Source: Nicky Nelson/WENN.com / WENN
Ever since TV personality Jeannie Mai and rapper Jeezy made their relationship official last month, people have had a lot to say about their pairing, good and bad. But the 40-year-old is more focused on coming up with catchy couple names (like #TrapperMai, #JeezyMai #YoungJeannie and #Jeaneezy) than she is any negativity. Still, she wants to show people that her relationship with the 41-year-old rapper is more than just a PR stunt, or an attempt to embrace her controversial attraction to Black men.
“That’s something I’m still kind of understanding, because I don’t see it,” she said of criticisms while on Big Boy’s Neighborhood with the ladies of The Real. “Obviously when you marry you marry for love. Even in my past marriage, I married for love. Feelings change, people grow apart, so that happened. For me, it’s just focusing on what is love for two people, two human beings? So that part is kind of a responsibility that we’re just going to have to demonstrate through our relationship.”
Her co-hosts jumped in to share their two cents, with Loni Love saying, “They act like he the only Black man out there!” and Adrienne Houghton commenting that the interracial relationships all the women are currently in are representative of what many relationships look like in today’s society.
“We really do represent what the world looks like. That’s the world. Everybody isn’t saying, the only way I can find love is if I find it through my own race, but more so that we all should be living outside the box,” Adrienne said. “We shouldn’t hold people in boxes and we shouldn’t trap our own minds to only think inside the box.”
Jeannie does acknowledge though that there is a certain responsibility that comes with being with someone of another race, and she and Jeezy are taking it seriously.
“I think when you look at the word ‘interracial,’ you should really look at it as ‘interresponsible.’ It is a responsibility when you date outside of your race to learn about that culture, because not everybody’s experience is the same,” she said. “When he steps into my house he takes off his shoes, he knows how Vietnamese people do it. When I met him I was like, ‘I want to go to Hawkinsville [Georgia]. Show me exactly this yellow house that you grew up in, and how did you start your business and how did you understand how to make a dollar. I actually loved it.”
But as far as questions pertaining to the future of their relationship, Jeannie is just enjoying the moment and having something with the rapper that she hasn’t had with others, including ex-husband Freddy Harteis.
“I think right now the coolest thing about the relationship that I’m focusing on is learning what it means to feel safe,” she said. “When you meet a man who is vulnerable enough to make you feel safe, it’s your job, ladies, to protect and cherish them, or let them go where they find the right woman who’s ready for that. Otherwise we go through life and we have relationships and then we get misled, we get cheated on, we get all these things that happen, and then the person who was willing to be safe is now recoiled and doesn’t want to give that. So I’m going to treasure what he’s given to me right now because I want to be safe.”
You can check out this interesting conversation by tuning in below, starting at the 27:10 mark:
