This post is inspired by one of LeToya Luckett’s new song and album titled “Back to Life” which I’ll link at the end of this post. If you don’t know who Letoya Luckett is, she is one of the girls who had the premonition to jump the ship known as Destiny’s Child before Beyonce dropped everybody and took over the world. Letoya Luckett may not be a household name but I think she turned out far better than Michelle and Kelly. Letoya dabbles in acting and has had an above average musical career without having to bow down to Queen Bey. But anyway, let’s get back to her new album “Back to life”.

The video to the first song “Back to life” describes a relationship in the “going steady” phase where you introduce your significant other to your friends and family. So in “going steady” tradition, Letoya’s hunk of a man introduces her to his best friend from when he was in diapers and who just happens to be a female. Naturally, Letoya questions her man and his relationship with his best friend as she senses some chemistry there. After that introduction, their relationship goes south as her man becomes more distant and is always on the phone either texting or on a call with his female bestie. The climax of the video is them fighting in the kitchen with the punch line from Letoya being her telling him “you don’t value what you have, because you don’t know what you have”. So naturally, they break-up because she wants to get back to her life, back to her reality, and back to herself. Fortunately, there’s a follow-up song and video titled “Used to”.

In “Used to” we find out that Letoya’s hunch was right and that her ex-man’s female bestie had confessed her feelings to Letoya’s man. We also find out that old boy is stressed out trying to get her back by calling her and kind of stalking her, telling her that he was wrong with his punchline being “I didn’t know what love was till I met you”. Naturally, Letoya is out there thriving, serving looks, and going on some horrible dates.

Ladies, this goes to show that you should always listen to your gut in any relationship because you’re usually right. But I still need to give my two cents on dealing with friendships of the opposite sex. As established in my tom boy post, I do have a sizeable amount of male friends and I’ll use one of them as my case study. Every time I am in Kenya, I usually hang out with one of my brother’s best friends who has grown to be one my good friends as well. We have a brother- sister type of relationship but since we’re not actually related, I usually un-intentionally ruin his chances in courting girls because they think we have something going on. On the other hand, he’s usually my wing-man and 75% of the guys I’ve dated in Kenya, were set up by him.

In my opinion, I think that the jealousy that stems from opposite sex friendships is more of a female issue. I think this is because guys recognize that if the male best friend hasn’t gotten with the girl, it’s probably because the girl has friend-zoned the guy and he’s not a threat. On the other hand, female best friends try to play the role of mother in law and they don’t think any girl is good enough for their guy friend. In turn, the female best friend tries to sabotage their guy friends’ relationships. Girls are also more likely to get jealous of all the time her guy friend is spending with his girl and might try to destroy your relationship because of it. Of course this is immature, but it does happen. This is why I think that as much it’s okay to have close friends of the opposite sex, they should not be your closest friend (I am speaking on heterosexual relationships here). You should leave that spot open for your future spouse or get ready for drama in your friendship and relationship.

Now that you’ve heard my opinion, I am interested to hear other thoughts about this issue. Please leave a comment below.