It once used to be that the word blessed, along with its derivatives, had hallowed connotations. Not entirely so these days, especially in black urban circles where “blessers” are a hot topic of conversation and all the rage. But what is a blesser? He’s a new version of the sugar daddy, except his spending power…
Category: Relationships
Dear Bear, I’ve been with my partner for five years, and I want to spend many more together. We both hate capitalism. He grew up extremely poor and I grew up wealthy. I’m all about redistribution of wealth in all aspects of my life, and my relationship with him is no exception. He has worked…
“Being robbed is the price we pay for the way we live,” my husband said, several hours after we came home on Saturday to find our front gate jimmied, our front door kicked in and many of our valuables stolen. I’ve been thinking about this for days now. He’s right. Petty theft, smash-and-grab attacks, burglaries,…
Woman has baby. You wouldn’t think that it would make headline news (unless, of course, it was Kate and Will again), but it has. Not because the mother-to-be is a boss at Marks and Spencer; lots of women in senior positions have families. Not because the impending birth was announced on the stock exchange: this…
“God,” sighs Marie (Carrie Fisher), having just listened to her best friend’s latest dating nightmare in my very favourite scene in one of my very favourite movies, When Harry Met Sally. “Tell me I’ll never have to be out there again.” “Tell me I’ll never be out there again” is the audible wail emitting from…
Here’s how it goes. Every few months, a 4 000-word trend piece comes along that captures some elemental cultural truth and with it the imagination of the internet, magazine commissioning editors and desk workers the world over. The Facebook share button is currently going steady with an exceptional Vanity Fair piece by Nancy Jo Sales,…
Here is an assertion with which you will be familiar. After 30, women’s fertility falls drastically. Their chances of conceiving naturally plummet, and they are left relying on IVF or adoption, or – worst of all – consigned to a childless life. These lonely women sit around their laughterless homes, pining for the burbling affection…
The New York Times recently published a piece about the lives of the hyper-rich stay-at-home women on the Upper East Side, complete with sex-segregated dinner parties and year-end bonuses from wealthy husbands for being “good wives”. These may appear surprisingly crude to some, but less so for me. Much of my short marriage felt like…
Phumla Ndlovu’s* partner Xolile Silo* started drinking at nine that Monday morning. He then left their house in Roodepan township, near Kimberley in the Northern Cape, and headed for the local tavern. It was just weeks ago: March 23. “I was lying on the couch watching TV when he came back later that evening,” Ndlovu…
They’re emotionally and physically exhausting, they’re hugely expensive and they are the biggest curtailment of your personal freedom after prison: objectively, it makes next to no sense to have children. Sure, the instinctive drive to perpetuate the human species, blah-di-blah, but since it feels like the only conversation I’ve had with friends for the past…
I bristled again the other day at a phrase I think we need to expunge from our vocabularies. I was talking to an elderly relative about a mutual friend who’s recently been divorced and has three small children. “Ah,” said my relative, shaking her head disapprovingly. “Another broken home.” It’s a phrase that goes with…
With henna on my hands and my head covered in a scarf, I went to my wedding. My sister-in-law had helped me drape my purple and gold punjabi in a way that would cover me from head to toe, except for my face. It’s not customary for a Muslim woman to attend her own wedding…
Faking orgasms is a disservice to society. Why give a standing ovation when the play is bad? These were the musings during my first year of university when I contemplated sex and orgasms. This thinking did not stop me doing it years later, but then again, everyone knows taking one’s own advice is poor etiquette….
“Men don’t court anymore.” A complaint I’ve heard more than once, men are less R&B and more hip hop, less Luther Vandross Buy Me a Rose and more Lil Joh “Turn Down for What”. The masculine types are no longer trying when it comes to the dating game. Maybe we should blame Tinder and the…
Sexy old women: mutually exclusive terms, some would say, unless you’re referring to “cougars”, whose legendary prowling gives them their beastly nickname. This species is female, middle-aged and is to be found in the jungles around well-known watering holes. The title is an advance on the old days, when such women would have been described…