I think it's safe to say that you feel my pain if you've ever encountered men who wanted to casually date you instead of viewing you as a woman who they can give a title to. To be honest, this treatment falsely affirmed in my mind that no matter what I would do, the only guys who would want me would be the ones who craved immediate and short-term attention instead of men who liked to plan surprise dates for their girlfriends, brag to their friends about shopping for engagement rings, or write the sweetest messages to their women they nicknamed their "other half".
My constant disappointment led me to think about the ways I could start preparing myself for the one who would want to become committed to me—which I eventually did—and what behaviors I would have to change in order to stay out of the casual friend zone. Here are ways I changed the tone of what I wanted in my love life for the better.
Get comfortable in having uncomfortable talks.
Oftentimes, the miscommunication in thinking that I was the "fun girl" instead of the "ideal woman" was because I got afraid of asking the important "where do we stand or where do you see this going?" questions to men I really wanted to be in a relationship with. So how did I get past this?
I had to give myself permission to be content with any man that didn't value long-term commitment and consistent communication. If I found myself asking questions such as, How come we never go out on dates? Why do I only hear from him weekly instead of every other day? Why doesn't he express himself to me? What about me makes him flirty and physically attracted to me but never emotionally available for me?, then I knew it was time to ask for honest answers.
I didn't always get the answer I wanted, and girl, nobody likes rejection. Hearing I liked someone way more than they liked me felt like someone added extra gratuity on a tab that I didn't see coming. But, was it worth it to know the answers before I invested months or even years thinking that he would eventually change and wife me up? Absolutely! Becoming more comfortable asking these questions with the men I wanted to be with was a big timesaver instead of trying to break down the meaning of his mixed-signals to my girls every chance I got. At the end of the day, words can sometimes be just words, so I knew I had to take this a step further to really get more results from the men I pursued.
Master the art of studying habits instead of words/actions.
My rule of thumb is to trust habits over words and actions. Serious question, how many talks about a guy's behavior was I going to have with him? The more I started observing the things he was consistent in doing, such as texting me only at night or while he's at work, the conversations that interested him, the activities/places he was consistently talking about going, or how he treated me when I was and wasn't around him, a lot of things made sense. I made the choice to take off the rose-colored glasses and get my answers in studying his behaviors. A man who is looking for a woman to be committed to will show it in his daily actions, habits, and movements.
Habits are a part of who we are. It's much easier to trust a person who repeatedly shows you how they feel, versus someone who just throws in a few words or a few actions here and there. This also meant the same for me, I made sure my actions matched my "I want to be a girlfriend" language.
Stick to people, places and things that mirror what I wanted.
Instead of complaining about why I can't find a man, I started to spend more time doing things that would attract the right kind of men. I took myself out on dates, went to the gym, and embraced hanging around my friends who had successful relationships. I didn't want to be bitter about not having the man of my dreams, because why should the next person take on my emotional baggage from my previous dating life?
As much as I could, I avoided the guys who actively looked for one-night stands, stopped talking to my exes who wanted situationships, and any other people or hangout areas where I knew I would be wasting my time. I sought becoming a walking brand that demonstrated I am more than worthy for a great man and I'm not interested in being anyone's friend with benefits.
Getting treated like the queen you are can be a real struggle, but it's not impossible. Hopefully, these strategies that I used for myself can help you narrow down the kind of man that is looking for the same qualities as you are.
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Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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