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By YourTango

Confession: I have been a womanizer for a long time, so I know something about womanizers in general. With that in mind, here are my best pieces of advice for single women about identifying and interacting with men like me:

1. There’s a difference between players and cheaters. There are two types of womanizers, players and cheaters. One should be respected and the other should remain despised. There is an old saying, “Don’t hate the player; hate the game.” There is a lot of lighthearted validity to that adage.

I distinguish players from cheaters because players have multiple female sex partners and they are upfront and honest with women about their desire to be sexually satisfied by more than one woman. This type of womanizer does not try to hide, deny or camouflage the fact that monogamy is just not his thing. Always appreciate men who are honest with women about their promiscuous desires.

Cheaters interact sexually with multiple women under false pretenses. They present a facade of wanting to be involved in a long-term, monogamous relationship with one woman, but deep-down they want variety in their sex lives. I have no respect for liars, manipulative game players, adulterers and cheaters. I simply do not like the idea of toying with someone’s emotions.

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Source(s): NY Post, WENN

Last week we told you that Roscoe Orman a.k.a Elmo’s right-hand-man Mr. Gordon from popular children’s television program, Sesame Street left his partner of 40 years and married a much younger woman. During an interview, Sharon revealed that Roscoe left her destitute, to be evicted from the New Jersey townhouse they once shared. To make matter worse, she says that he’s refused to have anything to do with their children since he left. Now, Sharon is ringing the alarm letting the public know that this isn’t the first time that the Sesame Street star has been unfaithful.

In an interview with the NY Post, Sharon dropped the bomb that she received legal papers in the mail 27 years ago, while she was pregnant with their third child, alleging that her then-partner fathered another child.

“I was pregnant with my third kid. We were ecstatic. Then a paternity suit arrived in the mail. I’m pregnant, and another woman in a different state is pregnant at the same time,” said Sharon.

According to the Post, court records indicate that child support complaints were filed against Roscoe in New Jersey and Washington on behalf of a woman named Deborah Hill. A 1988 article by the Post also reported on Roscoe’s child support woes, revealing that he was required to pay Deborah $5,000 in back child support for their daughter Kalah, as well as monthly payments of $200.

Sharon adds that Deborah was on welfare after she got pregnant. She also says that Roscoe paid child support to Deborah until Kalah turned 18 and then put her through college. Sharon and Roscoe remained a couple through all of this and even had another daughter together.

You’re probably wondering why she stuck around. When asked by her interviewer why she never left, she replied:

“I wasn’t going to jump up and leave my family.”

Too bad Roscoe didn’t share those sentiments.

The so-called ‘bitter black woman’ that has been used and abused in her past but somehow brings the issues into her new relationships, has a brother; and he’s known as the ‘bitter black man’.  And the woman who men consider full of baggage because of kids, bad relationships, or credit debt is also not alone. You see, men can also be bitter; and although many would hate to admit it, they too can come with baggage.

I’ve been both fortunate and unfortunate to meet a man who came equipped with more emotional baggage than my girlfriends and I combined. What’s so fortunate about it? Well, it finally allowed me to diagnose the disease that plague many men. The symptoms usually include closing people off, infidelity, miscommunication, and other actions caused by trust issues. Most men have also been hurt, just like women, and often times they don’t deal with those issues before getting into a new situation. A previous relationship with a guy named *Justin, taught me this.

Justin appeared to have it all together on the outside. He was a few years older than me, so immediately I thought he would be more serious than many of the knuckleheads I had recently met. He was successful and ambitious, with a career that backed it up. He didn’t possess all of the physical traits that I liked, but was still easy on the eyes.

Justin was caring, supportive, and considerate. Plus, he listened to me when I went on my long rants about work. He was easy to talk to….until he felt us getting closer. He began accusing me, without accusing me. He would make jokes about me not answering the phone because I was with my ‘other guy’; then his mistrust would cause him to become distant. He became inconsistent and often moody.

You may be thinking, he doesn’t sound emotional, just typical; but I later found out that he had issues getting close to women because his former fiancée had left him a few weeks before their wedding. He didn’t trust easily and when he did, he would become doubtful of the person and push them away. He didn’t feel ‘good enough’ because someone had left him; and most of all he was afraid of being hurt again. He wanted a woman, but considered all women liars and cheaters. Sound familiar?

Justin was a typical ‘bitter black man’, and his attitude was affecting our relationship. While he didn’t come with a lot of physical baggage (he had good credit, single, and no kids), he had enough emotional issues to make up for it. Justin was an eternal pessimist when it came to love. In his eyes, love was meant to hurt; and usually he tried to hurt others before they hurt him. Luckily I realized his faulty logic and dipped before I became another him.

People often talk about double standards between genders. By considering women the only ones with baggage, this is a double standard at it’s best. We might handle our baggage differently, but it all comes out in different ways. Some men have more issues than women when it comes to relationships, and usually they don’t talk about them or even identify them. If they’re not acknowledged, how can they be fixed? Usually they can’t, and they’re then transferred into another relationship.

Justin came into my life lugging enough emotional baggage to take our relationship on a trip straight to break-up land. Just like women with baggage, he had a lot of good traits, but they were overshadowed by emotional issues.

Both men and women go through situations that can make them better or worse. Some learn to deal with them, others never do. Dating a man with baggage isn’t necessarily a no-no, just like dating a woman with a lot of baggage shouldn’t be. The only time it becomes dangerous is when they don’t realize they have baggage. In my case, Justin didn’t and the death of our relationship was the result.

If you couldn’t get enough of Sweet Brown in that commercial she did for a dentist in Oklahoma, word on the street is, not only is she somehow going to be the co-host of Cheaters soon, but according to Gawker, she’ll have a part in Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas, which we previously told you has a cast that has been lacking in color all around. But now, they might have one of the most colorful people around in Sweet Brown to liven things up.

While Gawker doesn’t list their source, according to Shadow and Act, it was Perry who posted the original video of Sweet Brown after escaping that apartment fire on his Facebook page (after finding it so funny that it needed to be shared–great idea). And on top of that, if Perry can cast Kim Kardashian in a serious role (Temptation), it actually makes sense to put the very comical Sweet Brown in…well, a comedy.

In all truthfulness, I’m happy for Sweet Brown. Compared to other YouTube sensations like Antoine Dodson who haven’t truly capitalized on their 15 minutes of fame and turned it into something promising (aside from maybe trying to perform during a break at the BET Hip Hop Awards), she’s out here working hard to be seen. She even got to swap spit with Shemar Moore on Watch What Happens Live! (Though he likes to kiss strangers a little too much for me.) And she seems like a pretty cool person, so good luck to her! Hopefully she’ll end up in some other movie roles in the future, because I wouldn’t put my money on A Madea Christmas being a big hit…just saying.

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We all know that some men can be as good as gold while others are the complete opposite. We’ve read about them in the media and heard about them from friends, and we all know that players are guys we want to avoid when it comes to the dating scene. To avoid getting burned, here are 14 tips to easily identify a player.

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Well, it seems like Ahmad Rashad just isn’t the marrying type.

According to Gossip Extra, the longtime sportscaster and his wife, Sale Johnson, are on their way to divorce court. This marriage marks the fourth for Rashad and second for Johnson. She was once married to Johnson & Johnson billionaire and Jets Owner, Woody Johnson. The two were married in 2005.

According to the report, the couple has actually been living apart for quite some time now.  The two haven’t filed for for divorce yet but instead are working out the financial difference before they begin making the divorce process official.

Johnson gained quite a bit of money from her divorce from Woody Johnson; it’s estimated that she received more than $100 million in the settlement.  When word first got out that Johnson and Rashad were married, people joked that Johnson was now Rashad’s “sugar mama.”

Sale’s camp is allegedly leaking the information. They say the reason for the split is Rashad’s friendships with athletes Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. As we all know, Woods has a very murky history with the ladies while Jordan has supposedly been dragging him to a restaurant called Rachel’s quite often for…”dinner.”

From Rashad’s camp, the rumor is that they’re just not in love anymore.

Hopefully, this won’t turn into an even bigger public mess, but when camps are somewhat openly putting the information out there, we might hear more about this relationship than we thought we’d ever want to know.

We’ll be keeping an eye out on this one.

As 2012 came to a close, I had much time to sit and reflect on various trials, triumphs and lessons that I’ve learned up until this point in my adult life. One area in which I am constantly learning is my love life. It’s been a long time coming since love and relationships were equated with crumpled up slips of paper that read : Will you go out with me? Circle yes or no. These days things are way more complicated, but all in all, I am pretty grateful for the lessons that I have learned and am still learning along the way. Among the lessons I’ve learned are things that I will never do again for the sake of being in a relationship. Check out some of my love faux pas. You just might recognize some of these from your own life as well.

Beef with other women

I was never really an extremely confrontational person, but there were points in a couple of my relationships where I felt justified in “checking” other women over my man. As I continue to grow and mature, I realize that certain things are really unnecessary and fighting with other women over a man is one of them. If you have to fight over him, then he isn’t really yours.

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From Your Tango

Most men do not cheat because they don’t love you anymore. Men cheat because they want more variety in their sex lives. Some complain of being bored. They want to feel adored by their partners; they want to asert their freedom; they are tired of disappointing you; they want a partner who places them at the center of their life, and they no longer feel like the priority in yours.

Sometimes it’s because you are speaking different love languages, and some men say it is a biological directive to procreate with as many women as possible for survival of the species. Whatever the reason, men have an innate need to feel respected and appreciated by their partners. It is most disconcerting for a man to realize he has disappointed his partner in some way. He wants to be her hero.

So, here are 10 ways to prevent your man from cheating:

1. Be willing to initiate sex. Men equate sex with desirability. Help your man to feel desired by expressing your love in a physical way.

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From YourTango

With the recent disclosures from General David Petraeus — who resigned as head of the CIA after admitting to an extramarital affair with his biographer — stacked on top of all the other recent political figures who have cheated on their spouses, I’m asking the question, “What are men looking for when they cheat?”

Statistics indicate that cheating is much more common than we might like to believe for both men and women. Janis Abrahms Spring, author of “After the Affair,” says that infidelity now affects one out of every 2.7 couples. Then there’s the dating site for married people looking to have affairs, AshleyMadison.com, which boasts of having almost 17 million anonymous members. It’s clear that something is missing in many marriages these days.

Based on my own life and the conversations I’ve had with other men including my male coaching clients, I’ve assembled the top five things men are looking for when they decide to enter into an extramarital affair — unconsciouslyin many cases. It’s really not just about the sex!

Read more at YourTango.com.

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Cheating is one of the most guilt-ridden actions a person can partake in, and being cheated on is one of the most painful experiences a person can have. So, why does it happen? Why would someone want to hurt someone like that? When you look at the underlying emotional issues behind cheating, nobody ever meant to hurt somebody else—they were just finding an unhealthy way to avoid their own pain. Here’s what I mean.