Why Dr.Dre’s advice on “Hoes and Housewives” makes you a better person.

Dr. Dre’s 1999 “Housewife” launched an idiom of street knowledge into the mainstream, that would long transcend it’s time. So much so, that in 6th grade a close friend and I would quote it like a bible verse. This is saying a lot, because we actually had to take bible class.

Years later, I discovered that “You can’t turn a hoe into a housewife” while having misogynistic stripes, is advice that can help us in work, friendships, and family relationships as well. 

But take this with a grain of salt– I’m not a therapist, just a guy addicted to self-help books and hip-hop music, who wants to help.

Oh, and an important note. I use Hoes as a gender-neutral term.

1. “Hoes stay hoes”. 

Nothing in life changes for the better. 

Okay wait, but you’re thinking of people you know who have changed. Maybe you were an asshole to your ex, and now you’re a much better partner to your current partner, like me, and you’re thinking fuck this guy I HAVE changed.

Trust me, I was a hoe, and now I’m a husband…. In theory. But I did not change, nor does anyone.

Because in life, things do not change for the better. They grow.

I pulled this idea from psychologist Dr.Leslie Carr.

For example, a fulfilling career takes time to grow. Being laid off, that’s a change. Quitting your job, that’s a change. And it only takes a day. Even if you get a new job, it’s the result of years of hard work, education, discipline, and MAYBE celibacy.

Change is instant. It takes minimal effort and minimal time. Growth is gradual. It takes consistent effort and longer periods of time. The good news is that we can 100% control the person we grow into. 

2. “Loving hoes saves you from heartbreak.” 

The other slice of wisdom from Dr.Dre’s song is that loving a hoe because they can become a housewife/husband is not loving them at all. This is loving their potential. 

I adapted this idea from Dr.Gabor Mate, who talks about “Human Nature vs. Human Potential”.

I discovered that while loving potential may disguise itself as a hopeful selfless act, it’s actually manipulative and selfish. We think that we should love the friend, girlfriend, partner, boss, or co-worker, this person could be. But someone’s potential is always directly tied to our wants & needs, not the reality of what that person is capable or willing to do in the present moment.

But what about tough love? What about helping people not suck as humans? Isn’t that love? Well, it is, but the key here is to do our best to love someone’s growth instead of their potential. 

The main difference between loving potential vs. loving growth is that one is connected to our self-interest and the other is extremely f****ing difficult, yet makes us very happy. Basically, loving potential is loving what you want from someone. Loving growth is loving who someone is, and the person they want to become. 

When we love potential, we’re emotionally stuck in the future. This limits us to either feeling overly anxious that the other person will not meet our needs, or feeling overly excited that one day they might. Either way, we aren’t focused on having our needs met in the present.

Loving growth frees us. It lets us be honest about which relationships in our lives are capable of meeting certain needs, and which aren’t. It allows us to take the necessary steps to be happy in right now. 

3. “Love the hoe in you.”

The final, and in my mind the most crucial wisdom from Dr. Dre’s song, is that we have to accept, and love, the hoe in us. 

To explain my point, I’ll use the ladder theory. I adapted this idea from best-selling author Mark Manson’s writing on friendships. 

In a ladder of relationship intimacy, you can only go as high as the least committed person. It takes two to go up the ladder, and say begin a committed relationship. But it only takes one person to go down the ladder, and say “we’re just friends”.

The heartbreaking part of the ladder is when we have to accept that we’re not as high on someone’s ladder as we hoped. Yet ironically, the happiness hack here is to love them. 

For example, If you REALLY want to be work friends with “Rachel”, and she only treats you as a work enemy, you can only go as high as work enemies on the ladder.

But, if we choose to love Rachel, we let go of the way we hoped to love them. Instead, we love them in the way they are asking us to love them in the present moment. 

This is where the miracle happens. Allowing ourselves to stay at the ladder rung of “work enemies”, teaches us to love qualities in ourselves we used to hate. Maybe being work enemies with Rachel means now we have to be more assertive, emotionally withdrawn, and competitive. These tend to be dominant qualities in people that have hurt us in the past, and so often we learn to shame these qualities in ourselves.  

We may be attached to the idea of being nice, trusting, and emotionally open. But, some people (Rachel) prefer competitive, antagonistic environments. That’s where they flourish. And being nice, trusting, and emotionally open around these people will most likely lead to betrayal, heartbreak, and your life becoming a Tyler Perry movie. 

So, Loving your enemies can mean kicking their a***, if, of course, that is the only language they currently understand. 

Conclusion: “Love comes from very odd places”. 

In Jay Shetty’s N.Y Time’s best-selling Think Like A Monk, he tells a small story that changed the made me drop the book, pick it up again, re-read it, and drop it just one more time. 

Jay asks his monk teacher; “I’m giving love to all these people, why aren’t they giving it back?”. 

His monk teacher replies: “Just as you are loving people who don’t love you back, their are people that are loving you, that you’ve forgotten about.”

He goes on to describe a theory called “The Circle of Love”. It states that the love you give out always comes back to you, just not from the same people you give it to.

When I read this, I realized that just as I have relentlessly chased people in my life, – so have others chased me. 

As we learn to love people’s growth, we release the expectation they may love us in the way we hope. The miracle here, is that we will discover the people who already do. 

Till next time, 

M