High Maintenance Men

A lite half soy, half skim, decaf caramel Cappuccino is on the menu and it hasn’t been ordered by your girlfriend…

Your wannabe David Gandy in his chinos, leather lofas and Ralph Lauren shirt has a little bit of a problem and his problems are becoming yours.

(This is David Gandy in case you have been living under a rock)

I’m fine with compromise (especially if you are David Gandy and staring at me like that) – it’s essential to any relationship, and my shameful subservient admission is that I actually love Destiny’s Child’s song “Cater to you” because I adore the concept of giving yourself so completely and wholeheartedly to the person you love (insert feminist bra-burning uprising here). I play it on repeat as I drive around the burbs believing I'm Beyonce. Just like Beyonce, I think it's o.k for Girls  to "run the world" while 'catering to you' and telling "nasty to put some clothes on." I think it’s o.k to be feminist and to love and since love is giving, it’s also o.k to do the washing, iron the shirts and cook for him  (provided he shares the load in equal or greater proportions than me). I think you’d love your man even more for valuing your equality which would mean a greater willingness to do more for him. All feminism is, is an admission that women are humans too. Sorted and a little bit off track.

But what of our actual roles in relationships?

How do you take to a whiney male? Not to say that women are whiney but perhaps to say, it’s more o.k for women to nag than for men to. Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying.  

When I think of the man that I want – I envision a man, not a baby who I have to burp and breastfeed. Sorry for the visual. I hate poo so I don’t want to be elbow deep in his. Again – happy to carry the load but I’d rather a man who can carry himself and carry me in the process. Isn’t that the whole idea of being with one; that they can support you, protect you, be that backbone you need when YOU feel weakness?

I know what the Germaine Greer’s of you are thinking. Why are women painted as weak? We can hold our own, we can manage without men and if we are equals then we don’t need rescuing etc…and you’d be right. Congratulations, we have the same thought process. Smart minds think alike (it must also be because we are female and amazing).

HOWEVER…. in a relationship, I only want what is better than what I already have and if it is not better and it is not enhancing my life in any way, then I simply do not need it and will ask to be excused while I examine the room for the nearest Exit.

I’m always told relationships are more work than fun but I want my work to be like Richard Branson’s or Oprah’s – fun, thrilling, adrenalin-charged and while sometimes exhausting, it should always be rewarding.

So what happens when you’ve been seeing someone and while they are wonderful in many areas, their insecurity is all that is ever projected onto you?

If you’ve just started seeing someone, are you expected to uplift them right away in one month of positive adjective filled conversations about how much you love them and how they’re enough when you don’t really even know them yet?  I think this is the reason that I’ve always argued that you should feel complete as a person before entering a relationship so you’re not constantly projecting the same negativity repeatedly onto the person. Be ying and yang, be Ren and Stimpy, Be Beavis and Buthead for all I care, just be enough for yourself so you don’t seem less than that to your partner.

I know this post is hypocritical of me because I’m a sucker for both praise and attention. I love attention so much that I imagine my name in headlights, my own talk show, my own empire, songs written about me, you name it – I’ve dreamt it. As much as I love compliments is as much as I give them; frequently and fabulously BUT when I’m in a relationship I want to praise when I want to but be praised constantly. I don’t need them, but I do really enjoy them; however I am female.

Irrespective of my love for being loved; I wouldn’t ever believe it existed in the first month of dating someone. So I wouldn't ask for praise, I'd wait for it. As such, I'd take issue with him forcing emotions out of my mouth before I even felt them. So if he’s asking:

How much do you love me? I’m answering as much as won’t get me hurt.

If he’s asking what it takes to have my heart? I’d answer  his.

If he’s looking for a compliment? I’d tell him the mirror was enough praise (and the fact that I was with him)

and if he was looking for a bootycall? I’d tell him to hang up.

Tough love? Maybe - but I’m always going to be on a woman’s side in saying that behind every bitter woman are a few men who have broken her heart so please excuse the wall we’ve put up while you’re wooing us with potentially empty words. Prove it and everything will be reciprocated.

 

I want my partner to feel like the luckiest man on earth for being able to court and captivate me. I will feel infinitely luckier for having found a man that feels that and I hope that that will be enough. I don’t want to constantly need to reassure him of my love because he will feel it and know it. I don’t want to have to tell him he is handsome if he asks because if I didn’t love being with him, I wouldn’t. Simple.

Nobody wants a cry baby or there’ll be dummy-spits on both ends.

The dating manual is easy to read and goes a little like this:

1. If someone is going to cry it’s going to be the woman.

2. If someone is going to wipe tears away it should be the man. Mine not his.

3. If someone gets flattered it should be the female,

4.  If someone is to give it, it should be the male.

5. If "I love you is said," the man should initiate it.

6. When he does that, know that everything else will surely follow and gentlemen, that’s when your lady friend will step in and step up.

Compliments will come wherever they are deserved. Love will hold hands with shared experience and walk its way up to your heart but false and futile flattery is a waste of words and time for both of us.

Love is what we’re waiting for, anything less is a high-maintenance lie.

Short stuff and his Napoleon Complex

Napoleon Bonaparte was a short French Emperor who compensated for his lack of height through war, conquest and a starvation for power. A Napoleon complex is when you are vertically challenged and you spend your life making up for it…or trying to (while onlookers attribute it to your deficiencies in height).

I've got a Napoleon in my life. His philosophies are as archaic, he sees himself to be just as grande and his starvation for superiority is sickening and a bit exhausting. He has an epic case of short-man complex and boy is he mad about it.

He is rarely challenged. He tears you down for his own elevation and he revels in proving himself to be the smartest, wisest, strongest, most handsome guy in the room. NO he is not my boyfriend (and thank God for it because I think we’d kill each other) but he does get under my skin in the same way a boyfriend might because he’s always got something to prove and I am often compelled to prove him wrong.  Most of us know a guy or two like this too – they are not always small in stature but they are always small in our view of them. He’s a jockey on a pony – their isn’t even a prize-winning  horse (you know where) to boast of – although he’d say differently.

If snow-white were a real person and her fairy-tale turned reality show she’d have renamed the seven dwarves. There’d be Stupid, Imbecile, Cheater, Liar, Napoleon, Prick, and D***head – and they wouldn’t be her friends. Friendship with these dwarves never works.

Before you write me off as a cynic – let me explain….

My friend was cheated on this week. I don’t know how tall her ex-boyfriend was but I do know he is a very small man.

If a mirror, mirror on the wall was sought for advice, I’m adamant it would have called out the aforementioned names (Stupid, Imbecile, Cheater, Liar, Napoleon, Prick, and D***head) at him and it would have been justified in doing so.

I’m not just saying this because she is my friend, but my friend IS snow-white: the fairest of them all. She is truly the sweetest person I’ve ever met. No one could ever say a bad thing about her. She is what every man dreams for himself in looks, health, education and heart but this man made her life a nightmare. It will always puzzle me how a man so small, could get a girl so great and then be the one to sabotage his own happiness with her. Sadly, it’s not the only story of heartbreak I’ll meet with – she’s not the only sweet girl to be broken and he’s neither the first nor the last of men to tear a woman’s heart apart.

This man was the guy that TLC would have sung about. He was a scrub in all sense of the word. “Always thinking about what he wants, he just sits on his broke ass.” So she launched herself into a protective, providing and almost maternal role that nursed him back to a testosterone fuelled future….without her. She knows it’s for the best but the days ahead will be filled with questions of why, if she was so great, he could not see it.

The problem with these little men is that in their weakness, they don’t search to rise above their status or give thanks when they are punching above their weight, they redefine masculinity through cheating, through abuse, through verbal taunts that are aimed to assert to those around them that they are still “men.” Wrong little boy….so very wrong.

These men are rarely challenged and are a little bit Veruca Salt without her ‘golden egg’ when stood up to. He didn’t even apologise when he got caught.

Thank you Napoleon for giving us a phrase to categorise these dummies but my God why is there no other solution than being slapped around before ditching them or being ditched by them?

I’m someone who likes to give people the benefit of the doubt so like my friend, need a house to fall on my head before I realise the errors in my judgement. I’m not calling it stupidity, or naivety, I’d much rather label it kindness and understanding.

Obviously these small fellows are uncomfortable with having their heads that much closer to their backsides. I’d be cranky about that too.

A lover from another brother...interested?

How do you feel about dating your friend’s crush?

There’s an ethical dilemma on my friend’s hands. She has a huge crush on a lovely lad that appears to be courting her but her friend is a tad into him as well. The problem is, she didn’t realize her compatibility with him at first glance (few people ever do), so while her friend called dibs on him, she happily stood aside until they got talking and before she knew it she was falling for him too.

She asked me the other day. Is it worth pursuing when her friend had liked him first?

This is very tricky businesses when loyalty is tested but any rational woman would agree that you can’t call shotgun on a man who isn’t yours. Generally, it’s up to the gentlemen to make men of themselves and to pursue the girl that interests them. It’s not that I’m not a feminist. I am. I do believe in women’s rights but it’s because of the value that I place on women, that I think they should only be with men who appreciate their value (shown by them asking YOU out and not the other way around). Just like that, I think my friend’s question might have been answered.

If this man she is interested in is truly interested in her, then her friend should graciously step aside. After all, why would anyone want to be with someone who didn’t want them just as much?  On the flip side, why can’t they both step aside and ditch the male? Simply, because as a single person, I know it’s tough out there. You don’t come by decent guys often, so when they do pop up in your life and are just as infatuated with you, you’ve kind of got to hold on to that good thing. Your friend’s crush will pass.

Sounds simple in theory but it’s absolutely gut-wrenching in practice.

My friend is torn. Devastated. Losing sleep even.

I’ve seen two couples emerge out of broken relationships. In both situations, love was found; in one of them however, a friendship was lost. That brings me to my other questions….is it more important to hold on to a friendship that might not last or is it more important to give love a chance, in hope that it will outlast the friendship? Can your friendship be forgiving, open-minded and honest enough to withstand that sort of test?

When I first heard the story of a friend stealing his best mate’s ex, I was outraged, repulsed, stupefied. Essentially it was cheating on your best friend. After all, if you could callously switch off your sensitivity towards your friend for a moment of selfishness, how could you ever pledge loyalty (with meaning) to anyone again? It would seem that in this situation their word on loyalty would become void as a result of their disloyalty. I couldn’t be with someone like that. I would also struggle to befriend someone like that. It’s not even about being judgmental; it’s more about having the ability to respect someone enough not to pass judgment on them. This is the type of thing that would make me disrespect someone. I don’t like liars and I don’t like cheats.

The ethics of friendship and romance is murky however and always open to interpretation.

Since opinions are malleable, shades of grey exist, and definitions are subjective, what if all of the above happened to a pair of friends who:

a)     weren’t that close

b)    Only had crushes on these guys (and neither actually dated/kissed/marked territory in any way)

Would the rules change? For me, they do a little, especially considering the flip side of the argument.

Another of my friends is being courted by a couple of mates. They aren’t besties. They are both attractive and attracted to her. Both are pulling out all the stops to win her over. She is being coy, is enjoying the attention but is careful not to jeopardise either of these potential relationships because friendships are at stake.

If both boys don’t mind playing the same game, then there’s no harm in my friend putting her best foot forward and picking herself a winner. She’d also have to brace herself for a bit of heartbreak in case these boys choose friendship over her (unlikely situation as far as I can tell). I don’t think these boys subscribe to a bro code.

It’s a lesson we know and all agree with; hate the game and not the player. There are always casualties when love is played. You may win, you may shoot or you may be shot down. Brace yourself and don’t say I didn’t warn  you.