Grow up Douchebag!

I've written before that I understand from a male's perspective why you would hesitate to settle down. A fun night here or there, a different girl or guy to hang out with daily, a different scene, a new party, a lack of attachments, an altogether good life but at some point you need to look beyond what is menial and think about your legacy. Who do you want to be? When will you be it? When will a future with someone be more important than a life on your own? What will all of these reckless, empty nights mean when everybody stops singing to your tune?

This is an open letter to all of the douchebags you ladies have had to put up with and an apology for the heartbreak they caused you.

In recent months, I have heard the most shocking series of breakup stories I’d ever come across. Nobody wants to fight for love, they all just want to fight. Others are left with no choice but to leave because of the unforgivable deal-breakers that break trust and evaporate love in a relationship. As a big believer in love, I will admit, the negative stuff shakes your faith a little. While we all hope and pray and believe in the greater good, the greater male community (or just the ones we’ve crossed paths with) prefer to be bad in epic proportions and while it’s never good form to trash your ex…they’re not my exes, so I’m going for gold on behalf of my friends.

Here goes…

Dear Douche,

You're not a bad guy. We say that because we want to believe that our investment in you was worth it. It wasn't but against our better judgement we believed that you'd grow up and out of the phase you were in. You didn't.

You grew older but age somehow bypassed your brain. All of those brash nights out with your brainless bachelor friends will do that to you.

Those long wish lists we had when we were eighteen reduced because somehow by default our self-esteem dropped with everyday that we were with you until you felt enormous and we felt minuscule.

It became increasingly difficult to love you when you constantly let us down. You didn't care. When you thought you had us, you reverted to your old ways. You stopped putting in the effort to be better. You stopped valuing us. It became about you again. It's what you knew best.

Maybe you didn't have the capacity to love in the way we had loved you. Maybe you did but simply didn't want to give us your heart. We spent days, months even years pining over you and just as long getting over you. It took you seconds to replace us.

You gave it all up for a lifetime of hollow nights out. You gave up purity of heart for a few fleeting and flattering words.  You gave up joy for lust. You gave up love for youth. You gave up youth to temptation. You gave up a future to build yourself a past. Was it worth it?

We stopped waiting. So did the girls you hooked up with.

Everyone was searching for love while you sought superficiality. You might settle down one day but you'll be much older. You won't be wiser. You have no brain cells left to make that possible.

You'll find a girl who is content with your lukewarm heart. Those that seek true love will look far beyond you for it. You will lead separate lives because you've spent your whole life living for you and when you circle the earth searching for the one who completes you, she won't be there - because you never were. This is the bed you made for yourself...now lie in it.

You’ll find something, but I doubt it will be happiness because you failed at giving it and when you're too old to hit the clubs, when the girls you know become the girls you knew when the friends you have become the friends you had - will that life you chose be worth it?

We may have cried for a week, a month, a year but you will be replaced. Eventually you will feel like a figment of our imagination. It may take you a little longer to feel our grief, if you feel at all, but what you did and what you will always do, will catch up with you. We accept now that you cannot change and we’re just glad not to be waiting anymore. We get it. Finally.

You never realised what was in front of you. Sure enough, someone smarter than you will. That's when we'll be the ones that got away, but we'll be too far away for you to ever reach us.

You lost when you were so used to scoring. Foul play should keep you on the sidelines forever.  We still pray you one day grow to be the person we hoped. If not for us, then for the gratification that the effort we put in was worth it for someone.

We've been patient. We have waited for you to grow up. We have believed in your goodness. We've seen your potential for perfection but potential is nothing when everything you are is everything other than what you should be. You don't want to change. You never will. Because of that, we'll never want you twice. 

We accept we can never lose what we never had so this is no loss at all.

Good riddance and goodbye. 

System failure! Trouble in paradise.

There’s a common problem among women that details the noticeable decline in performance when a woman moves her man from boyfriend to husband territory. If perhaps we were to make marriage a computer, then it is safe to say, once the husband upgrade is made available to the boyfriend application, the husband application begins to corrupt the romance folder. He does however help provide love and finances for bills. Where the boyfriend application was once free-flowing with flattery, the husband application continues to fail the female application user.

The Husband while in your life uninstalls passion, slows down performance, wipes out housework and installs sloth in replace of the aforementioned applications to your life.

This app is a common trend among many married women in my life. Where romance was rife once upon a time, once upon a time remains just that. In recent times, love exists but actions desist. The security coding ensures longevity in partnership and thus both folders remain permanent fixtures in each other’s lives. Not always happily so.

What many men find is that nagging to fix these technical difficulties adds to the system failure and while this computer crash damages the hope folder, there is no Tech nerd who has been able to fix it to date.

Desperation abounds and women everywhere struggle with the technical failures in their marriages. The Husband upgrade is a rude shock to the system and though the desired outcome is to shut down and reboot, most women admit to having caught the incurable commitment virus, so they stick around in hope for repair. Too many cherished files exist in this hard drive and so they’d rather salvage those files than start anew.

Women everywhere for years to come will complain of this problem. The answer however is in the acknowledgement that the boyfriend application was merely an entertainment package. He was there for theatricality, joy, outings and gallivanting. Husband is the upgrade for the woman wanting an operating system; a handyman if you will.

In the “Manual of Marriage According to Me,” it is written that to repair this system failure, a new command must be entered into the system. If the command is entered with passwords; guilt, tears and mother-in-law, husband is sure to operate.

Do beware that installing Mother-in-law will result in a Husband virus that may lead to a crash. If mother-in-law creeps in undetected it will affect the running of all of the programs in your home folder. In such a case, all unsupported files will fail you and you’ll be a sad system.

Do remember that while Husband fails in some areas, he’s worth the purchase. He has minimal mental storage, but optimal stomach storage. If you cook, he will run, if you run, he will remain attracted and while there is limited multi-tasking ability at least you know whatever he is working on is one task out of your hands.

If you clear out exes, work and miscellaneous rubbish from his files, he’ll have more room for you and is likely to perform at an acceptable pace.

Maintenance of your looks and your love will ensure a performance worth your purchase. A good lippy and a bit of lingerie might help too.

Keep this for the archives folder when the system fails in future.

You always want what you can't have until you get Facebook!

You always want what you can’t have and when what you wanted comes back begging for your attention, its desirability disappears. That’s my current dilemma but I’m also not the only one looking beyond what I own.

As I was writing this column, I opened up on ninemsn and stumbled across an article from a men’s magazine.  I don’t endorse that type of reading so I won’t post the link but it introduces the push-up bra for men’s packages. The idea is that you wear this wonder-wear and it enhances the appearance of your member, size-wise (it’s not a miracle worker). I can see a lot of willing consumers subscribing to this gimmick. In 2011, it seems women are not the only ones who are optically illusive with their bodies. We all own a pair of spanks, a body shaper, we gel, blow-dry or keratin our hair. We always want what we can’t have and being au naturale is sometimes a little bit too daunting for both players in the courtship game. 

My dilemma of wanting what I couldn’t have then suddenly not wanting it all, came in the once desirable entering the pornography trade; or close to. The ever damaging facebook revealed intimacy with other women. We all facebook stalk. It’s the easiest way to do a background check and the easiest way to be disappointed in your latest infatuation and even though he is roaming the streets carousing, gallivanting, Hugh-Heffnering around the place (although with women his age) he still finds time to check up on me. He would. Men like him are never satisfied with just one woman. Enter Oprah with my ‘aha’ moment. I shoulda seen. I coulda seen. I woulda seen had I taken off my blinders but we all know the cliché is true and ‘love is (in fact) blind.” 

A study in Cleo magazine found the saying to be true. In a test to see how men and women responded to their partners, it was not a photo that stimulated the heart but a memory, as “feel-good” transmitters floated through their pools of romantic, emotional bodies. That was sweet I thought because it meant these loved-up couples were in it for matters of the heart. How promising! (read it here http://www.cleo.com.au/men-and-women-from-same-planet-romantically.htm ) It dispelled the notion that men and women are from different planets and told us that love was what made the world (our same world) go round. Lovely!

 Madison magazine’s February issue reports the same. It chased several couples that chased love and believed they found it in different parts of the globe. Some fought till their love conquered, others (these are the ones I paid attention to this week) let their senses conquer. Good for them!

The one story that really struck me was of a young woman who harboured a love for a man she met at a conference. Love-struck and in romantic euphoria she held on to the penchant she had for this man for years. She believed that if they could be in the same place at the same time and rid of their state-divide, they could be happy. Time passed, distance in kilometers decreased, they moved on with their respective lives but every so often, this love would creep back into her life. She waited for that spark, but the fireworks were out upon discovering that he had married, moved on and was just looking for an affair the second time around. She realized she loved the idea of him, but the reality was repulsive, bland, disappointing. She moved on. She grew up. She found him on facebook and her latter perceptions were confirmed.

I’m still a hopeless romantic, just a little more cynical this week and just as I was about to give my old crush another go and hold on to the idea that I could be the exception, I logged onto facebook and saw he’d face-booked himself with a few online loves, r.s.v.p.d to a few more parties and signed his youth away to superficiality. Love is the deal. His lust for others is the dealbreaker. 

It’s true you always want what you can’t have but sometimes, if you’re lucky, what you want eventually comes back for you and that’s when you realize what you wanted is not really what you want at all. Phew!