My eyes have always given me a little trouble (without my glasses I admittedly can’t see near or far), but from what I could see in that so-called infamous video of Kevin Hart sitting in a car with another woman, he didn’t look like he was doing much of anything but talking — albeit exuberantly.
After simply “SMDH” (shaking my damn head) at the rumors that he stepped out on wife Eniko Hart, the comedian emphatically said in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight that the cheating allegations were “absolutely not true.”
“It’s Miami, the clubs close at 6 a.m., so I was actually going home early,” he joked.
We saw nothing inappropriate happen technically, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t so something wrong in theory.
Call me old-fashioned or controlling if you like, but I wasn’t a fan of the idea of him being out at 5 a.m. in a car with a woman who isn’t his wife or a close, known friend of his wife (aka, she’s met and knows of this friendship). And sure, I don’t know all of the inside tea on what friendship Hart and the woman in the car, Miami singer Monique, may have. Still, considering we’ve never seen them together before or heard them mention one another in any type of way outside of this incident, one could assume they’re not really friends. And yes, I get that he’s an entertainer and they don’t necessarily operate on the same schedule as the rest of us, but this situation still left a funny taste in my mouth.
When I talked about it with my husband over Southern fare during our weekly date night, he didn’t see an issue. “So if you go out with friends, including one of the opposite sex, and you guys stay out late and are seen in a car together doing nothing, that means you still did something wrong?” he asked. “People just read into things too deeply. But I think it’s unfortunate that the assumption is that if you’re seen out with a woman late at night, as a man, you’re cheating or you’re wrong.”
One of my single girlfriends didn’t really see an issue either, specifically in terms of people’s criticism of his late hours spent with this young woman.
“What’s wrong with staying out until five in the morning sometimes when you’re married? I think if you keep your partner aware of your movements and when you’re coming home, it’s not a big deal,” she said. “Because I don’t necessarily want someone telling me I have to be home at a certain time because I’m married. No matter what, I’m still very much my own person and if I want to hang out with friends late occasionally, I shouldn’t be made to feel like because of my marital status, that’s always going to be seen as inappropriate.”
I understood where both of them were coming from. Again, I didn’t say he cheated or did something flat-out disrespectful by being out late or by being out late with a woman who isn’t his wife. As I stated, I don’t like the idea of it. With that being said, my beef is more so with how situations like that can be perceived. As Veronica Wells put it, Hart was in a compromising position. But it wasn’t one he found himself in, but rather, one he put himself in.
What I’m getting at, folks, is that when you have the opportunity to go out without your spouse and be with friends, don’t put yourself in predicaments or positions that could be of embarrassment to the both of you or that require an explanation to iron out.
Out of respect for my partner, I wouldn’t put myself in a position where I would be moving about, riding around with, sitting super close to, all in the mouth of, flirting with, touching in a flirtatious manner, chatting at all times of the night, throwing back drinks or hitting the streets at the crack a– of dawn with a man who was not him. I don’t think it means I’m overly cautious. I think it means that I respect my relationship and don’t want to compromise it over an unnecessary “misunderstanding.”
To share an example that I’ve put out there before, I once dated a guy who, on his birthday, hung out with a few girlfriends while I was at home sick. I hated these girls (at the time — it’s a long story), but knew they lived in his building and were his friends, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it. The next day there were pictures on Facebook of him in very inappropriate positions with these girls. He was immature as all hell, so there were photos taken by one of the girls of them kissing him on the cheek, posing bent down in front of him, and the kicker, him wheelbarrowing one of the girls with her big behind close to his crotch. It was a friend of mine who saw the photos and called them to my attention, which made the situation worse because other people saw that foolishness first.
While he didn’t technically cheat, he put himself in an extremely compromising position that not only was disrespectful to our relationship, but left me embarrassed. Because he didn’t cheat, he didn’t initially understand the blowback from it all.
I say all that to state that sometimes in these situations, it’s not what it is, but what it looks like. While no one is trying to lock someone down and put a key on their independence, how many of us are really married people staying out until 5 a.m.? You can do that if that’s the type of understanding you have as a couple, but the likelihood of things like this happening, where you’re seen and accused of doing something inappropriate, gets higher past a certain point in the night. And when people are falsely accused of certain things, the common thought for people who know them is, But why did you put yourself in that position?
Marriage is hard enough, child. I would just say to Kevin (married less than a year like myself) and anyone else, that it’s best not to make it more complicated by getting caught up in sketchy mess like this. Because it’s about perception. People see what they want to see, but they can’t see and think the worst, your spouse included, if you don’t allow them to…
But as always, that’s just my opinion. What say you? Was this whole Kevin Hart situation petty or did he put himself in vulnerable, compromising position that he shouldn’t have at 5 a.m.?
The post Is This Petty? Kevin Hart, Sometimes It’s Not What It Is, But What It Looks Like appeared first on MadameNoire.