So she called me and then I picked up the phone and I was like
'Yeah, you alright like, I can’t lie, I'm dying', like.
Taking a woman's virginity should never be taken lightly.
Hi, I'm Tonye Mak, Director, Filmmaker and Storyteller.
Amongst my peers the narratives around dating
have felt really toxic and negative of late,
so, I wanted to create a space to have fun, honest and grounded conversations.
It's time to change the story.
This is Dating Black.
What is the wildest thing you’ve done when dating?
Wildest?
I was quite scared because this, the country I was in,
I don't think you're allowed to do what we were doing.
When I was younger like, there was a girl I started speaking to and do you know what I mean?
We were speaking often, just didn't want to speak anymore.
You know, back then back in the days did you lot have
house phone numbers that you used to call house phones?
Yeah.
Because it was free?
Hundred.
So basically, I blocked her number from like, calling me init,
I didn't tell her that like, I don't really like you anymore,
I just blocked her number and then she called my house phone init and then my mum picked up.
Oh my days.
So then my mum was like 'Who’s speaking?' The girl said her name,
'Can I speak to Seye?' So my mum says, 'So and so is on the phone for you', init.
And then I just left the room.
Then my mum was like, 'What?' My mum was calling me init.
I cheated on day one.
Wow.
Damn. Just volunteered it.
Yeah, I know. He said will you be my girlfriend?
Yeah, cool, I’ll be back.
And I’m...
Did you regret it?
Nah 'cause yeah, 50/50 init.
It was good.
Yeah, like.
It’s part of the story.
Yeah.
You know them ones?
When I was younger, yeah, I wasn't, I don't know.
My grips on reality was a bit mad. So, I was talking to one girl or whatever and like,
I think I saw a picture and it gave me the ick, so I was just like,
nah I don't really want to do this no more sort of thing
but I didn't tell her, so she called me and then I picked up the phone and I was like 'Yeah,
you alright like, I can’t lie, I'm dying', like.
I was basically like do you know what and then I just stopped talking yeah
and then I pretended to be my mum and I was like
'I’m sorry, Hendo’s got to go now like, he’s dying'.
Can you re-enact the death?
Man said re-enact the death.
Basically, fam, I remember it like yesterday, I was lying down on my bed sort of
thing and she was calling me and I think I had aired the first call I swear, I was like cool,
boom I'm not shook init let me, let me pattern init, so I picked up the phone,
and I was just like, 'Yeah, you alright?' Like I remember making my voice very coarse init
and very like and then I was like 'I can’t really talk right now,
like I’m dying' sort of thing init and do you know what it is as well yeah,
you know when you’re young yeah? Like bro like saying I’m dying like,
what are you dying of? Like what’s the problem? Like, do you know what I’m trying to say?
There’s bare details that man missed out sort of thing init and I just like,
I just started pretending to be my mum and I was just like I was like 'Yeah sorry he’s got to go.' Fam, listen
What’s so funny about that as well, she definitely knew it was you.
So what was her reaction to your mum as well?
Fam, do you think I gave her time to react?
Fam, I locked off the phone fam, I said you have to go fam.
I said listen, 'I'm sorry like, there’s no time. I need to spend the last time with my son.' So.
Have you guys ever like, received or sent a read more message or a podcast voice note?
Someone's mum left me a voice note once.
Wow.
A voice note?
A long one?
Two, like two minutes, 40 seconds.
That’s a long ting, yeah.
Cooking me.
Did you deserve it?
Course.
He deserved it.
Of course, you can’t just fuck my daughter and leave like.
Do you know - all I want to know is that was she tech savvy like,
did she like press record and then swipe it up to lock it?
No.
Or, did she or did she hold it?
No, it was a voicemail. You know like?
She left you a voicemail, I didn’t even know voicemails were that long.
I’ve defo received.
And have you ever sent?
Actually, do you know what? Nah, I’ve actually sent as well
because sometimes that’s the only way you communicate with some people,
they just - you know like it gets to a point where you can't be arsed to talk,
you just need to communicate, make sure it's black and white and fam it is what it is.
God damn, it’s not my proudest moment.
It's not my proudest moment.
I've definitely received but...
And how do you respond to those?
I don't.
I ain’t reading that shit.
You're not reading it?
No - I'm just joking.
Nah, I, because - you see with the 'read more' messages.
There's so many questions to answer.
I'm not gonna, respond back to them individually.
Jump on the phone, we’ll have a conversation.
That's an old person flex you know.
Speaking Portuguese I didn’t und- bare parts that I didn't understand but
she was, yeah she was cooking me.
And I'm pissed because I was scared yeah,
And I deleted it as if that would save me but then I was like,
'I want to hear it again.' So I called Vodafone like, can you send me the voice note back?
Swear down.
‘Cause I wanted it back.
And they sent it?
Nah.
Oh, I was about to say.
They said it’s gone.
Some of them I do listen to, sometimes I didn't and I just called.
Okay, you saved yourself by saying I just called.
I just called yeah, literally, I just called. So it's not like I ignored it.
I may not have listened to the actual voice note but I was just like,
I just called straight away. I was like, what are you trying to send to me?
Why don’t you just, tell me?
Is this an exclusive relationship? Is this dating?
Any situation?
But which one do you want, that’s what I’m saying -
Okay, give me dating.
Dating?
Yeah.
That just gets ignored.
Serious dating?
Exclusive dating.
Cool then, that’s, there’s definitely, okay let's talk about it.
I'll read it but we're gonna have to speak through this over the phone because I think for us, we're tone deaf.
So, I'm tone deaf anyway, so if I’m messaging,
it's gonna get read completely differently to what I actually mean.
So, it's in my best interest to speak to you over the phone or see you face to face and make that time.
I might have sent three, ten minute voice notes. Yeah.
Three!?
Do you want to listen to them? Nah I’m not going to play them.
Nah, definitely received.
I’ve received multiple. I’ve received...
That received one, it’s even
How do you respond to them?
You don't. Nah I'm guessing, you do.
It was detailed like...
Were they successful?
Detailed.
The babe was very apologetic, and I'm a forgiving person man,
I can't hold grudges. Like energy for me is like something that's very important.
I can't carry around bad energy so, when she hit me up recently,
I can't lie I’ve been waiting for her to message me. Like straightaway,
I was like come through let's have a chat, let's be adults, let's hash it out because,
I cared about her but I am never ever sending that what? Thirty minutes? That is a podcast.
That's 'Three Shots of Tequila' fam, what? That’s 'Receipts', Tolly T, no way.
I had one on the flight to Ibiza once,
'read more' it was mad I clicked it just to see
how long it is. It had like, head- subheadings.
Shit was, it was chaptered off.
Wait, the message had subheadings?
She planned it, do you know what is? She wrote that in notes before
she put in a message because she didn't want to press send accidentally.
Yeah.
You know like that?
That’s the technique, you have to write it in notes.
It opened to a Word document, like 'read more', fwam.
But I’m annoying because I don't even write my sentences in a one full thing.
One sentence send, another sentence, send, another sentence, send.
And it'll go - it’ll never be a paragraph
Okay but why? What's the difference? You just gonna send like, forty lines?
Yeah.
Just separately but it's not a 'read more' so that it doesn’t say...
Do you know what it is as well, yeah?
I find, when it comes to those kinds of situations,
women are very like 'but you didn't answer this question'.
No, but you didn't though. Why didn’t you?
No, it’s not that you didn’t, you didn’t answer it the way that you wanted it to be answered.
Exactly, what do you mean but you didn’t though?
Okay, no. If I asked you a question, I asked you maybe four questions...
All right. Give an example.
Bring out because we can't obviously for this set bring out our phone -
Bring out a phone were obviously, you’ve sent a paragraph,
or you’ve received.
Why?
Or you’ve received a paragraph, so we can have a discussion, let's have...
Bring out yours.
We’re not, are we allowed to bring out our phones?
Yeah.
I don’t get paragraphs, so I can't give you that.
Oh, now you don't get paragraphs, you tried to draw me out.
If you've got a draft of a message yeah, that's planned violence.
If you see 'read more', that’s too much man.
It’s that or 'We need to talk.' I just ain’t got time.
'When are you free?'
Those are the lines.
'When are you free?' Is tense.
If I'm sending your message, you're getting like, spell-correct. You're getting everything wrong.
Everything.
You’re just getting my emotions. I’m not planning it out, you’re just getting it.
No punctuation.
With the podcast voice note, that one yeah, I don't even listen to it in the chat.
So this is actually crazy that I’m saying this yeah but I forward it to myself.
I forward it to myself and I'll listen to it in my own chat. So in your chat it’s still blue.
Okay.
So then it’s like I’m just not listening, that's sometimes, that's if I really care about you.
If not, I'm just not listening because why the hell are you sending me something seven minutes long?
Bruv, someone got, one of the mandem got a fifteen minute one one time.
I can’t lie to you man.
Fifteen minutes? Pick up the phone and call me.
You have to plan it out so that you can get your points across.
I don't want to hear it.
Cohesively.
The thing is, if you’ve got that many points to give to me. I don't - I'm not listening.
It's too much.
You should have brought these points up as they happened.
You need to abridge this story and get it...
Don’t come all at once, that's rude, like. That doesn’t make sense.
I feel like it does.
That’s a, that’s an a - you don't like me.
It's not like I didn’t listen. As I said in the beginning,
I said sometimes I listen, sometimes I’m just like,
you could have just phoned me and we could have had a conversation,
we could have broke it down together.
Those messages are selfish anyway. They're not for me to read.
What’s selfish about them? Because I...
You just want closure.
You just want to talk, you just want to talk without being interrupted,
but you don't actually want me to read it. You just wanted to get off your chest.
I’m a typer, like I'm down for it but I do like lots of short bullet points.
Bro, you like typing?
Yeah, I don't mind it you know, I don't mind it.
I prefer it over voice notes because sometimes I waffle on.
I prefer to just get on the phone and just get -
Oh, no, you can't beat face to face, let's talk about it.
But sometimes, like you said, you can say something and if they don't have a high level of like,
receptive skills, or like they have a certain learning style, you almost need to -
this may sound crazy, you almost need to know the learning style of your partner.
Because if they're visual, they may need to read something because if you speak to them,
you could speak to them for like an hour and they're not really taking in what you're saying.
But if they got a message in front of them and they've got time to go away, read it and decipher it,
then they can actually access it slightly differently.
So as far as I'm concerned, you tell me what works for you and then I’ll be adaptable.
Communication is very important. So regardless, just as human beings,
you just have to respect each other to just be able to communicate and is - if as a man,
you're not ready to communicate with the opposite sex, you shouldn't be even talking to them.
Because that's just basic human respect. Are you going to air your mother?
Definitely.
No.
So as like successful black men, what type of women were you looking for?
Someone that's willing to grow and you know, see, the world in a different way.
I think it's very important that you two have an understanding of where you want to be in life.
'Cause I think that's a key fundamental because some women are just not motivated.
Being successful is very uncomfortable.
So that's the real conversation we're having,
are you willing to be uncomfortable because there's certain days you're not going to get paid.
Because it's your job, our job to bring in the money
and not every day you go out to hunt you're gonna get you're gonna get the kill.
There’s someone out there for everyone init. Definitely within our community, for sure.
Obviously, I know for the women it’s a bit different, do you know what I mean?
‘cause, obviously the markets are not the same.
High value man.
What's the difference? Why is the market not the same?
Just in terms of just choice init at the end of the day right if we're all being honest,
it's like, like you said, the whole high value man compared to high value women,
the more like women become successful, do you know what I mean?
The harder it becomes to date men and the more -
a lot of men have got bare insecurities and this is the kind of stuff we talk about in CB like,
in terms of just in themselves, so therefore it affects the type of women they go for.
They won't go for a woman that I don’t know,
makes more money than them because they might feel a bit inferior or less than.
Someone that ultimately is comfortable within themselves.
I think I'm very attracted to, I guess, confidence.
That knows they’re the shit.
Do you feel like body image is important when you're dating?
Like the way your girl looks, or the girl, you know?
I think you should always be attracted to your partner.
I'd be lying if I said no and I'm not gonna sit in this chair and lie.
It's not like the most important thing but hey, I look at, I'd look at that and gauge
whether I'd want to have a conversation with said individual. Yeah.
Yeah, I think attraction is dependent on the person as well and I think
sometimes confidence can add to that attraction, I don't think you have to have certain things.
You don't have to have like a flat stomach or you have to - hair has to be a certain way.
It's more how you are, how I meet you, that's the real connection and then how it is -
but I do think it's important to like, maintain your standards.
Sex isn't important when dating.
Isn’t?
I don’t agree
Who said that?
Sex money communication, that's the free basics of relationship.
I love that.
Yeah, I agree.
Sex, money...
Communication first.
I think in any order but it’s, they all have to be in synergy.
Nah, ‘cause we don’t have sex when we date.
I think, wait, hold on 'cause
And - but you know what yeah...
Speak for yourself, and yourself only.
I was about to say, do you know what it is?
Listen.
That's, you know what it is? So, that’s what we aspire to do init.
It's part of it. Like, if you don't have a level of connection, like intimately,
emotionally, spiritually it's not gonna go as far as you want it to go.
So I don't think it's the be all and end all but it's definitely a contributing factor.
Do you know what it is? I say it's important from a perspective where you need to make sure
that you're sexually attracted to the person 'cause I think saying that it's not important at all
just means that rah, like it just about personality and your relationship with God that’s all
I care about, that's what I'm attracted to. Come on, let's be real.
Yes and no, it's not like the most important thing.
And I sound like one of them Twitter guys, 'I'm a sapiosexual.' But I like to connect on like a mental level.
For me physical is great, but like, it's fleeting, it comes and goes and it's there, you can get it from anyone.
Whereas, like when you connect on an emotional level, like it's very,
very hard to get those connections, those true connections. So.
Would you date someone who's waiting for marriage?
No.
Why is that?
I know I'm not.
I’m interested in having sex.
Yeah.
That’s what I’m...
Why am I coming to corrupt you like, that’s just rude.
Taking a woman's virginity should never be taken lightly. For a man.
And I feel like you have to think about the responsibility that you're taking.
You know, because that's them really giving themselves to you,
the first time the first ever experience is going to relate to you.
If you're willing to, to stick it out and be in a
to death do we part, all day long.
But if you're not on that, then don't, let her find a person that is on that with her basically.
So it’s not a big deal?
Nah, it’s not still.
Some would say that’s a preference.
You know what's funny, because that's what is very rare for you that init, it's rare for you to hear that still.
And what’s annoying is that even when I say it, it's like 'He's gassing.'
because you expect me to be a certain type of way but I’m just not.
Yeah.
So it's not a big deal?
Nah because I think you have to respect their journey.
We said, you treat everyone as an individual,
as I said earlier on, so you have to focus on where they're at.
And then once if they make that aware, like aware,
aware to you, you then go in in an informed way.
If that's the one thing and you are the woman of my dreams, fuck it - let's get married tomorrow.
But this is the thing I never dated for marriage. I dated to have sex.
True.
So my whole reason for dating, you're going against it.
Yes.
Do you get what I’m saying? So why are we here?
It’s important, it’s just in the context how you’re having it but it's definitely important.
I think when people go and pretend that it's not that deep,
it’s that deep but it needs to be done in the right context.
Now, I know that before, I would have never said that.
We have to look at each gender's tactics here ‘cause men be successful in dating and relationships and sex.
Women aren't too successful in dating and marriage, so we need to add sex,
they need to add sex in there and it’ll help them get what they want.
I don’t even know how you got to that equation.
How do you not?
That doesn't make sense because you can’t say women aren't successful in dating and marriage
when you lot are married to women or engaged...
They’re fine. But it’s the women that, are struggling regularly,
it seems like they're doing something wrong.
Well that’s because his theory is that you should just be having sex.
First.
Yeah.
So in terms of like, well for me, for me anyway, like in terms of going into it.
I'm not thinking about oh, sex and all of that. You get what I mean?
If it happens, it can potentially happen. I don't want it to it could potentially happen.
But I'm not thinking, going into it, I'm not thinking rah, is she good at dah dah dah...
That's not really, that's not literally, that's not really my thing until it gets to, alright, cool, we're married init.
But in situations, things can happen init.
There is a constant argument about who should - dating overall,
who should pay where we go, how much - all of that nonsense.
Just cut that one out because it's clearly not working for a lot of people.
Just get straight to the sex.
See if you're compatible and you go from there - work backwards.
Yeah.
Because the other way clearly hasn't got a lot of people what they want in life, like.
I don't agree with what he's saying, but there's a science.
There’s a science to post-nut clarity that a man is different after he has buss a nut.
Back in the day, definitely not.
Those are the ones there, you don’t even spend your time. That’s the honest truth.
Also for me, it’s also down to respect as well in terms of like, if I'm just being with you,
just for this and I'm gonna now take that away from you just for my own sense of pleasure.
Yeah.
It's long, do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
We’re fine, we all had sex.
I'm good.
We wasn't too interested in dating for anything else and we made it. Yeah.
I mean, the girl that I, the woman I've married, I had sex with her.
Me too.
So, I mean, I've gotten to the finish line with my whole plan and strategy. So it has worked.
You have to be open to the fact that this person that you're with can either be the love of
your life or your biggest heartbreak but you just have to take the risk.
When they're just genuinely trying to be their best selves,
that in itself can be quite inspirational for you.
Yo.
Can you follow on from that?