The Miseducation: Can You Stand The Rain?

“On a perfect day, I know that I can count on you/when that’s not possible, tell me can you weather a storm?” – New Edition

I was at work one day listening to the Jukebox and New Edition’s “Can You Stand the Rain” came on. Now I can’t front, growing up I really didn’t like this song. Now don’t get it twisted, I didn’t think it was wack but I just didn’t love it like everybody else did. But this time listening, to the song I heard things that I never heard before. Now, let me digress for a sec, I’m not a big dude on lyrics. In fact, that’s a BIG joke in my house cause I’ll be singing a song and Tee will be like “what did you just say? Those aren’t the words!” So in a nutshell, I kinda just make words up when I’m singing along with a song. Now when it comes to hip hop, that’s a different story. I can spit a Big Daddy Kane or Rakim song with ease but with R&B, let’s just say that a lot of what I think people are saying, really isn’t what they’re saying.

Now, with that outta the way, while listening to “Can You Stand the Rain” this time I stated hearing phrases like “storms will come, this we KNOW for sure” and I was like “hold tight, they’re talking about getting through the tough times in relationships!” Now, I’m sure most of ya’ll are like “duh, of course that’s what they’re talking about.” And I knew that but they’re REALLY talking about the tough times. Then I start thinking, this came out when I was 14 and in the 9th grade, what did New Edition know about the “tough times” of a relationship? And then I started thinking, “what do WE know about the tough times of a relationship?”

I mean, who REALLY knows about getting through the tough times in a relationship? See, relationships are all about fun, sex and going out to eat. And if we’re not having fun, sex and going out to eat, then we’re 9 times outta 10 about to break up. But marriage isn’t about fun, sex and going out to eat, so what happens when we stop having fun, sex and going out to eat? We can’t just break up…right? We gotta fight through these tough times…right? But what experience do we have in fighting through the tough times? Cause we never did it before. If things started going downhill in our past relationships, we deaded them. But now I can’t just dead my wife right? We did just spent $20,000 for a wedding and I just spent $5,000 for a ring, so we gotta work it out…right? But we don’t know how to work it out, cause we’ve never done it before, remember? So what do we do? Some of us try to make it happen and some of us just give up.

 

But trying to do something you’ve never done is like trying to play Monopoly, but you don’t know the rules. I mean, how many times are you going to go around the board not knowing to collect $200, and that you’re suppose to buy houses and 4 houses equal now you can buy a hotel, etc. etc. before you just quit? Cause if you don’t know how to play a game, it’s not fun. And if it’s not fun, what do we do again? That’s right we quit. And this is why A LOT of marriages don’t make it. Not necessarily because we don’t wanna try (well for those who do try) but because we don’t know what to do, while we’re trying. How many people actually got married thinking that we’re gonna have to go through some REALLY trying times? I sure didn’t. It was to the point that I was reading a GREAT book called "Two Becoming One" and I was reading about all of the issues he encountered in his marriage and I thought “me and Tee will never go through any of this stuff” and I threw the book into storage. Needless to say that after 6 moths of marriage I was diggin’ that book back out!

To me, life is all about expectations. Why do people hate their lives? Cause they EXPECTED things would be better. Why do people hate their jobs? Cause they EXPECTED they’d have a better job. Why do people hate their marriages? Because they EXPECTED that it would be just like it was in the relationship. They probably expected that their marriage would be just like The Cosby Show or an episode of Martin where everything is fun and games. And if there is a problem it gets worked out in 20 minutes just like Martin and Gina did or the way Michael and Jay (My Wife and Kids) did. But they aren’t expecting those storms to last weeks, months and sometimes even years. I think people get it twisted about marriage. Like it’s this magical thing that doesn’t mirror life. I’ve actually heard people say things like “I know life isn’t fair BUT why isn’t my marriage perfect?” Really?!?!?!?!? So, I think once people learn that your marriage is just another part of life and that you’re gonna have some good seasons AND some bad seasons and when more people start having each other’s back, we’ll have more marriages lasting longer. Cause it’s not like Ronnie, Johnny, Ricky, Mike and Ralph didn’t warn us in ’89 that storms were gonna come right? Well, let’s start getting ready for 'em.