Archive for Girl to boy dictionary

Games, tests and confusion: A bad mix

March 2, 2007 · Filed under Confusion, Dating, Girl to boy dictionary, Internet Dating, Relationships

You know I said that I wasn’t going to talk to anyone else from the dating site whilst I was “dating”? Well, I lied. Or, to be more accurate, I omitted one tiny detail. One of the two who I particularly wanted to get to know a bit more I have got to know a bit more (flirt and sex free, I might add). There does not appear to be a “spark” (as in “let’s shag”), but we seem to have become quite good conversation-partners over the last week on the phone and via e-mail. I believe that is the way that it is going to continue, but there is an interesting niggling thing which I would like to run by the collective girl-to-boy dictionary crowd in case anyone has any wisdom to offer.

Now, obviously I fancy her a little. Well, quite a bit actually, but I’m more than happy to just remain friends: it gives me another valuable female perspective on things which I’m clearly not qualified to decide all by myself: indeed, she’s actively encouraged me to get out there and date people.

Waiting for the but?

Wait no longer. Here it is…

Something strange happened this evening and I’ve no idea what it was or why it happened. Here’s the story: we’ve talked a lot. She tells me (as everyone else has) that I’m not ready for something complex and that she wouldn’t date me anyway because she’s so convinced that my non-readiness means I need something a little more casual (ok, so I’m taking everyone’s advice except from my own, but I’m going somewhere with this, I promise…)

Despite this fact (platonic, platonic, platonic!) I appear to have been tested in some way. She did a pretty good hatchet job on herself, physical attractiveness wise (utterly unjustified, I might add, having seen a picture of her), and e-mailed me a picture of her friend with a “we might be coming up to your neck of the woods near to easter, do you want to come and meet with us if that happens?”

Well, of course, my answer was yes! It would be a pleasure to meet her having spent so much time chit-chatting. Her friend (and don’t get me wrong here, her friend is attractive) was meeting her on-and-off boyfriend, thus it seemed like a good foursome with perhaps dinner, nice company, nice conversation and some good wine.

Now, for some reason, she expected me to fancy her friend. Apparently, I was meant to pick up on the “on-and-off” bit and spy an opportunity to sneak on in there and get on with her friend more than her. I don’t know her friend, but I am beginning to know her (I think, but sometimes I’m not sure how much I know anyone, really). I saw this as an opportunity to meet her and failed to notice right up until she became almost blunt about it: she’d expected me to say something completely different.

So I asked her, “I don’t understand. I want to meet you, she’s taken – why are you so adamant that I like her?”

It turns out it was some kind of test. A test to see if I was shallow – if I could see beyond someone’s cute body and attractive face to see what was underneath, indeed, if I even cared what was underneath. It was a set-up. And I didn’t bite. So I passed.

My question to my three readers that ever respond (and anyone else who feels that they can offer some thoughts on this subject) would be:

Why?

Why the test if we’ve already established that we’re going to be just friends and that I should date someone as a matter of urgency?

Surely someone’s shallowness is obvious in other ways during conversation, thus I fail to see the requirement to be tested.

I suspect that I was subjected to one of these tests last year, but was blissfully unaware that it was taking place until it was too late. Maybe I’m a little more observant this time around, or maybe the examiner wasn’t quite so subtle as my ex-girlfriend.

If there is one thing that really sinks my battleship it is games in relationships. In fact, my entire skeleton shakes when people play unnecessary games in any aspect of their lives. Why bother? Isn’t everything complicated enough without the cloak and daggers approach to learning about someone?

What test are you taking today that you’re not aware of?

Either that, or I ask too many questions. Hmmmm…

Life, eh?

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A friend in time saves nine (mistakes)

February 26, 2007 · Filed under Confusion, Dating, Friends, Girl to boy dictionary, Girlfriends, Internet Dating, Relationships

A couple of days ago I was on the phone having a long chat with a female friend of mine who I’ve not had the pleasure of speaking to for a good couple of months. I caught her up on developments in my life (that took a while as you can imagine, thank goodness she rang me) right up to my new relationship and all of the details about how that was going. So she kindly decided to hit me with this bombshell:

“You’re not ready for that yet. For a complicated relationship, I mean. You need something a bit… simpler.”

To which my reply was “what do you mean by complicated?”

She said “Well… you’re just lonely. What you need is some sex, cuddles and someone to veg out on the sofa with twice a week. Oh, I don’t mean one-night-stands, you need a hassle-free relationship for a month or two. That’d sort you right out. Then you’d be ready.”

“Ready for what, precisely?” I replied trying to figure out where she was going with this whilst having an eerie feeling I knew exactly where she was going.

“Oh, you know, for the whole love, moving in, having babies thing. You’re rebounding, you feel lonely and normal enough to want a girl’s company but you are not ready to make a true commitment: particularly a complicated one. You’ve only been able to hold yourself together for the last month or so, let alone make decisions of that magnitude. You’re doing too much too quickly, you need to slow down. You’re not ready.”

“I’m not ready?” I replied with perhaps a touch too much sarcasm, “I feel ready.”

“Trust me. I’m your girlie with no vested interest: you’d be making a serious mistake going for a complex serious relationship at this time. You’ll hurt someone and that someone is probably going to be you. You sure you got enough in reserve yet to deal with that?”

Compromise time. I needed to think this all over, so I rashly promised “I’ll ring my Mum, run it by her and see what she says.”

“If you present it exactly like you did to me, I’ll bet you 50 euros payable next time you’re over that she’ll agree with me completely. 50 euros…” She paused briefly before continuing “… I’ve known you for a long time, so I’ll bet a further 50 euros that you’ll take the bet and lose.”

Of course, I took both the bets (don’t I ever learn?)

I was sitting on the sofa, thinking about what she’d said and the more I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make. It was time to ring Mum. The phone rang. It was Mum. How do mothers just know when you need to speak to them? Oh, I understand what a coincidence is, but still – it did appear to be perfect timing: almost to the second.

I kept my promise to my female friend: I presented the facts (as I understood them) to my Mum in exactly the same way as I had to her. And Mum’s answer?

Her answer means I’m 100 euros down next time I’m on the continent. Either that, or I can spend the next five years avoiding Germany until she’s forgotten, but she didn’t forget the other bet with her that I lost either (despite the currency change: she helpfully converted Deutsche Marks to Euros for me in a handy e-mail reminder), so I’m probably screwed unless the Euro collapses. You’ve probably guessed that I’d be lost without female friends, they’re as close as I’ll ever get to having a girl-to-boy dictionary of my own.

The second opinion put my brain into ‘Spock mode’ where it calmly analyses the situation in a reasonably detached fashion. I even made a list of pros and cons to help visualise what was happening. Nope, they’re right, I’m wrong. I’ve missed being able to step back and view the big picture: it is a skill that I believe is all part of that great thing that we call “wisdom”. I lost this skill for several months, and even now it needed two separate opinions from outsiders before my mind was capable of putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 4 rather rather than 69.

Sometimes when you’re in a situation it is hard to step back. If you’re emotionally weaker than you normally are, it’s even harder. By speaking to someone I’d not spoken to for a long while and feeling good enough to be able to talk sensibly I received a gift that I would potentially have missed for weeks: a valid fresh perspective.

To be honest, all the evidence was already there given I’ve written this, this, this and this in the past weeks, I just failed to put it all together coherently.

——

I’m me again; that’s the scary bit on the road-to-recovery over with. I can afford to walk rather than run and besides which, you see a lot more when you’re walking because you have time to look around you. Time to stop and smell the roses.

Wood. Trees. Can’t see one for the other sometimes. Perhaps I need glasses.

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Saying goodbye to people you didn’t even know

February 22, 2007 · Filed under Dating, Girl to boy dictionary, Internet Dating, Life, Love, Relationships

So as I said the other day, I’ve set my profile to invisible on the internet dating site since I’m no longer sure that I am single any more.

This has made the last two days mighty odd: I have had to say goodbye to people I didn’t even get to know properly – and I’ve found myself regretting not getting to know some of them a touch more. By some, I don’t mean a huge number – I mean two. Apparently, over 50 people added me to their favourites list and I had conversations with waaaay less than half of those, some of which lasted one message, some of which lasted several. One of which ended in a phone number – and I’m dating her (I think! Early days, but so far, so good :-)). I said goodbye and thank-you to everyone I was talking to because for better or worse, I believe it is polite and the “right thing” to do. Some of them got a few lines, some of them got a vast letter. It was the two who received a vast letter that have been hard to let go of.

For some odd reason that I’m pretty sure a therapist would have a field day over, this has troubled me. I didn’t have to say goodbye to any of them, technically. I mean, they didn’t know I was dating someone again and it’s not as if I’ve passed the “threshold of no return” (sex, if you want a translation), so surely I could have flirted with them all a bit more and seen what happens? Isn’t that the point of internet dating? But no. I’ve got this conscience thing (goddammit) that tells me that they ought to know the truth – regardless of whether it’s going to work out for me or not; but therein lies the complexity. I’d love to get to know the other two more, but it would be for all of the wrong reasons of which the two most obvious are:

  1. I’d be comparing. Did I choose wisely with the date I made, or should I have chosen differently?
  2. Surely I could just be friends? I could say “let’s just chat as friends” until I’m blue in the face, but the above negates any plausibility in that – hell, even I don’t believe I could do it. I’ve had (and still have) friendship-only relationships with females (yes, it can be possible, gents), but it strikes me that a dating site is the wrong place to start such a friendship, after all, it’s a dating site, not a meet-some-friends site.

So where is my Miss Right? Am I dating her now? Did I walk by her today without knowing? Is she thousands of miles away from me right now? Have I just let her slip through my fingertips on the dating site? Life is full of questions and the funny thing is, the simpler the question is to phrase and the fewer words it uses, the harder it appears to answer.

So come on ladies – what would you have expected a man to do in this situation? Think of this as helping me with my girl-to-boy dictionary.

One of these days, I’ll write a book all about love – if only to illustrate just how little I understand about it. It’d be a cracker – 75,000 words just to say “nope, I don’t get it, do you?”. Anyone got a suggestion for the title?

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Valentine’s day: In case you hadn’t noticed…

February 13, 2007 · Filed under Dating, Girl to boy dictionary, Internet Dating, Relationships

… is tomorrow. Unless a miracle of incomprehensible proportions magically materialises out of thin-air on my doorstep in the next 24 hours, I’m going to be by myself. So just as a reminder for all you blokes out there, doing cute and lovely things isn’t just a one-day-affair :-)

I’ve decided to do the boring thing and spend the evening in with a bottle of fizzy wine (no, not champagne, that would be wasted on one!) and cheer myself up with the internet armed with MSN (you know where to find me :-)) and some of the music I ordered (which according to the nice chaps at Amazon, should turn up tomorrow: It had better, or I’m going to be real short of material).

Still, I have interesting news on the internet dating front. It appears to actually work!. So far, I’ve been contacted by a couple of people and even had one brief message-to-message exchange with one. I’ll be sure to keep you all posted, but it’s kinda exciting to be talking to new people… and… oh my word… the possibility of dating again after all these years!

Goodness… I’m all tingly with anticipation… and I’ve not finished writing my girl to boy dictionary yet!

Either way, it has been a good day. Perhaps I won’t be needing one of these after all.

Life is good. Cheers!

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Girl to boy dictionary: The art of the subject change

February 12, 2007 · Filed under Confusion, Girl to boy dictionary, Girlfriends, Love, Rants, Relationships

”It has been said that a million monkeys with a million keyboards would, in time, produce the collective works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the internet, we know that is not true.”
– Robert Wilensky, from a speech at a 1996 conference

Someone had better pass me a banana… This blog of my mind’s strange content has been pouring onto the internet now for slightly over a week. I still have no idea if anyone other than karalina actually reads it. So please do say “hello, I do” if you do, even if it’s just a simple “hello”.

Anyway, today’s monkey-typing is brought to you by the colour “rose” and the number 1 (as in one bottle and one glass), so I expect my later post to be somewhat less comprehendible. Today is another girl-to-boy dictionary day. Oh, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had a very strange relationship with a girl who we’ll call “Miss X” for the sake of this conversation.

I shall illustrate what our turbulent relationship was like with a typical example:

Me: Babe, sorry to be a pain, but it’s not really fair for you to invite all your friends over to my house without telling me, especially when we don’t live together.

Her: I’m fed up with the mess around here. Also, why don’t you return my calls to you when you’re at work?

Me: Er, well, I’m busy… I…

Her: And two weeks ago, we were at out and I was tired. I was dropping hints all night that I wanted to go and you ignored me.

Me: Well… I, I didn’t notice… You could have said something.

Her: Are you blind or something? I couldn’t have made it clearer if I’d screamed it in your face. And when I asked if you’d pick me up from work last week, you said no. I was so angry.

Me: But… you said that if I was still working it was ok? I didn’t realise it was so important.

Her: That’s the problem. You never realise what’s important.

Me: Sorry, babe. I’ll make an effort in future.

Her: And none of your friends like me.

Me: (Usually speechless at this point….)

Didya spot what happened? In one deft slight of hand, two week’s worth of her gripes came out, eliminated my very reasonable request completely and I ended up saying sorry for things that, well, really I didn’t need to say sorry for. What will she take away from that conversation? Not to invite her friends over without asking, or perhaps that she got a few things off her chest and sorted me out nice?

Well, here’s something about men (excuse the generalisation). We’re not the fantastic mental multi-taskers that you girls are. Furthermore, as I’ve said before, stuff that’s a few week’s old we can barely remember, let alone debate sensibly. Fine, if you need to think about it for a day or two, do so. It was wrong of Miss X to lie like a predator waiting for me to take one accidental step into the open plains before pouncing with a huge batch of utterly unrelated issues that she had. Everything was always about satisfying her – it was truly a relationship of one.

You’ll be amazed to hear that this went on for some time. Oh, I got better at turning the subject back round to the point, but that turned a comfortable conversation into an argument every time and that I was highly uncomfortable with. Oh, and we’re talking door-slamming glass throwing arguments, too, which scare the living daylights out of a softie like me. There were times that I was genuinely scared.

As a peacemaker, I am often the first to cave in the interests of a happy life. I know that this is wrong, chalk it onto my list of “personality defects”. I prefer discussion and debate over arguments: because arguments have winners and losers big-time, and after a few caves here and there, it was all too easy for her to get the impression that she was, in fact, always right. To this day, I’m sure that she’s convinced that she left me rather than the other way around.

With relationships, I believe that it’s not about winning and losing, it’s about the “greater good” – being happy, warm and comfortable with each other and that is not gonna happen if you’re at each other’s throats on a 24/7 basis. My mother once always had this piece of wisdom: “never go to bed on an argument”, advice that Miss X could have really benefited from. In the closing days of that relationship I was convinced she was lying in bed plotting and planning a new detailed set of rock-solid reasons as to why I was a poor excuse for a human being along with a brand spanking new list of things that I had to change about myself.

Love only really flies if you love everything about each other; and that includes the flaws – otherwise, how can you even consider the idea of spending the rest of your lives together? Oh, fine, yes – if not changing the bog roll bugs you or leaving my coffee mugs all over the house is becoming an irritation, tell me: I can deal with that. Those are simple things – but if I slip up, or forget a few times I expect gentle reminders not a verbal slap in the face.

I’m me. I’m always going to be me. I can tweak, but I cannot become a totally different person. It always (and still does) seem weird to me that she loved me for who I could become rather than who I was. And it was that, and that alone that eventually gave me the courage to say goodbye to her despite the fact that I loved her (oh, and the sex was so good too!).

How was that, for a monkey? Ooooo ooooo ooooo!

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My brain is a liar. Its pants are on fire.

February 11, 2007 · Filed under Confusion, Girl to boy dictionary, Love, Mistakes, Relationships

Have you ever done something really stupid at the end of a relationship in a desperate hopeless effort to try and save it? And I mean really whizz-bang stupid, not just sending text messages or long love letters, I mean the grade-A stuff that means that you either a) wish you could erase it from your memory or b) it forms the start of many interesting conversations at drunken parties for the rest of your life. I have. I’ve got plenty of times that could hardly be filed under my “finest moments”, but each time I got better at dealing with it — I learnt that the pain does indeed fade after time (I guess I was using the time wisely, albeit accidentally, as karalina suggested on last night’s And finally post) and the level of stupid things I did slowly calmed down to merely slightly embarrassing. No longer was I camping out in hedges looking at my ex’s bedroom window or or literally begging for another chance with my dignity meter reading a solid zero (and those are the remotely sane ones). To quote Bladerunner (and almost in context, too), I’ve done “questionable things” in the name of saving doomed love.

If you’ve had more than one relationship, you’ve probably got a few of the above “love made me do it” skeletons in your closet, too. But I’ll bet you one thing: They seemed like a good idea at the time, indeed, I’ll bet that it honestly, truthfully felt not only like a good idea, but right. I don’t know in your case how long it took from doing “the thing”, whatever it was, until you realised “oh shit…”. In my case, the times vary from mere seconds to months and in one case, years. Which all clearly points to one thing: there are times that you can’t trust your own brain. Broken love makes it lie to you and your idea of right and wrong goes flying out the window, which, it seems makes the true art of wisdom being knowing when you can trust your own thoughts.

Problem is, it takes a while to accept doom, especially if you’re the one being left. And if you try too hard to fix it, and it is really lost, you just make a fool of yourself. If you don’t try enough, and there was still hope, you look like you don’t care and shoot yourself in the feet without even realising it. It’s one of life’s great lose-lose situations. I’ve spent many a year looking for the compromise, but I always wonder if I’ve failed to read the signs that were provided in non-verbal form. It’s another case where that girl-to-boy dictionary would help. Or perhaps I’ve just spent too much time looking at this web site since finding it yesterday :-) (I predict a hefty order, any day now)

There are times, though, when I believe (or at the very least, perceive) that I am operating in excellent common-sense, good decision mode. Those times coincide with when I am in a stable, happy relationship with someone. Coincidentally, those times also match, give or take a few months here and there, the most successful times I’ve had in my life and career. So maybe the natural state where your brain makes the best decisions really is when you are in a secure relationship, which I sort of eluded to last night when taking about the seven year itch.

Since my brain is a liar and I’m still not completely free of all the issues surrounding this split (well, duh, if I was, clearly this blog would be empty… :-)) how do I know when I can trust it again? I guess I don’t. It’ll just happen magically as it always does. One day soon I’ll be sitting in a comfy leather chair with a fat cigar in one hand, a brandy in the other and looking back on this blog laughing myself silly; let’s hope it’s not in an ironic way, eh?

Good grief – I really ought to lighten up (without floating away) so here’s something (suitable for work, don’t worry :-)) that made me laugh, saw it on the telly a year or so ago, was more than glad to find it on the internet as well!

Funny, you wouldn’t believe that I’m generally an optimist, would you?

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Girl to boy dictionary: More help required, please

February 9, 2007 · Filed under Confusion, Dating, Drunken Ramblings, Girl to boy dictionary, Relationships, Sex

To put it bluntly, I fail to spot if someone fancies me right up until the moment they grab my bottom and start kissing me. All of my major relationships started in this way. I’d be blissfully unaware until it was made either a) brutally honest, or b) a friend pointed out. In the case of the latter, I’d still say “Nahhhh… you’re imagining things” right up until former happened. Oh, I can spot blatant flirting, I’m not completely blind (or I’d still be a virgin, which, I assure you I’m not by a long shot), it’s the subtle stuff that I miss.

I’m not exactly shy, indeed, I’m quite a flirty and social character but on the other hand, I am yellow-bellied enough to rarely go up to someone I like the look of and say “hello”. I need a lot of alcohol to get to that point, and unfortunately, whilst alcohol makes your ears think you’re sounding witty, clever and amusing, that’s your brain playing a cruel trick on you. Oh, you can be sweet, endearing and fancy-able when you’re a mite tipsy, but drunk? Nope. Your dignity is screwed.

I’ll illustrate with an example of my blissful ignorance from over a decade ago. Back in ’95 (this makes me feel old!) I was at a pretty tedious IT related conference in the states presenting a product alongside a bunch of other people also presenting different business products. I got along quite well with the (very cute) girl next to me. We chit-chatted, had a laugh and generally enjoyed the fact that we were next to each other in an otherwise pretty shitty situation (these conferences are a lot less fun than they sound to the un-initiated). But I figured that was all friends-stuff – you know, social niceness, which was a pity because I was single and found her very attractive.

It was my colleague who pointed out that evening when we were having a highly deserved expenses-funded meal with un-necessarily expensive wine that he thought she fancied the socks off me.

Me: Don’t be ridiculous. She just likes me, we get on well together.

Him: Mark my words mate, you should have seen it from where I was standing. She kept sneaking looks at you, she fiddled with her hair whilst talking to you and she tipped her head sideways at the same time. Dead giveaways. You’re in there and I’m prepared to stick 10 bucks on it right now.

Me: Deal. At the end of the conference, you’ll owe me 10 dollars. I’ll spend it on beer. For me.

Forgive the rather blunt man-ness of the conversation, but in my defence, I was only 25 at the time.

Anyway, we get to the next day. Exactly the same drill, except I’ve got super-sensitive does-she-fancy-me o’vision spectacles fully engaged on their maximum level. Nope, I see no difference. My colleague was 10 dollars down, for sure. Later that afternoon, it was all getting quiet and we figured that no-one would notice if we both buggered off from the sales stand for 20 minutes for a quick beer. And so the conversation continued:

Him: She desperately fancies you.

Me: This wasn’t funny yesterday either, I’ve been paying attention all day, and you’re winding me up.

Him: Yesterday, mate, she was wearing a wedding ring. Today, she isn’t. You think she just forgot to put it on this morning? Trust me, I’m married. It doesn’t happen. She wants you.

Me: We’ll see.

I still felt secure in the fact that my 10 dollars was going to remain mine and that I was going to get an airport’s worth of beer out of him on our journey home. Pity though, because I really liked her. I just didn’t see what he was seeing. When the day ended, quite a few of us who were demonstrating products from all sorts of different companies decided to all go for a beer together, the cute girl included. So, we all piled into taxis together to go to some bar that someone said was quite good. She got in next to me. Sat real close. Ok, we’d just fitted a LOT of people in one cab, could be co-incidence, maybe I was just… horny and super-sensitive.

Nothing amazing happened at the bar, so I started to feel secure that my assessment of the situation was in fact completely correct. A bunch of us, her included, were at the same hotel so we all went back together. My colleague spent the entire taxi ride back to the hotel doing the whole nudge-nudge, wink-wink routine. We all ended up in her room and emptied the mini-bar. Gradually, people left. Then there was just a few of us, and then she asked me for a neck massage. Would you fucking believe it, I still didn’t get it at this point. My colleague was the last to leave and did so grinning inanely and there I was massaging the shoulders of a very attractive person who I fancied like mad and if my colleague was to be believed, fancied me like mad too.

I hate to skip the interesting bit (it was really good :-)), but needless to say, I was 10 dollars down and the remainder of that conference was a wonderful experience – one of the very few successful “we both know this is only going to last a few days” relationships I’ve ever had (I guess I should link to this, and post given the context). Oh, and she hadn’t cheated on her husband with me, their relationship had been over for a long time (although I have to confess it wouldn’t have mattered either way when I was that old. It took being hurt myself a few times to educate me on that subject: wisdom is accumulated, not given). For some reason, she’d got into the habit of wearing the ring and wasn’t expecting to meet someone. Neither was I, but if I’d have listened to my colleague from the outset, a few days could have been a few more days. He obviously doesn’t need a girl-to-boy dictionary as badly as I do. Still, those few days rank amongst the huge collection of days that fall into the “thank goodness I’m alive” stack — that stack always has, and always will, outweigh the “arrrrrgggg…. not another day” stack.

So what is it about some men that they can’t see this stuff without an outside observer pointing it out? Am I just being shy? I worry about offending someone and making a fool of myself – probably simultaneously, and that’s not my style. I wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed because I’ve not seen what was bloody obvious to everyone else. I wonder how many opportunities I’m missing right now because I’m not seeing something that is written in letters 20 feet high and 10 feet wide right in front of my face.

It’s 12 years down the line now since my above example (oh, and if you think that example is bad, I’ve got a bloody library of them) and I’m single again. If I can’t figure out this shit, I could be sitting on Miss Right’s lap and not know it. Perhaps I’m just a little rusty on the details, but because I so clearly need help with this whole girl-to-boy communication thing, some advice would be appreciated: it could make a difference for me this very weekend!

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Girl to boy dictionary: Translation required!

February 7, 2007 · Filed under Confusion, Girl to boy dictionary, Girlfriends

I had an interesting conversation last night at the pub with a couple of the friends I was with, and I thought I’d relay a bit of that in a heavily edited and only partially remembered form (and therefore probably biased highly in my favour) because it relates rather splendidly to my Girl to boy dictionary required post from the other night; think of this as part two. The relevant snippet of the conversation between me and one of the girls went roughly like this:

Me: “Yeah, as you know, men are pretty simple. We’re just not that bright, so we need to find girlfriends that understand that just because a certain combination of words left our mouths doesn’t mean that that was what we meant!”

Her: “Yes, but it might just be alcohol making you tell the truth by accident.”

Me: “Ok, some times, maybe, I’ll give you that – but I’ve had relationships in the past where I’ve unintentionally put my foot in my mouth with some humour-gone-wrong or poorly phrased sentence and it has been months before it was presented to me on a silver platter as proof of my male incompetence.”

Her: “At last! A man who recognises that men are generally incompetent!”

Me: “A good relationship is surely one where you don’t have to pre-censor everything you say before you say it; a slip of the tongue will be taken as such, not a mortal attack. The dangerous ones are where you DO have to pre-censor everything. Besides which, females can’t exactly sit comfortably on a tower of moral superiority either, you know!”

Her: “True, but we’re a good few steps up from men.”

Me: (leaning forwards by this time dangerously close to my pint) “I’m sorry, but that’s rubbish – men and women are different, but steps up? I think not. After the last six months of my life, I’d say we’re on the same rung, and I can give concrete examples.”

Her: “You know what I really love about men? They’re the easiest people on the whole world to wind up.”

Boom! Conversation halted – she’d played the ultimate stopper card: it was conversation closed. So we laughed about it, finished our pints and talked about other things.

Anyway, given my wishes for a girl-to-boy dictionary, I’m curious if there is a translation here, I think it could be one of five: 1) I had a point and we were to drunk to debate it properly, 2) I was actually having a conversation with myself, 3) she was indeed winding me up (with a high degree of success, I might add!) 4) I was boring her shitless with long rambling messages of the type I’m pouring out on this blog or 5) I’m seeing complexity where there is none and over-thinking the whole thing.

A translation from any female visitors would be appreciated, but I’m pretty sure that I know the answer…

Comments, of course, are compulsory as usual.

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Girl to boy dictionary: Anyone got one?

February 4, 2007 · Filed under Girl to boy dictionary, Girlfriends, Rants, Relationships

Even a super-sensitive man can’t decode girl-speak effectively. Yes means no, no means yes, yes means yes, no means maybe, no means no, perhaps means yes, perhaps means no, perhaps means perhaps… what on earth means what, when and why?

Here are my two top gripes about the fairer sex. I’m sure if you’re a girl yourself, you can come up with a list 100 times longer about us (I know, men suck), but this is my blog, so tough :)

  1. If we’ve done something wrong or insensitive, why can’t you just tell us? Dropping hints doesn’t work. We don’t get hints (well, I don’t). I can’t fix what I don’t know about. Furthermore, we can only deal with one problem at a time and as I rambled yesterday, anything more than a week ago we can barely remember, let alone discuss.
  2. If we’re trying to fix something we don’t understand, put us out of our misery. We may be blind to the details, but we do know when something isn’t right. “It’s not you”, “oh, it’s nothing” and “don’t worry, just an off day” are usually (although not always) lies. So in the meanwhile, we start trying to fix things that are not broken and generally feel around in the dark looking increasingly more stupid and achieving the exact opposite of our intentions.

Both of the above can be summarised as “Men are generally not good at reading between the lines”. Obviously, there is a great deal of generalisation in my gripes (which I know is always dangerous at the best of times, but please forgive me this once), but long-term relationships have ups and downs. People do change, not by command, but by time and we’re all subjected to temptations — times where we think the grass looks a lot greener on the other side of the fence. It’s our own choice whether we leap over that fence, but any good strong relationship deserves the chance to at least discuss the problems (think before you leap seems an appropriate phrase here). Splitting up is so easy these days I wonder if the default position of “let’s just quit” has become the norm.

Now don’t get me wrong. In the last 20 years, I’ve had several incredible long-term relationships — with wonderful people (one in particular :-)) — people that I’ve had extraordinary times and experiences with and I would never dream of trading any of that for anything. Yet, when it came to crunch time be it after a year, a few years or a few more years, one of us hid a feeling from the other, and before you knew it it was wine and dinner for one.

Oh, and I did go to the pub. I had a pint, read 10 pages of my book and realised that I was more right about my previous assertions than I could possibly have imagined. Now I’m at home, in the warm, armed with MSN, e-mail, a telephone and a glass of wine (for one, obviously).

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