raw and very real, and I thank you.

I noticed the connection between drunk watermatch business and No Holds Bar.

I was just like, and these things go together, both hand and hand.

So we're gonna get into our truth and their portion of the show.

And we did Truth and the Air because is you gotta do both?

We know everybody gonna choose truth, And I said, no, we're gonna get these hosts there, so truth and are you don't get to choose.

You gotta do both.

So for truth leaning into self esteem, I would love you to share with us because this is a vulnerable show.

What is one of the biggest insecurities that you've faced in dating and are you still dealing with it?

If not, how did you overcome that?

Insecurity?

I'm so damn cute.

It's just so hard.

The worst, like ah, the worst as a person.

Goodness, Okay, let me see, but for real, like I've been sitting in this and I'm just like, I really do not know, and.

I think I don't know because one of the things that often came to me while I was dating, particularly when I was in college.

I went to the illustrious Morgan State University.

There we go, premier HBC.

You in all the land, I said, all the lands?

So yes, you got.

It.

Yeah, they're gonna, They're gonna come to me.

And that's okay because my bears got me.

I know they do.

I know they do.

But by the time I when I got there, what I encountered for the kind of dudes that would say things like you're the marrying kind.

I don't know what that.

I was just like, oh, so then I can't just we can't play I'm the marrying kind.

Cool.

But then I met mister booth Thang.

Okay, and I met him in two thousand and five.

I had a boyfriend when I got there.

Oh then I did not have a boyfriend for too much longer after that, and then it was me and mister booth Thang.

Okay.

So your insecurity was that you felt like the perception of you was so wholesome that you didn't get to kind of have fun.

Yeah, I mean and I didn't.

I don't think that I knew how either, right.

I knew that my life had up to that point had been about how do you do for others?

Uh?

You know Nigerian parents, doctor.

Lawyer, engineer.

You have to be an example for your sisters.

I'm the oldest of four, so it's like you have to be the one to do everything correct.

No, no, no, no, give it to us harder.

You better know, disappoint me?

Do you think I came to this country for this day?

So it's like, okay, how do I do what they are asking in a way that still honors who I am?

But also, you know, organ.

Be on college?

Fine, And I'll say this, I didn't really succeed in that.

I didn't start dating until after college when me and miss the booth thing broke.

God, now we did come back around.

But husband, yes, okay, it's okay.

How long was the break up?

We actually just had an episode where we were talking about do you need to break up in order for to know if the relationship is worth it?

Oh, we broke up more than once?

How many times?

This is our third time?

The third times?

The term okay, So we got together in two thousand and five, two thousand and six, broke up in two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, got back together for like two months in two thousand and nine.

Okay, that's right, that's right.

Okay, so almost twenty years though of yeah, okay, got back together in like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, been together.

Okay, so ten years months and then ten years is such a oh yeah, because that that second breakup was fuck you fuck you, don't call me, don't call me?

Who unblocked each other first?

Who did it?

I don't block, nobody never open, I don't block.

I'm just like, don't call me here just but so who called who first?

I called it?

Just like just like oh observed, right, Okay, this.

As bad as being the blocker and unblocking.

Does the double back come from you feeling lonely officially feeling single?

Or were you just like I want some dick?

What was the reason for that?

I actually came to terms with the fact that I made very well just be single for the rest of my life, right Like it was one of those things where like it was after I had a date where a guy got on his knees in the mud, wrapped his arms around my waist and said, your wound is where I want to make my life.

Now here's the problem.

WHOA, yeah, it was scary.

This is the first number one, it's the first date.

Number two.

It was let's go on a let's turn.

Amanda's that on the first date, I'm calling the cops.

Nine.

We weren't garden.

All of a sudden it emptied.

Out and I was just like.

And I was just like, oh gosh, I might die here.

Oh I would be scared.

Uh huh.

I was like, oh, oh, this is the end I want to live.

Like, oh that's okay, you yeah, okay, describe the esthetic man, I don't know.

Wait ho teping?

This was white Man's like, oh yeah, I don't.

Girl, down't blame me.

You you shouldn't have been a girl, not life yoga?

Why are you doing it?

Like?

I got catfish just a little bit because I'm just like, well, the picture and the person who.

Came did not match up.

But and then he said that yes, And I was just like, we're here in this space, we're alone.

I'm just like, how do I get back to my car?

You want to not end up flowers?

Real bad girl, I'm just like you're pushing up daisies.

So I was just like, wow, okay, I mean that's cool.

We could we could talk about we could talk, we could talk about there ain't nothing to talk about.

I actually actually started screaming about us.

I'm excited.

I'm about to make you talk because the dare, the dare, I'm gonna make you talk.

Cover your ears, boothing so for this, because we like to spice it up a little bit.

Okay, let's keep it.

Pretend that you're a phone sex operator.

Give your opening line in character, in the sexiest tones to assure that the collar gets hooked.

I need three sentences, minimal ready, and you gotta get it.

Hey, I've got about ninety seconds.

My wife's about to come back in this room.

I just need to release m Well, you know why you're here.

I know why you're here.

Release you have my profession.

I asked for it.

Then get off the phone.

All right, yeah, I want to ask I would have We're tight.

I'm saying, my god, do you like to have sex with me?

I'm not I'm not baby voice, I'm not anything.

I'm like, I am not a Google.

You No, I don't Google.

I don't got God, I'm just like, hey, wait, you've never seen.

A sexy text message to booth thing like.

While he was at work, he was like, I pictures speak.

I don't.

Oh, you don't do that.

I'm like, hey, you want to have sex when you come home.

I'm not gonna hold you.

Yes, I used to my sexty.

Will let me get that nut later, you.

Know what I mean.

I mean sometimes I'll even be like, hey, you want to be my sex toy?

Well, I asked if I can be their sex toy.

I always ask that.

I am never the sex toy.

I know that happens like that.

It's reparations for orgasms loss from other women.

That's funny.

I'm not bad at that.

I'm that other women and not not just your Oh.

No, not no, no, she said, there's no problems.

There's no problems.

No problem.

Now, I wanted to get into another segment, a little rebrand because y'r niggas.

Apparently we can't say homie.

So from the bedroom to the courtroom, we're taking this bitch to court.

Okay, I'm gonna play a clip and I want us all to decide if she is guilty or if she is innocent.

Now, when I play this clip, you were going to decide if she is actually guilty of having low self esteem and a lack of boundaries or if she is an innocent victim of a man.

Okay, probably here goes the clip.

I feel like at this.

Boy, I've been doing this situationship with Joel for over like twenty years, and I really don't know what you want.

I don't think he knows what you wants.

I'm glad you said yes, though you know I don't want to seem too clingy.

What do you mean cleaned?

You're not clingy enough?

Like it's homeboy and homegirl.

I mean, I don't know what time, why you want to put a title on it.

It's like, why am I here?

Why did you invite me on to Danner?

Why are you doing all this?

Why did you put the tablecloth in the candle and the flowers and all this extra stuff, ma'am?

Okay, you said you know you've done You've seen it.

No, that is e No.

Is she guilty or innocent?

She's guilty guilty.

Of a like number one.

Geez, okay, let me take a moment.

Okay, okay, number one.

It sounds like there is some damnage self esteem there taking weight like.

It sounds like she knows what she deserves and she knows that she's not getting it, but she's also not doing anything about it.

So I talk about self esteem on a spectrum, being from secure self esteem, the next would be fragile self esteem.

You die by the likes, So whether or not somebody compliments you will be the thing that either it gases up your entire day or your entire night.

Damage self esteem is the one I see most often in Black women because inside we know, we know, but outside we don't say anything, we don't do anything different, okay, And then there's vacant self esteem.

It's just not there.

You don't have it.

And where do you think she?

I think you're I don't.

I mean, because it's not the spectrum.

She could be in several spaces all at once.

But number one the place I have you pause.

I'm looking like you're asking the questions to the wrong person.

It's not why did you ask me out?

Is why did you accept?

Twenty years is two decades.

That's two tens, y'all, that's two ten man.

You could have two ten year olds or one twenty year old child that is wild with the same.

Can I ask you, then, in terms of situationship, would you say that overall a woman in a situationship has little self esteem?

Like would you she chose to be in a situationship.

If they're okay with a situationship, then really you have you probably have secure self esteem.

You know what you want, You've asked for what you want, and you're behaving in a way that is also aligned with the thing that you want.

Now she clearly wants more.

This is the with love.

With love, with love, I mean it with love.

This is the equivalent of saying that you are a spectator at a circus and that you don't know how this clown got here when you actually are in one of the rings with them, because you too are a clown.

Oop, What up, barnum?

How area a situationship last until you become the clown for staying in it?

As the first you become a clown when you compromise.

There's a difference between compromising and being compromised.

The second you become compromised, you became one who wore the red nose at this circus.

You gave up yourself, You gave up what you wanted, You gave up what you knew, you gave up what you like in order to stick around with this dude that won't even you, just you, my special friend.

Wait, how long do you believe?

Because this is how, in my opinion, situation start.

It's a man saying they ain't ready yet.

If he ain't ready to move on, only only if you want something, if you want something.

And I say that all the time.

Hey, I know that a pop fives drive through and they do not have the chicken ready, and they tell me it's gonna be like twenty years to you know, twenty twenty one minute, this chicken is gonna be ready.

I'm going somewhere else.

I have to now decide whether or not I'm willing to wait here for the time where this thing is going to drop.

And I think that we are forgetting the part where we have to ask ourselves are we willing to wait?

And women in particular are socialized to wait, socialized to give up of themselves in order to be with someone else, and to believe that life starts if a man, specifically a man is present, regardless of whether or not you are gay, lesbian.

As the day is loan, they will still be waiting for your true come uption when you are with a man.

So to see someone that pretty, who's probably very smart in other areas of life, but not emphasising it here, It's like, what are all of the circumstances and who contributed to the circumstances?

Because I do not believe that she got there by herself.

I think other people helped her to be there.

I'm wondering who are the who are the perpetrators in your life that help that helped dress you in clown gear, who drove you to the circus and told you that just wait five more minutes.

I would like.

To say, I do think some of these clowns paint themselves.

Let me tell you why.

I think a lot of the women that end loving situationships are fucking liars.

I think they are telling these men that they really good.

I'm looking for god your shit too.

I'm dating other people too.

I have had so many women they hope to get yours.

Oh I cannot be a We cannot be that cool, bro.

There's not that many cool girls in the world.

I'm good you good like if that's what all you look like?

No, if you know you want love Suddenly.

We sound stupid for saying it out loud.

And it's like you can have both have the situationship while you keep shopping right to me, it's like a job no can your application that you don't you don't.

You don't say I want to work at this company and that one only and that's the only place I'm ever going to apply and hope.

Here's what I mean, here's why I think it's wrong.

What if that one job is really your north star.

Let's just the one job can be your north star.

But it doesn't mean that you don't work until you get the north.

But the problem is if you got Netflix that picks you up for gigs sometimes and then let's just say there's a twob here and there and the other little fucking app that I don't know that at the end of the day, though, when you keep the situationship alive and just fuck other people, it actually does kill the spirit a little bit because your heart is always tied somewhere and these women got to cut the cord because you never really go and date for real if.

You don't do part beside to a lot.

Okay, I.

I mean, well, I'm in to meet a normal person.

When I say normal, like, I don't.

I haven't put a label on it.

But all four of my partners are aware of each other.

We text every day like there's time and time that we spend.

For each other.

Relationship can we I mean, a situationship to me.

Is something that's not there's not a committable title.

There's not like plans to move in or do things together like to me.

To me, there's not when we think of relationships, right, there's normally this uh I don't want to say hierarchy, but there's normally a path, right, Okay.

Well, now we have the title.

After the title, then comes the baby or then comes moving in home to that, then it's meeting the parents, and it's that.

To me, I think a lot of people would identify the kind of relationships that I'm currently in is situationships because I don't have those markers to mark what these relationships are any given point, or the seriousness of them.

Because to me, we're like, I'm in a place where I genuinely want partners that I can enjoy life with.

And so to me, if I'm talking to a person who believes the monogamy or who doesn't believe in someone being able to have their heart in space for a lot of different people at the same time.

I think a lot of people would look at my situation as situationships, and I think that that's often what situationships are.

I don't think a lot of people would because you have four of them.

A situationship is generally described as someone that is doing all the things of the relationship, meeting the family, i e.

Spending holidays together, and no title.

So if you have multiple partners, you're dating acsual.

But a situationship is generally when there is an imbalance of like or I would even describe it as a relationship that confuses others and yourself.

So like let's just say, I'm like, oh, he's not my boyfriend.

We've all been around it.

Y'all together.

Oh no, we're not.

But y'all live together, y'all got it.

They're spending all this time photos, they're the person that you choose for all these things.

That's like situationship is.

I'm saying that I've heard of some as a therapist that's the second relationship therapist.

There have been many a person male and female who.

Come in the therapy talking about the relationship they're in where that person calls them their friend.

That is how they get introduced outside while being kissed on the neck.

I'm like at night, create fights.

Around certain large things, right like holidays, Balentine's Days, usually when a lot of people come because they realize that they are not whatever they thought they was.

So people come around.

Then they come around Christmas, they come around birthday, birthday.

They come around like I got this promotion and I was going to go out to dinner and this person basically embarrass the dog shit out of me.

I look like, yeah, because you go with them, they don't go with you.

That's your boyfriend, but you're not their girlfriend.

That's the problem.

And the thing is you already knew that.

Now you're just acting brand new, trying to figure out why we all acting friends.

He's a situationship while fucking other people because I think you're just waiting for that person.

To say the other people will help you out of that, damn And it will because somebody.

Work.

Because part of the problem is that you have there's a part where you're playing a zero some game where it comes to a situationship.

You are you are now counting how much time, how much energy that you've put in, and you feel like if I pull out now I've wasted all this stuff.

Like if you say you still waste it, if I'm looking in on top of that, it doesn't have to be a waste because too many of us also see a relationship end as a relationship fail.

It is not a fail to pivot because say that this thing actually doesn't work.

The biggest failure that I've ever seen.

I've seen a lot of people that didn't need to get married get married.

That's a failure.

Oh you do not win because you got a ring.

Congratulations.

That's a shut up ring and a shut up marriage with somebody who doesn't even like you.

It just wants you to shut up.

You lost he ultimate them girl word, because I'm just like, well, you got men don't want you to go anywhere either, because they comfortable with you right there.

So if you say you get them everything that they want, but they don't have to give you anything, it's the equivalent of saying, hey, I got this penthouse apartment.

It's twenty thousand dollars a month, and I accidentally only charge you three hundred dollars a month.

I'm supposed to call you and tell you, hey, you under charge me?

Please?

You love an analogy, huh?

I love an analogy.

I'm a clients like an analogy, you know, like growing one.

And if that because I'm just saying that, like sometimes when you can see it differently if you take it yourself out the situation, right, So if I because I believe that anyone that I've met is a penthouse, I'm like, you are offering pit house level benefits.

It's nice, it's secure, it's clean, it's got nice windows, it got a beautiful view, it's at the top, it's lovely, and you are treating yourself like you that dingy apartment down on the corner.

We're a basement apartment with no windows, like with low ceilings and clearly like the side of a dead body.

So I'm just like, so you are treating yourself like you ain't shit, And I wonder why.

I wonder who helped you to learn that that is your place?

Because again, self esteem is not the individual's failing alone.

It is the individual and their community.

So I'm like, who taught you that your job is to lower everything there is about you?

In order to be accessible to somebody who's not supposed to have access.

You sit where you are in the penthouse.

If they can't, if.

They can't pay the rent, they can't come.

You can meet them outside and have a good time on occasion, but they can't come upstairs.

Leave their asses outside.

For women who find themselves constantly in these situationships, for women who constantly aren't being chosen quote unquote, or selected or given titles.

I mean what you said, what I mean it's not chosen is they also did not choose themselves.

That's the part that I think it's lost.

And I talk about that while they out here, you choosing you though, So like, have you seen that movie about the little white pig faced girl Penelope?

No, I feel like I can't spoil with the pig with the pig nose.

She got the pig nose the cartoon, But I ain't got kids.

It's not a cartoon, but it was, it was, It was a movie.

It was like christ I don't know what does she wins Adams?

Okay, I'm making up names.

What was it?

Okay?

So basically Penelope, he was right by the way.

Her name is Christina Ritchie Christina Rich watch me work.

She was in Casper.

That's how she was in That's the movie right there, the like if you were about to be spoiled, just turn away and with a spoon.

That's a white I know.

So in this movie she has this nose and the curse is that she will not be beautiful until you can get one of your own to love her, right to want to be with her.

And they think that means get a man to marry her, knowing that she got a whole big nose and that if she you know, kisses at the wedd end the boom, she'll be transformed.

Cute nose all that.

What they didn't know is that it was not specific to a dude.

One of your own must accept her.

She had parents who didn't.

She didn't accept herself, and that's how she freed.

She freed herself because she was just like I like how I am.

That's what got her the nose, That's what changed the whole appearance.

I'm saying that in these situations people are doing the exact same thing.

You didn't give it to you.

You're waiting to be chosen.

You didn't choose you either.

That's the part that I find to be object number one not only sad, but it's the shit that pisses me off because it makes me look at mama difference, It makes me look at your daddy different, It makes me look at what friends did you have growing up?

And what the hell did society tell them to tell you to remove your self esteem in that way that it like it pisses me off, it makes me sad at the same time because under the systems of oppression that we have, nobody feels like they are indeed the shit that they are.

Everybody feels like they some shit, not the shit.

What it is so damning yourself?

Like when getting stuck in these situations that might be almost a roadmap like is it saying no?

Like what is choosing yourself look like?

It's saying no and yes.

I think that when we think of boundaries, we think of the no.

I think of what's the part that if you say no to this thing, what can you now say yes too?

Right?

So, if you're saying yes to a pleasure filled life, not just a pleasure filled bedroom, you would make different choices, right Like the way that you talk to a partner about what you want sexually is very much full of your boundaries because it's about the things that you like and feel good for you and to you like, oh yeah, do that again, right, like, oh yeah, do it faster, do it slower?

You are you are directing this thing so that you can reach the whatever pinnacle of pleasure you're looking for.

For some people, just straight pleasure is fine.

I mean, we don't need to go chasing orgasms.

So that doesn't mean you shouldn't be trying to.

Yeah, you should get it, but it's funny.

It's like, how do you make your life orgasm?

And even with a partner, I think is important, Like even like recently, like I've been talking about the things that make me happy and also is that something that I can enjoy with you as a partner.

So whether it be traveling, whether it be certain foods, like I'm not dating a nigga that don't like sushi.

It is a pleasure of my life and you're not gonna take it away from it.

Like I date a man, I date my husband and we don't like a lot of the same things, and it's okay because for me, I'm just like he's also not the end all be all, He's not the son of my universe.

I am the son.

I am at the center.

It doesn't exist without me but the orbit, and he is one person in my orbit.

I receive lots of pleasure, and I hope I give lots of pleasure to miss the booth thing.

But he is not the only source of pleasure in my life.

I love that right.

I have friends, I have family, I have other I have other people in my life who are I'm friendly with, but we're not friends.

And that's how I classify people.

I'm like, yeah, we're friendly, we're not friends.

All of these people can bring pleasure, and I can also give pleasure, both sexual and non sexual pleasure all as wherever I can spread it, I spread it.

And I'm like, this conversation brings me pleasure my husban, then it's not facilitating that.

And he doesn't need to.

So everything that I love, he don't have to.

Everything that I want to do, he don't got to.

We fell in love over love of roller coasters, things like that, and I'm not even into those anymore.

You cannot give you this girl.

You cannot give me.

Ask me if because I live in the south now and the fair is coming and She's like, girl, you go to the fair and I said, it's not them right.

They put them too fast.

For me and put them up, you take them down.

I remember that being like, oh my god, my mom's gonna let me go to the fucking fairgrounds.

Especially growing up in Orlando, that.

Used to be thinking, oh no, now I'm going for the games and the niggas was at the fair.

It was that there in the mall, people be outside, they were there, they was there.

Well, I do want to leave out of here with one last thing.

In terms of your book, drink water and mind your business.

What would you want a reader to take away from it?

And who do you think this book is specifically for?

This book is my love letter to black women.

Black women are often not centered in these conversations about self esteem, which makes no sense to me.

And there are they're like fifty eleven books outside about self esteem.

And if you didn't mention racism, I'm trying to figure out what the hell you did right, if you didn't mention sexism, I'm trying to figure out what the hell you did?

How did you forget the systems that are impacting people's ability to even access the self esteem that they had when they were kids, right, and that people systematically took away from them.

So for me, I know who the book is for.

And the thing that I really want people to get from this is that when I say drink water and mind your business, I mean it literally and I also mean it figuratively.

So for me, the drink water.

The dehydrated body does not have good orgasms, So drink.

Your water period.

And because nobody else can drink water for you, so you have to do some work, but you also have to find the access to the tap to get it, which means surrounding yourself in the community of people who will help to pour into you so that you can drink that.

The mind your business is not the one that everyone else knows where It's like mind your motherfucker it no, no, no, mind your business, as in the way my mom says it, fix your front, mind yourself, mind your business.

That means actually pay attention to what it is that you are doing.

So for me, it's pay attention to what you are taking in, pay attention to what you are putting out, and pay attention to the things that you say you desire.

Do they belong to you or do they belong to someone who has aggrandized themselves to believe that they know you better than you know yourself, because people always think they know you better.

I don't like that.

Saying attention to what you say out loud is important.

The universe listens to me crazy.

I get every single thing I want.

She gets a little too.

Or I can do that even when it's a down thing you say to yourself.

I think the best thing to tell others is like it out in the world that you hate something about yourself even if you're alone in the room.

Isn't something any of us want to do, Like is.

It even true?

Do you hate that thing about yourself?

Or have other people hated that thing about you so much that you have decided to do their jobs for them boom and take it on as something that now you have to hate about yourself.

I think those are like meeting yourself at various ages.

I'm just like it's cute, right, like the idea, like people like to push this thing, like, you know, like meeting me at this age versus this.

I'm like, you probably never met you.

I'm sorry, you probably haven't met you.

What you have met is the version of you that you have pretended to be in order for other people to feel comfortable, for other people to feel like they own you, for other people to feel like they can like you.

A lot of us are the exact people that our parents wanted us to be.

We're not who we are.

So did you meet you or did you meet the version of them of you that they wanted for you?

And at what point do you get to meet you?

And hold on to that because I think we have glimmers.

We have those moments where we meet ourselves and those usually have the moments where other people get big mad and then we go right back to wearing the mask that makes them comfortable.

Girls, stop giving a book out, y'all, drink.

Water, and my business, a Black Woman's Guide to Unlearning the BS and Healing your Self Esteem, is available now wherever you get books like with us.

Please please please buy from.

Your local black owned, women owned, queer owned bookstores.

Get it from Amazon, get it wherever you get your books, source books dot com.

That's is that on the back, So there goes that.

Uh, thank you doctor for joining us.

We appreciate you so so so very much.

And where can everyone follow you?

So maybe hire you because ladies is working, where are you selling them?

To donadriobo dot com.

You can follow me on at doctor Donald Orioo and from there you can get everywhere.

And those will also be in the description of this episode.

As always, thank you guys for tuning in and only because we talked about manifesting earlier.

If you're in Atlanta, you can catch me now on hot on A seven nine off the clock from six to eight.

Yes, your girl literally went to Atlanta, got her and got damn radio show like I said I would, so power of the tongue is real.

Believe in yourself.

Also, if you guys want bonus content, Patreon dot com, backslash Horrible Decisions, we Ain't go nowhere Baby, and also no holds Barred available now wherever you get books you next week, bang y'all