[Editor’s Note: After the positive response former NFL baller Bob Whitfield received on his 7 Reasons Why Women Cheat, I’ve decided to give him the SFTA platform yet again.  This time Bob takes aim at Cupid and the fairy tale feelings of LOVE vs. LIKE. Again, I have to state I have absolutely NOTHING to do with this commentary, and while he has me feelin ‘some kinda way’ right now, these are clearly all BOB’S views and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of me… ATLien! ]

LOVE is… ‘a non-muthaf*ckin factor boo’ in your relationship! (I can hear the boo’s raining in now!)

For couples, love is like the flour mixed with the grease that makes the gravy.

LOVE has a magical all-purpose element to make a relationship recipe that is much more robust, exciting, romantic, etc and so on…. but who just wants gravy, or the special love sauce?

Relationships, for LOVE’s sake, lead to Marriage.  Which is simply a social economic relationship between two people that provides tax and legal advantages for their union. [In layman’s speak: you get a tax write off and someone that can’t be forced to snitch on you in court]

I’m not against marriage, relationships or being in LOVE for that matter. I enjoy having those tax write offs; but I don’t like that Tyler Perry ending with some negro spiritual playing in the background and some Maya Angelou slow talking verbage “I LOVE you, more than life itself?”

LOVE can be at first sight or after months of wining and dining, picnics, concerts, a ton of text message and tweets.

So when Keisha (Lisa Raye) exalted while living the life on “Single Ladies” this past week, “I LOVE you!” to Malcolm (damn its only the 4th episode), that love won’t make it to season 2.

I say let LOVE be default.  Let LOVE be all that you can naturally bestow on another person.

LOVE  is so basic. You get a puppy…you LOVE it. Get a car… you LOVE it. So meet a girl… you LOVE her. 

Given that you will sex her as if you LOVE her, bring her home to meet momma as if, make babies as if, and build a family all around that basic emotion, LOVE is like breathing, it just happens till it stops.

But in a relationship you need more than LOVE to breathe on.  You need RENT, FOOD, etc.. which means you need MONEY.

Say this to your mate: ‘I confide in you’, ‘I depend on you’, ‘I believe in you’, that to me is more compelling than ‘I LOVE you’.

There is a stronger feeling than LOVE that creates a deeper bond in a marriage or any relationship.  It’s called LIKE… and “LIKE” is so exact, it does not get a mention in your wedding vows. Cause no matter how much you “promise to love, honor, and respect” your mate, today you just don’t LIKE that MotherF’er!

Couples brake up and say ‘I still LOVE’ or ‘still have LOVE’ for their mate.  But it is the dis-“LIKE” that is keeping them apart.

So when you don’t LIKE somebody, you can’t stand to be in the same room with them… throwing shit at them and everything.

What Toni say? ‘LOVE should of brought you home last night’; and LOVE would of had you sleeping on opposite sides of the bed with a continental divide as vast as the grand canyon.

LOVE got you wake’n up the next morning to your own living nightmare, where discontent is reality and happiness appears as a dream.

That same old LOVE got you in the basement watching baseball highlights, scary movies, and fat girl porn just to fall asleep on the couch away from that woman you LOVE so much.

LIKE, on the other hand is a cold piece of work, cause it has a duality like an angel on the left and the devil on the right both tapping on your shoulder.

LIKE is the whole cookbook for making that special special gravy taste so good.  Cause guess what happens when that same women LOVES you but don’t LIKE you… you eating “Man-wich” cause she done gone “spam” on your ass!

Remember reason #2? Now she’s coming to bed in a robe, boy shorts and a sports bra, with her hair in rollers… wearing a sulfur mask, talkin’ bout ‘I LOVE you, good night!’.

Just stop it ok…

Stop saying “I LOVE you” and “do you LOVE me” and start using the other L word, cause no matter how many times you may hear ‘I LOVE you’, its a non-muthafucking factor when you are not well LIKED in your relationship.

These words of life and actuality are from Bob Whitfield’s doctrine for Male Existence ~ the ‘L.M.O.T.T.P.’

What do you think about Bob’s assessment of LOVE?