Sunday, October 12, 2008
Single With Howling Dispair
My wife is my absolute best friend, period. Somewhere, back in some sequestered section of my brain, I vaguely remember being single and--God forbid--dating. Oy, what a nightmarish thought. For those of you out there in the dating world I pity you.
“Don’t tell me that you and your wife have an arrangement’”; “Don’t hit on my friend(s) first. Yeah, I saw that”; “Don’t ever say to me, ‘Your breasts don’t look like the ones in my magazines’”; “Don’t lick my face - I get flashbacks from Silence of the Lambs”; “Don’t ask me if my friend might be interested in a threesome”; “Don’t try to guilt me into something - you are not my mother, and you don’t have her skills.”
Apparently we men must adhere:
...to impress, men need to be hugely successful, but pretend that they are not. And this is only one aspect of the almost impossible balance that needs to be struck. Men need to convey sexual desire without sexualising the person in front of them, need to be authoritative, opening doors, paying bills, deciding where to go and so on (recent research found that 60 per cent of women would consider it a bad first date if they paid), yet treat women as absolute equals. They need to flatter without seeming overly impressed, they need to care about their appearance (but not too much), and when it comes to chatting up, they need to take the initiative, and absorb any humiliation that comes their way, without seeming at all arrogant or pushy.
I can tell you right now that if I was still single, date night would consist of a six pack, a roll of duct tape, and my right hand.
