A couple of weeks ago, as I attempted to listen to the radio (throwback music fans can read between the lines there; some of this music these days is violating as hell), it was like the universe was begging me to pen this article. First, it was Lilo Thomas’s “Wanna Make Love (All Night Long).” Then it was Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” (question: why I gotta throw my clothes on the floor when he’s gonna gently take his off?). Then it was (and this is my jam — but still) Lorenzo’s “Make Love to Me” (yes, I finally went to a throwback station to get all of this). And while one part of me had my head and neck swaying from left to right, another part of me was low-key irritated…like I almost always am…whenever I hear the phrase “make love.”
Sex. As making love. What in the world? I mean, if only married (or folks in long-term committed relationships…and I do mean more than just three months) were saying it, I could kind of get it. Okay, but you’ve been seeing someone, and after a few days, y’all have sex, and you say that he made love to you? How is that even possible? In the immortal words of NeNe Leakes, I feel like when love is tossed around so casually like that, it’s somewhere asking, “Now, why am I in it?”
Yeah…we’re gonna go there today. And while I totally get that this is my opinion, not everyone will agree, and there will be some pushback, please just entertain why, when it comes to describing a sexual experience, “make love,” more times than not (at least these days), is not the responsible depiction of what’s actually going on.
Where Did the Phrase “Make Love” Even Come From?
GiphyOkay, so before we get into why I feel so strongly about “make love” as I do, let’s look into its origin story because I promise you that I have wondered, for years now, who even came up with the concept. I did some digging, and the closest thing that I could find is an English writer by the name of John Lyly, who once penned a piece calledHow To Make Love to the Moon: Intimacy and Erotic Distance, seemingly around 1590 — and he wasn’t talking about sex at all. He was actually referencing romance and courtship. Oh, but by the 20th century, it was used a bit more broadly, and then by the 1940s, it had become the slang term that it is now.
So, let’s start there, shall we? Initially, "make (produce) love (deep affection)" had nothing to do with the bedroom at all. It was about doing things to bring two people closer together on a mental and emotional level. Sex was so not the agenda.
Now bookmark that, please, as we move right along.
Why 'Make Love' Is One of the Most Irresponsible Phrases Around
GiphyI already know. Some of y’all are gonna say, “So, are you saying that sex doesn’t produce deep affection?” It can. It most certainly can. My pushback would be that casual sex doesn’t do that, though. I mean, the mere definition of casual includes things like “without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; passing” — so if no one is seriously intending for anything more than getting off to happen, if they are actually making moves that by, direct definition, are careless (listen, I’m just breaking the words down) — how could any real affection come from that? Because, for the record, affection means “fond attachment, devotion, or love.”
How can someone be casually devoted or casually love you? THEY CAN’T — and yes, I am yelling it. Devotion and love are very intentional. Extremely so.
And for the people in the back who still are rolling their eyes at your monitor or cell phone screen because you’re like, “There have been times when I have felt extremely attached or devoted to someone who I had a casual experience with. Hell, sometimes I even felt like I loved them” — well, I really wish that one day all of us will take oxytocin highs literally and seriously. Yes, there is a hormone in your body that is designed to bond you to the people you sleep with; however, that speaks to a physical response far more than an emotional dynamic…and that’s just what trips a lot of people up: they don’t know the difference between the two.
Okay, but what if you are in something that isn’t casual? What then? I’ll say this: I once penned a piece for the site entitled, “Make-Up Sex Might Be Doing Your Relationship More Harm Than Good.” The thing that you have to be careful of is using sex as a deflection from real issues that need to be addressed and then calling it “making love” to make you feel better about doing it. Because think about it — if you keep telling yourself that whatever the two of you are going through “isn’t so bad” because you just made love last night…do you get how deceptive that can (potentially) be?
Case in point. I know someone who is going through a divorce who said that because the sex with their spouse was so good, they would confuse great sex with a healthy relationship…yes, even in marriage. And because of that, they never really got to the root of their issues…which only made the problems and challenges worse. The worse they felt, the more sex they would have and the more they would justify staying…due to the sex.
Listen, no one said that sex isn’t mighty powerful. In fact, I’m the one who will stand on the highest hilltop and yell that it is with the biggest bullhorn. That’s why it needs to be approached from a responsible space and mindset — which is why, when it comes to the act, I have my own motto, one that puts “make love” into, what I believe is its proper place.
Sex Does Not "Make" Love; Sex CELEBRATES Love
GiphyI’m aging myself. Plus, as pro-Black as I am and as triggered as I would sometimes get by just how WHITE the original Beverly Hills, 90210 was, I was still a fan. Hell, in college, my late fiancé and I would even sometimes watch it together. And a classic episode was when Brandon Walsh’s girlfriend, Emily Valentine, slipped him euphoria; he got mad, and she told him that if they made love, he wouldn’t be mad anymore. What he said in response was a checkmate for the ages: “In order to make love, I have to be in love.”
Yeah, Brandon was preachin’ right there. I mean, how many times have you watched a movie or TV show where two people have been having consistent sex and then, when one of them says, “I love you,” the other one will be semi-freaking out, talking about “It’s too soon to say that.” So…it’s too soon for someone to declare their love to you even though they are out here making love to you? Make it make sense, y’all. If love is what sex is making, shouldn’t love be produced after a couple of times?
Are y’all starting to see more of my point?
It is my personal belief that a lot of people feel uneasy about “love” being used too soon because, deep down, they know that making love isn’t what they are doing. Getting to know someone better. Enjoying their time. Sharing orgasms with someone who can get them there. Sure. LOVING THEM? Sex producing love? Nah. And that’s why I firmly believe that sex doesn’t make love; sex CELEBRATES love. Because if you don’t love someone outside of the bedroom, sex isn’t gonna make that happen…, and if you do, sex is simply a physical manifestation of a deep and profound feeling and decision (with actions in place that totally back it up) that already exists.
Just ask some long-term committed couples that you know if sex is what “makes them” love their partner vs. sex being something that they used to celebrate — proclaim, rejoice in, honor, praise, revere, revel in, bless — that has already been established. And gee, when you look at all of the definitions (and synonyms) of celebrate, doesn’t it make sense that sex should be seen through the lens of celebrating love rather than making it?
Because if you truly value love, if you esteem it as special and sacred, sex would be honoring, revering, and blessing the bond between two people who care about each other, far beyond the surface level — two people who are committed, who have been through some things, we have made some compromises and sacrifices…two people who love each other in the purest and most accurate kind of way.
This brings me to my next point.
Please Don’t Expect Sex to Do Love’s Job
GiphyAbout a year ago, someone asked me what I thought was the biggest mistake that women can make when it comes to sex with a new partner. There are several, yet the one that immediately came to mind was, “Please don’t ask a guy if he loves you during the act. What guy would say ‘no’?”
This isn’t rocket science, and a lot of women know it. So, why do they do it? Honestly, it’s a form of manipulation, whether they realize it or not, because they are using a very vulnerable moment, where folks are usually not thinking very clearly, to have a serious conversation. Then, if a man says “yes,” they hold them to it as if it’s the gospel. Out here, expecting sex to do love’s job is reckless and emotionally dangerous.
And that’s the reason one billion why “make love” irks me so. I’ll explain deeper. Because I am both a marriage life coach and a doula, sometimes “the lanes” cross. When a couple is in trouble, sometimes they will tell me that they think having a baby will make things better. A child is not meant to be anyone’s savior. And you know what? Neither is the act that gets them here (funny how that plays out) — sex.
Sex is not supposed to be expected to do love’s job because love is a HUGE responsibility. Being patient with someone? Constantly encouraging and supporting someone? Being steadfast in trying times? Honoring your word? Allowing reason to override emotion, so that you can make responsible and accountable decisions for the sake of your relationship? You expect love to make all of that happen for you? In what universe?
I promise you, the more that I have spent time pondering all of this, the more “make love” is something that I almost wish would go away. For those of you who actually love each other (mutually so), CELEBRATE LOVE all you want. Sex producing love? It’s just never gonna sit well with me. Love is too awesome, and "producing it" is not sex’s responsibility.
This brings me to my final point.
If Love Is Cake, Sex Is Icing (and Kinda-Sorta Barely That)
GiphyAn ex of mine from back in the day, used to say all the time that if you need condiments to make your food taste right, it wasn’t prepared well in the first place. Now, if you paid attention to the title of this last section, I’m pretty sure that you can see where I am going with this.
My favorite cake is very specific: It’s Red Lobster’s chocolate cake (sidebar: did you know that the founder of Red Lobster stood up to Jim Crow laws back in the day?). Hell, I don’t even eat shellfish yet I’ll get some cake from that spot. Anyway, the icing is cool, but if one day I went there and the cake didn’t have any icing on it, I’d still eat it — that’s just how good the cake is. Oh, but on the other hand, if all they had was icing, I would take a hard pass. Too much icing can be overkill. Too much icing, without cake, can make you sick.
See what I’m saying? When it comes to cake and icing, I see love as “cake” and sex as “icing.” Icing can make the cake so much sweeter and enjoyable, yet if there was no cake…what’s icing’s freakin’ point at all? Icing is literally designed to accentuate/amplify something that already exists. It needs the cake far more than the cake needs it.
And for those who got through all of this and are still wanting to “But what if…” what I’m saying — listen, I write about sex too damn much on this platform for y’all to think that I don’t know that sex has layers to it. All that I’m addressing today is why I wholeheartedly believe that “make love” really needs to be used less. Honestly, I wouldn’t lose a bit of sleep if it got retired altogether. If you’re not in love, or in a mutually loving situation (because the two are not exactly the same), why not say what you’re actually doing: you’re having sex? It’s a way to keep you from programming your mind to make the reality of what is happening more than it is.
And if you are in love (or mutually love), give yourself more credit: sex is not producing love…sex is BLESSING the love that you and your partner have worked so hard to establish.
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Aight. I don’t know how to drive this point home more than I just have. I think now I will listen to a true classic R&B song that totally cosigns on my point — what y’all know about Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack’s “Tonight, I CELEBRATE My Love for You”?
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Good, real stuff right there.
Celebrating what’s ALREADY BEEN made. Excellent.
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Ding. Ding. DING.
A life coach by the name of Thomas Leonard once said that “Clarity affords focus” and, believe you me, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, if you don’t get clear on where you stand when it comes to your interactions with them, you can very easily find yourself “focusing too much” on those who don’t deserve it and too little on those who absolutely do. And y’all, this lil’ PSA couldn’t be more relevant than when it comes to what I call “casual friendships.”
Let’s dig — and for some of us, dig our way out of — what it means to have a casual friend, so that you can get clear on if you really need those in your life…and if so…why?
Article continues after the video.
It Can’t Be Said Enough: Always Remember What “Casual” Means
GiphyThere’s a reason why I decided to share two videos by mental health coach Isaiah Frizzle at the top and bottom of this article. It’s because a lot of what he shares in both of them complements a piece that I wrote for the platform last year entitled, “This Is Just What Purposeful Relationships Look Like.”
It’s the author M. Scott Peck who once said, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it” and please believe that the older (and hopefully more mature) you get, the more you tend to see just how valuable — and fleeting — time is; and that is what plays a huge role in motivating you want to only involve yourself with people, places, things and ideas that will honor your time — and when something is casual? In my opinion, it’s highly debatable that it’s worth much of your months, days, hours, or even too many of your minutes.
The main reason why is addressed in an article that I wrote back in the day entitled, “We Should Really Rethink The Term 'Casual Sex.'” The gist? When it comes to relationships, “casual” is certainly not a favorite word of mine because I know what it means. Have mercy — why would you want to invest your time, energy, and emotions into something that is, by definition, apathetic, indifferent, careless, lacking emotional intimacy, and/or is without purpose?
I don’t know about y’all but that sounds like a complete and total crap shoot to me — especially if you are going to go so far as to consider this type of dynamic a true friendship (check out “Ever Wonder If A Friend Is Just...Not That Into You?,” “6 Signs You're About To Make A Huge Mistake In Making Them A Close Friend,” “5 Signs Of A Toxic Friendship That Is Secretly Poisoning Your Life,” “12 Friend Facts That Might Cause You To Rethink (Some Of) Your Own,” and “Less & Less Of Us Have Close Friends These Days. Why Is That?” ).
To me, when you decide to call someone “friend,” it means that they are loyal, reliable, consistent, trustworthy and willing to be there to support you to the very best of their ability — even if it’s inconvenient to do so sometimes (check out “Life Taught Me That True Friendships Are 'Inconvenient'”). How in the world can you expect that from something that has the word “casual” in it?
And you know what? That actually segues into my next point about casual friendships pretty darn well.
Ponder the Purpose “Casual Friends” Serve in Your Life
GiphyA couple of years ago, Verywell Mind published an article entitled, “How the 4 Types of Friendship Fit Into Your Life.” The four that it listed were acquaintances (which I actually don’t consider to be friends; check out “6 Differences Between A Close Acquaintance And An Actual Friend”), casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. After reading the piece, I think they consider casual friends to be the “pleasure” friends that I mentioned in the article, “According To Aristotle, We Need ‘Utility’, ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Good’ Friends.”
And although I certainly get that, I think my “cause for pause” is calling those people “friends” when they probably should be called something like an associate or possibly even a buddy instead. Why do I feel this way? Well, I’ve shared in other articles that I think social media has jacked up vocabulary words and their true meaning on a billion different levels.
Take “friend,” for example. Facebook had us out here calling everyone we connected to on their platform “friends” when some of them, we’ve never even spoken to before — and I personally think that influenced, affected and perhaps even infected our psyche to the point where we will call folks, both online and off, “friend” even when they haven’t earned it and/or who possibly don’t deserve it.
That said, do I think that we all could use lighthearted interactions that don’t go very deep and are filled with not much more than fun? Sure. However, if we were to move this over into a sexual thing — those types of people would probably be called a sneaky link, and there is nothing significant or substantial about ‘em. In fact, if anything pretty much automatically comes with an expiration date, sneaky links would have to be it.
And that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make about a casual friend — so long as you know that the word “casual” is being used to describe them, while you may enjoy the people who fit that bill, they aren’t really anything that you can or even should fully rely on. Instead, take them for what they are and don’t really expect much more than that. Otherwise, you could be in for some profound levels of disappointment. And who wants that?
Final point.
How a Casual Friend Can Become a Huge Red Flag
GiphyI’m telling you, y’all gonna quit clowning Tubi. LOL. To me, the best way to describe it is it’s the Cricket of current streaming apps. What I mean by that is, back when Cricket (the cell phone service) first came out, people, like me, who used it service got incessantly clowned because it was seen as a bootleg provider. Now it’s owned by AT&T, and as someone who has rocked with them since I was in my 20s, I don’t have one regret for doing so. Cricket has always been good to me, chile.
And Tubi? Well, when you get a chance, check out CNBC’s article, “CEO at 33, Tubi’s Anjali Sud on success hacks she learned at Amazon, IAC on way to top of Fox streaming” — take note of the moves the streaming app is making and the quality of programming that is transpiring in real time.
Anyway, I find myself bringing up Tubi more and more in my content because it helps to amplify some of the points that I like to make. This time, it’s a movie that’s (currently) on there calledRight Man, Wrong Woman. If you haven’t seen it before, I don’t want to give too much of the film away. What I will say is that the main female character, she had a casual friend and then she had a close friend.
That casual friend—the one who liked to kick it all of the time—was a lot of fun; however, dealing with her came with a ton of semi-unforeseen consequences. Meanwhile, the close friend? She’s what the Aristotle article (that I mentioned earlier) would call the “good friend” because she tried her best to hold her friend accountable.
And really, it shouldn’t be a shock that the casual friend turned out to be a plum trip because if someone is loads of entertainment and pleasure and yet they are indifferent towards you, they make careless decisions around you and/or they don’t really make known the purpose for you being in their life other than to pass some time — where really do you and that person have to go past drinks after work or dinner on a rooftop restaurant from time to time? And if that is all that the two of you are doing, again, why are they deserving of the word “friend”?
Hmph and don’t get me started on the lack of reciprocity that typically transpires when it comes to dealing with people like this because, while they won’t mind you spending your coins on them, taking their calls in the middle of the night or listening to all of their issues — when it comes time for them to show up for you, they very well may gaslight you into thinking that you are being dramatic, clingy or “doing the most.” Why? Well, it’s mostly because the two of you never really established what the hell the both of you are to one another.
And so, while you’re somewhere taking them seriously, they are out here seeing you casually, and as much as it might hurt to hear, that doesn’t automatically or necessarily make them a bad person. You shouldn’t expect much where no clarity is involved. After all, casual is just that: CASUAL.
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I’m hoping that you can now see why I entitled this piece in the way that I did. It’s because a red flag is pretty much a warning, and to me, a casual friend is about as big of an oxymoron (again, to me) as casual sex is. Friends and sex are both too intimate to be seen or treated casually. Oh, but if you step out and take that risk, you could find yourself getting far more involved than the other individual ever wanted to go, because casual is how things have always been. “Friend” was simply to get you more mentally and emotionally invested. SMDH.
American columnist Walter Winchell once said, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” A wise person once said, “One good friendship will outlive forty average loves." Former President Ulysses S. Grant once said, “The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.” Does any of this sound casual to you? Yeah, me neither.
Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life who aren’t on deep levels. I’m just saying that you might want to consider putting them into another category than friend, because what friends do for people? There ain’t nothin’ even remotely casual about it, sis. Not even a lil’ bit.
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