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After spending six-and-a-half years in the bing, it’s hard to believe any man would faithfully stay by his woman’s side. But in Remy Ma‘s case, she made sure her hubby, Papoose, wouldn’t be going anywhere while she took a little vacation upstate.
While the rap couple’s three kids — one from their relationship and a son and daughter from Pap’s previous relationship — probably played a factor in making things work, the former Terror Squad princess had a few tricks up her sleeve when it came to reminding her self-proclaimed prince of New York what he had waiting for him at home Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. And the fact that the two were married while the now 34-year-old rapstress was locked up helped keep things a little more interesting than usual. Can anyone say, conjugal visits.
“People call them conjugal visits, but it’s really called FRP, the Family Reunion Program,” Remy tells The Boombox. “You can only go with someone that you can have sex with if you’re married; however, a lot of the women that are in prison don’t have husbands, or if they had a husband and were married he didn’t stick around.”
Reminisce Smith knows she got “lucky” with her marital circumstances, but she admits that keeping a marriage alive when you’re behind bars if definitely a “challenge.” “When you go [from] seeing your man every day, and breaking your neck to get to each other, to we can only see each other for two days in an intimate way every six weeks or 42 days… that’s a strain in your relationship,” admits Remy. “And then you have me, who stayed in trouble so my 42 days or my six weeks would turn into six months, easy. You have to have someone who really loves you and is willing to put your relationship over physical acts.”
But just because Remy had to keep her man’s attention without focusing on the physical doesn’t mean she didn’t get creative. “I think during my six-and-a-half years [in jail], we’ve had every type of sex you can think of: phone sex, letter sex, pass-this-message-to-him-when-you-see-him sex. We tried everything. We determined that we were not gonna let this break us and we didn’t.”
So if you’re going through a seasonal set of relationship issues, or just looking for new ways to have your guy stick around, check out Remy Ma’s Five-Step Guide to Keeping a Man.
"You have to know your man. Girls be like, ‘I know my man, I know my man,’ but I mean really know him. Know how [he] thinks, know what [he] wants in a female -- because sometimes you might not be what [he] really wants. [When you don't know you're man], that’s why it’s an issue when you have conflicting ideas about certain things."
"I know people are saying, 'Oh, she’s so progressive,' but I know what my position is. I know the part that I play in the relationship, and I know the part that he plays and I never try to step into his role. If I feel like he’s doing something that might harm himself, I don’t nag him or talk down to him -- nobody wants to be talked down to. Guys try to act like they’re so different from [women], but they’re really the same. You don’t want to be talked down to or want anyone to make you feel like your opinion doesn’t matter like they don’t really need you. If a guy came to you and was like, ‘Do you know how many chicks is hollerin’ at me,' you would look at him crazy. And you don’t want give that out to your man either, making him feel like dudes is hollerin’ at [you] everyday, like, 'I don’t have to be here.' I think once you know who your man is, and you know his wants and his desires and things like that and you let him play his position, everything else is just gonna fall into place."
"There would be times where [Papoose and I] would [argue], and we didn’t agree on certain things and we would be on the phone -- it took up to three hours sometimes because the average phone call is only a half-an-hour, and I would call six times if need be -- and I would sit there with a pen and paper and he would sit there with his pen and paper on his end and let me talk until I’m done. And when I’m done, I say, 'I’m done.' And then he would go back, and he would speak and touch on everything that I spoke about or what his issues were concerning the same situation. It’s so crazy how once we even started doing that everything was easier than it was before because [we] feel like [we] have a voice and [we] feel like [our] opinions matter.
"There be times when you can be with your man, and you just want to cut him off before he finish like, ‘Before you even finish what you sayin’, let me tell you right now it’s not happenin’,’ but that really doesn’t do anything to help your situation. You have to let [him] speak, and he has to have that respect for you to allow you to speak."
"You have to find a man that’s going to respect you. With my husband, I tell him all the time the fact that he grew up in a home with his mom and his dad and they were married until he was grown made him have certain values and certain respect for me. I’ve never even heard him in casual talking -- he might do it on a record, but even that isn’t that often (probably not til he started to hand out with me so much) -- call women bitches or hoes or anything like that. I know him so well, the way he says 'this lady' or 'this female' a certain way, I’m like, 'Oh, he really wants to say this bitch.' He just has so much respect for women."
5
Understand If He's a Keeper
"When women are trying to keep a man, just make it’s a man that you want to keep. You know, he might be cute and drives this type of vehicle and has a nice little bank account, but is he really somebody that you would want? A lot of times, guys like that they have issues about being with one woman -- they don’t want to be with one woman, and why should they when they can be with five of them and everyone’s gonna tolerate it? So you have to make sure that the man that you’re trying to keep is a man that you want to keep, and that he wants to be kept."
