The Wendy Williams Experience

by Wendy Williams

  And when you’re in entertainment you have to worry about whether your waist will snap back fast. Pregnancy weight is cute and motherly for a minute. After that, it becomes pathetic.

  DEAR WENDY,

  I just found out that my man is bisexual. He said he loves me and doesn’t want to leave me. We have been together for six years and I love him dearly. I asked him if he can stop seeing other men and he said he can’t. He says he likes men a lot. What do I do? I don’t think I can deal with him.

  I’ve had experiences with women, so I can’t blame him. But it really bothers me about him. Am I being a hypocrite by not being able to deal with him?

  Signed, UNSURE

  WENDY’S ADVICE:

  A cheater is a cheater! Whether he is cheating with a man or a woman, he’s cheating on you and telling you that he is not going to stop. I don’t know how old you are, but you have been with him for six years and you don’t mention children, so hopefully there are none, which will make your exit a lot easier. Good luck.

  You know, gaydar is a wonderful thing. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a wonderful thing. And there is an overwhelming number of men these days who are involved with women and with men.

  I’m one of those people who believe man-on-man sex is a totally different ball game from woman-on-woman sex. I think that a lot of women are just experimenting with lesbianism because it’s a cool thing to do, and also because men are treating us so badly in a lot of cases that we don’t know where else to go. So we just give up, throw in the towel, and turn to women. But that’s not the right thing, either, because there is still a problem at hand—our inability to face our problem head-on, without running to something else.

  There are, to be sure, women who have no problem being with a bisexual man. And I say, if that’s your thing, go for it! But you should know what you’re getting into. I don’t like surprises, especially surprises like that. And you would be astonished at the number of men living double lives. They are gay and working on Wall Street and know that they will never rise because they don’t have the all-important accessories—a wife, kids—so they get a wife and never bother to tell her, “Um, honey, I really like men.” Hell, she may be okay with it as long as she gets to live a certain lifestyle. She may go along with the charade. And perhaps it’s not a charade as much as a tool of the trade.

  While people, in my opinion, take marriage too lightly today, in business being married is important. It separates the men from the boys. And it says that you are stable. I know someone who will not do business with a single man or with a man who is not in a stable relationship. And I understand why. He says if he does do business with a man who is single, he has to allow for the dumbing-out-for-a-woman factor. He has to make provisions for that in the business deal. Isn’t that something?

  At the end of the day, there are some things that still haven’t changed. And that is the picture that marriage presents. It damn sure doesn’t mean that it’s a true picture. But it’s a picture that people want to see.

  So I can’t hate if, ladies, you meet a man and he’s going to be the next Bill Gates and he needs an arm charm, someone to call his missus, someone to have his children and kind of decorate the rest of his life, and he happens to be gay. Go for it. What two consenting adults do is their business. What I don’t like is the whole deception. The deception of no protection—making you think you are the only one, marrying you and having kids with you, and then you find out that he’s gay.

  Women write me about the craziest situations. I get this a lot: women who get pissed off at their men and they write me or call me and expect me to put them on blast. I generally do not do this. But I get that all the time. I get it from the girlfriend or boyfriend of a star and I get that from the average Jane Doe. They want to put him on blast!

  I tell them, “I’m not putting them on blast. You put them on blast!” To me, the best way to put someone who has done you wrong on blast is to move on and be successful. Success is the best revenge. Calling the radio and wanting me to talk about it is very childish. Maybe I need to start putting the blasters on blast.

  Here’s an example of such a case:

  DEAR WENDY,

  I’m part of this industry that we speak of so much. I’m six months pregnant with Buddy’s baby. Buddy [not his real name] and I have been off and on for a while. A couple of years ago, I was pregnant with his child and I made a decision to have an abortion. When he found out about my decision he was upset and called me selfish. Fast-forward to now, I am six months pregnant and he knows. After regretting my decision some years ago and with him asking me not to have an abortion, this time I decided to keep it.

  Now, here comes the hard part. I found out that he has gotten another woman pregnant, and when I confronted him he complained that it wasn’t his. Also, I was carrying twins and lost one. During this whole ordeal I have not seen or spoken with Buddy. Rather than him calling me, his wife has been harassing me. Yes, his wife! This is the wife he has never claimed and has said was his baby’s mother.

  This man has not picked up the phone to see how the baby and I are doing. Despite the nasty taste this man has left in my mouth, I don’t regret keeping the baby. Right now, I’m awaiting the birth of my son with no regrets, but it is also time to make sure this motherfucker pays. It’s time for me to start taking care of things for my baby, even though this man has no real money but is hoping his career gets back on track.

  Wendy, I want your advice on what to do, and feel free to say Buddy’s name on the air. His people listen all the time and I’m ready to put his ass on blast. Thanks a lot.

  —READY TO RUMBLE

  WENDY’S ADVICE:

  I’m not putting anybody’s behind on blast. You got yourself into this situation!

  See, women are still under the illusion that getting pregnant and having babies is so easy. But I’m telling you, if you decide to take off the condom you have to think, “What if I become pregnant with twins and I lose one and I have to spend weeks in the hospital and I need him there?” I mean, he hasn’t been there and won’t be there. He’s married. And you’re mad because his wife called you? You’re the harlot. To you I say: Welcome to the world of single motherhood, and expect more surprises from your baby’s father.

  And by the way, Buddy is also a straight-up homosexual. Maybe this is something you don’t know, but I thought you ought to. This very handsome R & B singer who comes from a Midwest family in the business is a straight-up homosexual.

  DEAR WENDY,

  I’ve been engaged for almost a year. I’m twenty-four years old and my fiancé is twenty-nine. While we talk about ideas for our wedding, there are no official plans yet. The problem is that while I love my man dearly, I’m no longer sure I want to marry him.

  We were together for two years before he proposed. He is truly my best friend. We share a lot of the same values and want some of the same things in life. However, he is stuck on this 1950s housewife role for me.

  While I believe I’m competent to be a wife and mother and a career woman, he believes my role should be to cook and clean and be a wife. He makes enough money to run our household and he has made it clear that it is my choice if I want to work. However, I don’t want to sit home and do nothing.

  Yes, Wendy, I cook dinner every night. But I also work every day. The reason for my second thoughts about marriage is that even though I want as many children as God will bless me with, I believe my man will insist that I be a stay-at-home mom. I think he’s being unreasonable. What do you think?

  —MODERN-DAY WOMAN

  WENDY’S ADVICE:

  I think that the writing is on the wall. You understand what you’re dealing with and you communicated it very effectively to me. This is not the man for you. And if you marry him, he is going to remind you time and time again while you fight, what a woman’s role is and what a man’s role is. He will say, “I told you this before we got married, so why are you acting like it’s new, now?” This is not the man fo
r you. You are twenty-four and you have plenty of time. Keep it moving.

  My first husband was into those traditional roles. I rather liked it because, ideally, I believe in traditional roles. I come from traditional roles. I know it sounds corny, but I know nothing else. I watched my mother work and my mother cook. Every day at five o’clock dinner was on the table. She was a great cook, a fabulous cook. She decorated and entertained with ease. She and my father would pick us up at our various extracurricular activities. But at the end of the day, my mother was the one in the laundry room folding the clothes. And she was the one soaking the ham to get the salt out of it to make Sunday dinner. And she was the one waking up at six in the morning trying to get us to the school and then get herself to school, because she was a teacher. So I don’t know anything but traditional roles. And I like it.

  But there are a lot of things about being a woman these days that aren’t traditional. And those are the things that my ex-husband had a problem with. Like a women making more money than a man. Like a woman working hours that aren’t nine to five. Many of us have to work after hours. In my profession, going out to various social functions that involve me having to work after hours is the norm. My job also involves me working after hours with fewer clothes on than if I were an attorney doing so. The clothes are tighter, the clothes are skimpier. I’m having drinks, so there’s this illusion that I’m having this great grandiose time. And my ex-husband couldn’t deal with it.

  So when I was faced with the decision of whether to work it out or bail, I decided to bail, because we had no children and there wasn’t a lot invested in the relationship yet. I was only married for five months when we had a huge, explosive fight over these very issues. And that was the end. I called up my parents and made the announcement and I called up my attorney and I started getting everything in line.

  Now, I’m happily married. And I’ve been married now for almost six years and the roles are still traditional. It’s just that my husband is with me on the after-hours hustle. Hell, he’s the one who arranges for it to go down. My husband is my manager and he has a perfect, clear understanding of what I want out of life, in terms of my career. As long as I have the drive to do it, he is there to support me. But at the end of the day, it’s still my responsibility to pick out the carpet and make sure that it gets laid. I love decorating the house, and he leaves me to do it, just like the woman from the 1950s, and I love that. It’s my responsibility to rustle up some form of dinner or make a formal announcement that there is no dinner and that we’re going out to eat. And it’s my job to find a good pediatrician for our son and get him registered for school and all that.

  And it becomes very challenging. There are many days that I show up for my radio show and I tell you people that I am so happy to talk with you, and I truly mean that. You help me take my mind off the stress of my life. You help me take my mind off of my troubles the way you tell me that I help take your mind off of your troubles.

  Not that my life is so terrible, but I’m just saying that the roles that my husband and I have are very much like those of the fifties. I don’t go out for girls’ night out, but then again we discussed this on our first date. We established this early in our relationship. I was never the girls’-night-out kind. And he didn’t want a woman who wanted a girls’ night out. When he gets stressed he wants to go out and drink some Hennessy with his boys. I’m the type of woman who will stay in the house and wish him well. “Have fun, honey! I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Vacationing apart is fine for some marriages, and it’s fine for some women and fine for some men. That’s not how we get down. But you have to communicate these preferences very early in your relationship—before it turns to love and marriage and baby carriage. You have to establish your likes and dislikes, because I’ll tell you this, people do not change.

  If a guy tells you from the jump that he doesn’t like makeup and weaves, he’s not going to all of a sudden start liking makeup and weaves because you’re his wife. A guy who tells you he wants you to cook and clean is not going to change his mind because you’re his wife.

  How we handle it at my house is I don’t cook and I don’t clean, but I do know how to make a little money. So therefore, I have to line up the help. I make it work. I may not do the cooking and the cleaning, but I make it happen and I get it done.

  I love makeup and I love plastic surgery and I love fake hair and my husband knew that on our first date. There were no surprises. And it’s the same today.

  DEAR WENDY,

  I need some advice. Me and one of my homegirls have been friends for seven years. We are really close and we speak every day on the phone. We hang out together, whether it’s shopping or going out to eat or going to the club. Everyone knows to look for us together, because we usually are. Now the issue is, I met her through my brother; she was my brother’s girlfriend for about five of the seven years that I have known her. My brother lives in Atlanta and has now moved on and so has she. But he is furious that we are still friends.

  Apparently when they stopped dealing, we were supposed to stop being friends. But we have developed a relationship of our own. We don’t talk or make references to my brother. In fact, his name hardly comes up. We just have a lot of the same interests and like to do a lot of the same things. And now over the years I can honestly say that she has been a friend to me, and in return I have been a friend to her, as if we had never met through my brother. So now, two years after their breakup, when I do speak to my brother he has smart comments and will only refer to her in a sarcastic way like she is the only friend I have and I worship her or something, which is totally ridiculous. Now my friend feels bad, because she doesn’t want to come between me and my brother.

  He doesn’t even live here, Wendy! My question to you is, I don’t live in Atlanta anymore so I don’t care. And what’s crazy is that my brother and my friend still speak maybe once every two weeks. What do I do? Stop hanging out and being friends to spare my brother’s feelings? Or do we tell him to grow up and acknowledge that we are friends?

  —DO I LOSE MY FRIEND?

  WENDY’S ADVICE:

  Well, it sounds like a wonderful relationship you have with this woman. And you’re in so deep. How close are you with your brother? This is a really tough one. I’m going to leave it up to you.

  But I can make a statement to other men and women who come up with this problem in the future. When your sibling says it’s over, it’s over. All ties get cut. I’m just giving it to you from my side.

  My brother, Tommy, is the only brother that I have, and we talk maybe four times a week. He lives about twenty minutes away from me in New Jersey, and he’s married. But if he wasn’t and he was dating, I wouldn’t be friendly with his girlfriends like that. I would be as friendly as he wants me to be. And if he breaks up with them, it’s over. I don’t know you anymore, girl! It was nice to know you, but that’s my brother and it’s over!

  I roll with my siblings. I’m sorry, I don’t care if they’re dating or married. I roll with what they want me to roll with, because I have a very cool sister and a very cool brother and there is nobody outside of them that would matter more. And I’m sure they would do the same thing. They love my husband to death, but they roll with me and that’s the way it is. My lines of loyalty are real simple.

  The thing about advice is that no one has all of the answers (especially not me). Not even our parents had all the answers, and their parents didn’t have all the answers.

  I wish that I had known that my parents didn’t have all the answers when I was growing up, because maybe I wouldn’t have had to deal with so many issues—issues that I am still dealing with. A lot of them I have overcome, but for those of you who listen to my radio show, you might question where some of my honesty comes from. It comes from not wanting to present this perfect picture. Because that’s not real.

  A woman who’s married with a career does not have a perfect life. I wish that more people in influential p
ositions could be honest. People have body issues; God knows I have mine. People lie about fidelity in their marriage. People lie about how great their kids are and how wonderful their life is. People lie about how much they love sex. People lie because they want to fit in, because they believe everyone else has a perfect life and they don’t want to seem different.

  When the truth is, we are all trying to figure our way through life. And it takes the pressure off of people if they know that somebody is willing to admit, “I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not perfect.”

  Being sought out for advice is extremely flattering. But it also creates a lot of pressure, because I don’t have all of the answers. There are some questions that are easy to answer—as easy as telling people to call a private eye, an attorney, or a doctor. But there are more challenging questions. And some of the questions make me really scared.

  I will look at the fax and it’s signed by a schoolteacher. And I’m thinking, “Oh, my God! This is a person teaching our kids.” Or I will get an off-the-wall fax from a person with a master’s or a Ph.D. and I’m thinking, “Is this what graduate school is producing?”

  I get scared for all of us, because you people are coming to me for advice and I don’t have all the answers. And I’m perfectly honest and okay with saying I don’t. But if I can help you find some answers for yourself, I guess it’s worth it.

  About the Authors

  Wendy Williams’s previous book, Wendy’s Got the Heat, was a New York Times best seller. Her radio program, The Wendy Williams Experience, airs nationally and on WBLS 107.5 in New York City. Wendy Williams live in New Jersey with her husband and their son.

  Karen Hunter has collaborated on the best sellers Wendy’s Got the Heat, I Make My Own Rules with LL Cool J, Ladies First with Queen Latifah, and On the Down Low with JL King.