Niecy Nash - Its Hard to Fight Naked

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I dedicate this book to my husband, Jay Tucker.

You are the confirmation of the things Ive believed all my life: That love is patient and kind, that there are men who want to be faithful, that relationships can be easy with the right partner, and that second chances are sometimes better than the first. You are my best friend, my confidant, my favorite lover. Thank you for being the very sexy answer to a heartfelt prayer. With you Ive learned so many things about relationships, including the fact that its hard to fight naked. If we ever have to fight, Im always happy to be naked with you....

With all my love and good stuff,

Niecy Nash

L ets get one thing out of the way right quick: I am not a hopeless romanticpeople have called me that my whole life and it has never made any sense to me. Whats hopeless about being a romantic? How can you even be both? What I am is a girl who is in love with LOVE!

I cant explain why. I dont ever remember feeling any different. When I was a little girl, they called me boy crazy. My mother used to say I had a touchy-feely gene. I was in kindergarten when I decided that a boy named Robert was going to be my boyfriend. Im not sure how I knew at such a young age that boys were visual creatures, but I knew. So one day I begged my grandma to let me wear my purple velvet dress, white kneesocks, black patent-leather shoes, and... wait for it... a rabbit-fur jacket! I wanted Robert to see me in my kindergarten finest.

I also learned early on from observing my parents that a guy is happy when hes well fed, so when I offered Robert that Now and Later candy I had hidden in my sock, I sealed the deal! I tried to hold his hand, too, which he thought was weird, but I didnt care. If he was gonna eat my candy, he was gonna have to hold my handeven as a five-year-old I could have told him that! It was all so innocent, and it was just the beginning of my journey with this thing called love.

Ive been a wife and an ex-wife, and Im a child of divorce, but Ive always firmly believed that we were put on this earth to find love. And there aint nothing hopeless about that! I believed it even when things didnt go right for me, when I was wailing and gnashing my teeth on the floor with a knife in my heart and my girlfriends were screaming, There aint no good men left! Every time that happened (and there were many times!) I always thought, The next time I fall in love its gonna be different! Holla if you hear me....

When I divorced my first husband, nobody thought that was strangeall anyone said was Girl, join the club! To my surprise, the real record scratch was when I told people Id found love again. Say what now?! That was when I realized that too many people had given up on love, whether or not theyd ever experienced it in the first place.

Hell, yes, I found love, and you need to find it, too! Society has played a horrible trick on us, duped us into believing that we can go it alone, that we can do bad all by ourselvesthat when the going gets tough, we gotta go at it alone. Ive always refused to accept that! Were all supposed to have a partner in crime. Why? Because someone has to drive the getaway car!

Labor Day 2009, I approached Jay Tucker on a dance floor (while he was dancing with another woman!), and twelve months later to the day he put a ring on itthis after Id had a divorce under my belt and three kids in tow. Now, I love that man more than anything else, but hes not the reason Im writing this book. This isnt some I got my man, wheres yours? kind of thing. Just to be clear, Im not a self-proclaimed expert on love. But I have been through some things and often share my experiences with women and men alike in an effort to make love easierliterally and figuratively. I want to start a dialogue outside of traditional norms and introduce a new way of creating, experiencing, and enjoying the relationship we deserve. I also want to dispel the myth that men are the complicated onessorry, ladies! Weve got way more going on than they do. Just keep reading. I promise we will have fun navigating this thing we call LOVE.

A few months after Jay and I started dating, we decided to throw a matchmaker party at our house for all the single folks we knew in Los Angeles. And it was a huge successjust ask The View s Sherri Shepherd. She met the man shed eventually marry right in my kitchen! Word spread across Hollywood like a pregnancy rumor, and now I cant accommodate half the women trying to get in. And its not just because I like to keep a clean house! Unfortunately its because most women come to me with an attitude something like this:

Girl, Im sick of the lies, Im sick of men, Im sick of it all. My ex was crazy and Im just tired. I just give and give, and they treat me worse than someone off the street. But if you have another matchmaker party, I definitely want to be there!

Hell, no, her ass aint coming to any matchmaker party of mine. With an attitude like that, shes already chosen her own adventure of unhappiness. But even though this attitude wont get you a party invite, Id hate to leave anyone suffering alone in the dark. So whether youre looking to find love for the first time, in need of renewed faith after a heartbreak, or trying to keep what youve got from dying on the vine, I want to help everyone discover the best possible relationship. For some of you that will require a considerable amount of work. Youve got to become whole, youve got to forgive your ex to be ready for your next, and youve got to be willing to be vulnerable. I knowits a big thing Im asking you to do, right? But once you take the right steps toward getting the love you deserve, the returns will come in sooner than you might expect. And if it takes my serving you up a tall glass of act-right first to get there, so be it. Thats why I decided to write this book.

Originally, I wanted to call it Stomach Full, Penis Empty: A Womans Guide to a Happy Marriage but that would have been a pretty short book. Plus, Walmart probably wouldnt shelve it with a title like that, and this is a message that everyonesingle or in a relationshipneeds to hear. Dating and relationships can be profoundly simple once we strip away years of misinformation and learn how to communicate honestly with one another. Men speak in headlines and women speak in fine print, but that doesnt mean we arent trying to write the same story.

Now, as touchy-feely as Mother says I may be, no one ever comes to me for advice expecting me to give it to em easy. So when you need it straight up with no chaser, Ill be the first one to serve it to you. Were going to tackle some tough subjects, but Im not giving you a list of rules to follow, and Im not always going to tell you what you want to hear.

But experience is a good teacher, and Ive spent way too many years recording history in beauty salons, spas, bathrooms, and everywhere else in between where women get to talking about relationships and dating. Ive heard every last piece of traditional advice on whom to give up it to, how to give it up, and when to just give up altogetherand I invite you to leave all of that behind if it hasnt worked for you. Some of what Ive learned wont be popular with your girlfriends. (I scratch my weave when women give each other arbitrary rules to follow and outline elaborate plans as if this were some big game were playing and men were these wildly complex beasts we have to come up against. Trust metheyre not!)