By now, you’ve heard about Ayesha Curry’s Red Table Talk interview. Some of the things that came out were her insecurity about the sports groupies who throw themselves at Steph Curry, her spouse. She also expressed some consternation at the fact that men don’t seem to pay any carnal attention to her.

As usual, Black Twitter has commenced with the memes and everybody with a keyboard, a few $10 words, and experience being a Black woman has started writing 12-paragraph sardonic sociological reports connecting Ayesha, hoes, pies, and light skin.

Well, this isn’t going to be one of those offerings. I’ve met many an Ayesha Curry in my life. Point blank, Ayesha Curry got married too young and now, at the tender age of 30, she’s realizing that there’s a whole world out there that she exchanged for a huzzzzzbind. She did it because she was under the impression that that was where a woman’s virtue lies. She did it because she believed the (often religion-based) lie that if you are a “virtous” woman, you and your marriage are bulletproof against the wiles of Jezebels and devils alike. She bought into the “philosophy” that the younger a woman is when she gets “wifed,” the better a woman she must be.

I’m not going to delve into her past tweets where she worked hard to delineate the difference between herself and the groupies. I’m going to chalk it up to a very young woman trying to cope with a life that seemed pretty on paper but got difficult when she actually had to live it.

This is why I advise against marrying before 30. Ayesha married at 22. At 22, you only have a set of perceptions from watching and listening to other people. If you’re the average woman, and a Black woman at that, you’ve been at least slightly mislead about men, love, and relationships. You likely won’t be disabused of those notions until your late 20s or early 30s.

I know plenty of people will disagree. I personally know women who got married too young and will swear that them still being married means that was a good idea (though I know the tea so…). By the time my mom was 24, she had married, had me, and separated. By 28, she had another child. That was a different era; and I’m willing to bet that my mother would tell any 22-year-old woman to wait before hitching her wagon to some man’s star.

I got married at 27 and in hindsight, I was not ready. It wasn’t that I lacked maturity. It was that I was too unschooled about the male/female dynamic and the intense labor involved in marriage and honestly, dealing with men full-time period. After watching women be dutiful wives despite less than stellar treatment from their husbands, and without being shown the antidote, I repeated patterns that were unhealthy for me and soon found myself unhappy and traveling a similar emotional path to Ayesha Curry.

I don’t have a big sister and when I was married, I didn’t have a mentor so I’m going to offer Ayesha Curry some advice as if I were her big sister:

1. Get on birth control. She’s three babies in and hopefully by now, she realizes that she’s not going to be able to procreate her way into emotional security nor her husband’s fealty.
2. Find some friends who have been married or are married but also stable. Stepford wives and party girls are polar ends of the same continuum and neither will benefit her.
3. Shut up. The problem with talking shit is that when things like this happen, people are able to rub your face in it. Confide in people you can trust to actually care to help you but leave the rest of us out of it.
4. You’re still Ayesha. Sure, you have three babies now, but you need to remember what made you who you are before Steph, and marriage, and mommyhood came along. It’s okay to do things for yourself. You can be a good mother and still maintain your autonomy.
5. Your husband is going to do whatever he wants to do. Doing gymnastics, physically or otherwise, is not going to keep him from behaving the way he chooses. And if he misbehaves, the onus is on him. Not you. Not groupies. You already have 3 children. You don’t need to try to monitor and parent and adult man.
6. Should it come down to it, do what’s best for you.

I sincerely wish her the best.