[Interview] Loni Love Explains Why She Decided to Choose Her Career Over Love: ‘I was really kind of wasting my time.’

When your TV experience consists of shows like Chelsea Lately, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Real it’s safe to say that – you’ve had a promising career in comedy!  Loni Love is becoming one of the most sought-after female comedians in the entertainment industry. Giving her very opinionated advice on ‘The Real’, she’s become one of the fan favorites, not to mention the fact that she’s shared another dimension of her personality, penning her first book Love Him Or Leave Him, But Don’t Get Stuck With the Tab: Hilarious Advice for Real Women. The multi-talented Detroit native recently took some time to chat it up with us at her book release party , dishing advice for those of us who have laser focus on career (over marriage), why ‘The Real’ is different from other daytime TV shows and more:

Jasmine BRAND:   So, this is your first book, correct?

Loni Love:   Yes, this is my first book and I’m excited about it. And it’s called “Love Him or Leave him, But Don’t Get Stuck with the Tab”. A shout-out to Simon & Schuster for giving me a deal and this is just an exciting time for me – I just feel like I want to burst, but I’m really happy. It’s a comedy-relationship advice book and it’s really more on the comedy side but it has a little bit of you know, advice that women can use.

JB:   Because I was sitting at the bar before you came down and I just flipped to one page – like in the middle – and it was hilarious. It was like a “Question and Answer” like – it was someone asking if should they tell their man how many people they have slept with. And you were like two words – hell no.

LL:   Exactly, it’s questions like that that normal people have been asking me – yes it’s because I do stand-up, I travel all over – and people have been asking me the same questions about relationships and for some reason they think they can trust me? So I said “I’ll put some questions in the book and answer them”, and they’re like some things but it’s just my point of view – I’m not saying that I’m a love expert or anything. I really like giving advice. I care about people especially women and I think a lot of people have been given advice – a lot of men having given their perspective and I think it’s time for a real woman to give her perspective, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

JB:   In terms of relationship questions – what question do you get the most about relationships?

LL:   “How can I find a man?” I mean it’s like we really have become this – a lot of us have become really desperate in thinking that we can’t find – there are men everywhere, really good guys out there and it’s just understanding yourself first. And that’s the thing that I try to stress in this book is to understand yourself first and love yourself first, then, when you work on yourself, you’re going to draw what you really want and also, you’ve got to make a master-list. We get embarrassed, you know. But if you’re looking for somebody and you know what you like, write it down – like for me, I like a tall man. I like a man that knows that Africa is a continent not a country. I like a man that’s going to sit in the middle of the plane seat, so I could lean on him – so it’s things like that for me that I need in a man. It might seem like it’s trivial but those little things let me know that that’s the man for me. So the first thing I tell people is to write a list, find out what it is that you really want in a man and then it doesn’t mean that you’ve got to check it off or ditch the guy off if it isn’t yours, but it gives you an idea what you want.

JB:   So I know that you’ve been married before. Are you single right now? Or what’s going on with your…

LL:   I’m what you call a satisfied single. I don’t want to give any trip reports when I come home. I like having peace and quiet in my life and I am perfectly happy in my relationships.

JB:   And that was plural. Do you think that you’ll always be – what you call that – single and satisfied?

LL:   A satisfied single? You know what? I will never say never but I can tell you right now – I am perfectly happy with being who I am. I just – I really – I’m an entertainer and the thing that I’d decided to work on was my career and I decided the energy that I was putting in certain relationships – I was really kind of wasting my time and I knew it. So I said, I would take that energy and put it into my career. And now look – I’m on a talk show, I have a book that I wrote – I mean, it takes concentration for those things but it happened. So, I’m not that I’ll never say never but right now, I enjoy my life, I truly do enjoy being single and I don’t really want to get married. I don’t want to get married – I’ve been there, and done that. So I know what I’m talking about when I say that. And for everybody has a different path – find out your path! And if you want to do it, don’t let people make you feel inadequate, because you wanted to do something that’s different. So I have a lot of sayings that I have been putting on my Twitter, a timeline because we’re hurting out there, especially sisters. But sisters don’t need to hurt, you know what I mean? We have to inspire men to be men – that’s the thing – and I think we’ve kind of lost that because we kind of feel like we’re desperate. “Oh if I’m at a certain age…” No! If you don’t have a man, then what you need to do is enjoy your life until you get the man. Don’t stop living your life. Keep improving yourself, keep doing what you want to do. Take trips, there are so many ways. But there are plenty of men out there – there’s never ever going to be a shortage. It only takes a minute to fall in love, seriously – it only takes a minute! So don’t give up on that because I can feel it coming from you. Don’t… No.. I know you want it. It’s out there! Don’t worry!

JB:   I appreciate you putting me out there like that.

LL:   Because you know what, every woman that I have been talking to – especially when they are at your age – I can feel it, I can see it. I’m like, you’re working, you’re on your career, and you’re doing your hustle. Don’t worry about it. It’s going to come for you. But also, don’t just ignore. When you see somebody, open up your mouth, okay? Don’t just let it go by and be like “Uh…” No! It’s okay to say “Hello, how are you doing? My name is Jasmine…”. You know what I mean? It’s like sometimes we feel especially sisters, we feel like we have to have the men pursue us. It’s not pursuing a man to say hello, it’s not pursuing a man to smile at him and whatever – you know, flirt with him. It’s like we can all “He’s got to do it to us!” and then you’re upset when he walk off and he’s with somebody else – because she knows how to do it! You’ve got to do that too!

JB:   Okay, we’re getting off me before I let you go, let’s talk about ‘The Real’. How’s it going?

LL:   The Real is going fabulous; we’re getting fabulous ratings. I want to thank people out there that are watching this show because we didn’t know how the show would be received. I mean, all we did was we said that we’re going to put a show together, we’re going to sit down, we’re going to talk, we’re going to put some cue segments and let’s see. We were going to – we were being compared to a lot of other shows because when you say “Oh, you’re going to put 5 women at a table, you can try to be like this!” We’re not trying to be like nobody and now that people see this show, they’re like “This is something different”. Yeah, we’re all sexually active on that table, okay? This is The Real – I’m on The Real, okay? So that’s one thing, but we are really having fun. Some of us are mothers, some of us are married, some of us are single – that’s what makes it a good conversation but I will say this, that we all like each other. We have spirited conversations but we also are respecting each other. And in this age of… you see women throwing bottles and glasses at each other – it’s nice to see – we can be civil and still have real conversations so I love The Reel.

JB:   I love it too! Speaking of other shows, have any other shows reached out and said “Hey, congrats” or “You’re doing it” or “Good luck”?

LL:   Yeah, they’ve been doing it on a low-low. I say that – which I understand – I totally get it. They can’t, you know publicly – but they’ve been doing it privately. And that warms my heart because you know they don’t have to do that. But for them to do that on the low-low, it really is encouraging and I appreciate it.

Watch the full interview below.