Love trouble? Keep your mouth shut!!

Nene Leakes

You know people have grown up when they start giving others good, sensible relationship advice.

Nene Leakes, she of Desperate Wives of Atlanta (is that the name of the show?) fame, is one such woman who recently showed that somewhere within her she knows the mature thing to do.

Money quote when Leakes was asked what Evelyn Lozada, who married Chad Johnson, had him arrested five weeks later for domestic abuse, and then filed for divorce immediately thereafter, should do:

“I wanted to reach out to her, but I didn’t. I feel like when people are going through something I’m confused about whether I should say something or not, because so many people are saying stuff to them. .. The only advice I would have for Evelyn is to be quiet. I wouldn’t say anything else. To me, it makes matters worse and I would be quiet and try to it handle privately.”

Amen, Amen, Amen. Leakes is not terribly good at taking her own advice, given that she has discussed her love life in front of the cameras for a living over the last few years, but she actually knows the right thing to do in such situations.

There is simply no better advice when love goes sour. Keep your mouth shut and deal with things in private. Do not talk to your sorority friends, do not talk to your hairdresser, do not talk to your office girlfriends around the water cooler, do not post anything about it on Facebook (not even cryptically) and, most definitely, do not talk to the press.

Childish gestures: Chad Johnson/Chris Brown

On to that, one should add … don’t tattoo his or her face on your belonging to try to prove that you are still in love with that person. That sort of thing is juvenile and foolish and only a woman or man of low self-regard will fall for it.

Speaking of tattoos, I have advice for our young men and women out there. In our day (there he goes again) it was not classy to air one’s dirty love linen in public. That meant you did whatever you could to keep your private business at home. Come to think of it, that’s why it was almost unheard of for anyone to marry another and then divorce them within days. Even when you fought, it was behind closed doors. You simply invested in dark sunglasses and layers of makeup to hide the battle scars.

… the one thing you must NEVER do is go blabbering about it. Keep your mouth shut if you have to do it with safety pins. Do not breathe a word of your feelings to anyone until you have given yourself time to internalize what it all means to you.In the heat of the moment, you will likely respond without thinking and that is the worst thing you can do when you are faced with such a situation. Don’t talk to anyone until you have thought things through thoroughly. If that takes weeks, so be it.

The reason for that was simple: love is a complicated phenomenon that few people have total control over. As Rihanna now knows, to her cost, you don’t stop loving someone because he has beaten you to a pulp. But we live in a world where public opinion can make or break your heart so you have to make sure that you keep it as far as you can from your relationship.

Yes, that means not tattooing your lover’s face on your leg or neck.

Goodness, why are such simple things so difficult for our young people to understand? How have they been raised?  The better question perhaps should be: who is raising these kids?

Related article

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2. Rihanna 1 – Chris Brown 3