Someone Else's Secret

Postsecret is one of my favorite places. People write their secrets on postcards and send them in to Frank Warren, who then picks the best and puts them up on his blog.

Earlier this year, this secret appeared on the website. It reads:

"I am learning Hindi so that when I meet your parents, I can tell them I love you."

I'm Indian. My parents speak perfect English. But I wish someone would both understand me enough to know how much this would mean, and love me enough to do this for me.

I hope the writer got their chance to say it.

I hope that one day, someone will love my child enough to write a secret like this for them. (I hope that for me too.)

My Life Is Soooo Much Better Than Yours

A friend of mine recently went to a party that an ex was also attending. As soon as she found out he was going, the whole nature of the event changed. Preparations included a new haircut, a manicure, and several agonising shopping journeys in order to find that elusive thing we call “The Perfect Outfit”, which is one that says, “Hey, I had no idea you were coming to this thing! This ol’ dress? I just found something on my floor and pulled it on. Is my hair a perfectly crafted mess that looks like my lover has been running his hands through it during wild sex? This totally didn’t take two hours and a professional blow dry, I just rolled out of bed looking like this because yes, I am always this effortlessly hot. ”

Now let me be clear: she did not want him back. In fact, she’d just begun seeing someone else and was deliriously happy. What my friend was doing was playing a game that everyone who has ever dated in their life has played at some stage, a game called “My Life Is Soooo Much Better Than Yours.”

The rules are simple: There are three categories—work, friends and the trump card, love life. The winner is whoever comes out ahead in two of the three categories. Of course, it’s how the winner is judged where things get complicated. For example, a friend who looked up an ex on Facebook discovered that although she was single and he had a girlfriend, said girlfriend was tragically fugly. She also enjoyed wearing lycra dresses that made her look like an overstuffed sausage. Naturally, my friend won because, well, single life was better than life with a sausage (or as one).

Of course it doesn’t work with all exes. There are some relationships where there simply isn’t any point in playing the game, because there isn’t any competition. My last boyfriend was such a dropkick that I know I’m always going to win purely because he is such a loser.

And then there are those relationships where you will always be the loser. They’re the ones that hurt the most, like seeing photos of my cheating ex with his cute-as-a-button new girlfriend. She looks adorable, and so I console myself with the fact that his new-found happiness is making him tubby. Oh and did I mention his receding hairline? You can’t really see it unless you squint and tilt your head to the side, but then when you do, it’s totally obvious.

It’s a form of sick self-flagellation that every woman I know does some occasional light stalking on Facebook/Flickr/Twitter/Whatever to check in on that ex—the one who came out on top. Perhaps it’s because we can’t find that Off Switch or because as women, we tend to take a break-up as a personal failure rather than circumstances between two people. Whatever it is, I blame The Pussycat Dolls. When they sang,“Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me” they gave a generation of women an anthem to approach their past relationships.

As for me, I choose to take the high road. But in case you’re wondering, I haven’t developed a temporary eating disorder to fit into this skin-tight black dress that leaves nothing to the imagination, and no, it didn’t take me two hours to apply make-up that looks like I don’t have anything on. Oh, the tan? That would be from living my fabulous existence because, well, my life is soooo much better than yours.

The Off Switch

A friend of mine was recently broken up with. They'd been together five years, and had been long-distance for six months when he phoned her one evening and called the whole thing off. Needless to say, she was devastated, but the thing that hurt the most was that when he returned home, he simply didn't want to see her. She didn't want him back, she just wanted closure, but it didn't matter--he wouldn't meet up with her. As she put it, "We spent our childhood together and it's like he came back and just didn't care about me at all."

We analysed it to pieces, as girls do, and came to the conclusion that a) he was afraid she would yell/cry/blame or b) he thought that she still wanted him back. But there was an option c. That he just didn't care about her at all.

It seems that men have an 'off' switch that just doesn't exist for women. They are able to break up and break away simultaneously, apparently unaffected by the guilt/fear/doubt that assails every woman I know post break-up. It seems inexplicable to us that we could simply stop caring about him simply because our intimate relationship is over. Yet men see the issue as black and white. "We're not dating, and I don't need any more friends," is how one male friend put it after he broke up with his girlfriend.

My last boyfriend was an old friend. We dated for a long time, and shared a common life--people, pubs, restaurants and memories. I tried for months afterwards to be friends only to be thwarted at every step by him. For me, it was crazy that here was a person whom I had once loved, who had loved me back, with whom I had planned to have children, who had been inside me, and yet, suddenly we simply stopped existing for one another?! The thought that one day, in the far distant future, we would meet by accident on a street and be complete strangers seemed unimaginable. And yet, this future wasn't nearly as horrific for him as it was for me.

This inability to switch off is also why women are so poor at casual sex. In Sex and the City, Samantha plays a vamp who has a different lover every episode, and yet, no woman I know identifies with her or wants to be her. This isn't because she's a slut--it's a show about sex and all four girls get around a fair bit--it's because she's so unemotional about her sexual encounters. It isn't plausible. I know plenty of girlfriends who've had one-night-stands and periods of casual sex, but both take their emotional toll, and neither are a way of life. And yet, men can carry this on for ages.

My theory is that as women, we have to be prepared to love the biggest ingrates of all--our children. We have to love them even if they're ugly, stupid, rude or simply adolescent. We have to love them. Men are our training ground. We have to be able to stay 'on' because if we switch off, then chances are, every teenager around will become mother-less.

I don't mean to suggest that men are cold-hearted, or lack the ability to love. I know plenty of excellent fathers, and yes, excellent boyfriends and husbands too. But that doesn't mean they don't have that 'off' button. They just choose to keep it on.

What I lost in the back seat of a taxi

A friend of ours was just cheated on. They'd been together for three years and she thought that they were madly in love. Since she found out (as these things inevitably do get found out--a stray text, a small world), he's been calling daily, filled with remorse. At the emergency girls night, reactions ranged from moral outrage to mutilation suggestions, but there was a definite consensus that she was Better Off Without Him. But later, alone, she confessed something to me she felt she couldn’t say to the army of girlfriends who had so powerfully come out in support of her: she didn't know if she wanted it to be over. Was she really Better Off Without Him?

Like cancer or depression, everyone knows someone who's been cheated on. The statistics, if Cleo magazine is to be believed, are horrifying--two thirds of men claim to have cheated on a partner at least once in their lives. That means that two out of every three guys you know have cheated or are cheating. Are you freaking kidding me?!

For me, it was the love of my life, or at least, I believed he was. The girl he cheated on me with was a mutual friend. She'd once sat on my couch, shared wine from my cellar, and eaten a home-cooked dinner at my table. She then went on to have sex with the love of my life in the back seat of a taxi.

He too, called me daily begging for forgiveness, bombarding me with flowers and texts. But aside from the numbing horror and heartache, I was overwhelmed with shame. The shame was twofold. First was the shame of being cheated on. Was I so awful, so repulsive and unlovable, that the love of my life would prefer to have sex with a random slut in the back seat of a taxi than come home to me? Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was the two of them in that cab. But then there was also the truth that I, like my friend, wasn't sure I wanted it to be over. Unfaithful or not, I loved him.

When I finally took him back, I had to endure the outrage and warnings of everyone around me. I was made to feel like a fool for even considering forgiving him. I felt ashamed that I took him back, like I was some weak, pathetic, spineless girl too naïve to see reality.

I wasn’t.

It feels like everyone expects you to behave in a particular way when you’re cheated on. But the truth was that my anger wasn’t enough to drown out my agony...or my love. I believed him when he said that it was a stupid drunken mistake.

The other issue for me was the tendency for people to exonerate her, to say, "Well, it's not her fault, she didn't do anything wrong, he was the one that was cheating," but I find that argument in the same vein as "I didn't do anything wrong, it was the Nazis that killed the Jews, I just stood by and watched." You know it's wrong, and you let it happen anyway. (BTW, she was living with her boyf.)

It was the lasting damage I didn’t count on. When he cheated on me, he took something from me I can never reclaim. Aside from my self-esteem and my self-worth, he also took my ability to trust. Something sacred was forever stolen from me, by both of them. To this day, my first instinct is to distrust. I wish I could change this, but I fear that all of my future lovers will be punished by what I lost forever in the backseat of a taxi I’ve never been in.

As for her, I always wonder why she did it. I would love to say that I wish her all the best. But sadly, I don't. We still run into each other occasionally, in our very small city, and every time I see her all I wish her is herpes.

How soon is too soon?

A friend of ours started dating a guy about 4 months ago. Last week he announced he had herpes. Now, while they’d been taking things slowing physically (they hadn’t progressed past heavy petting), emotionally they were waaaaayyyyyyy past the “I love you” barrier and totally into the “I hope our kids have your eyes and my nose” conversations. Awkwardly, no-one mentioned the “My baby-making facilities are slightly damaged” part of the equation.

Now, while I’m not sure how this conversation would go, in my head, it ran something like this:
Him: Honey, would you love me if I had only one arm?
Her: Of course darling!
Him: What about if I lost an eye?
Her: Sure.
Him: What if I lost my dick?
Her: Umm, yeah....
Him: Well, babe, guess what? I have my arm and my eye and my dick, except, my dick has herpes.

Okay, so this may not be an accurate recount. But the point is, this conversation definitely should have happened sooner. In a sexual relationship, a sexually transmitted disease is the equivalent of a disability. Certainly, it's a hindrance to leading a full and normal relationship life.

And in the same way that you would want to know if you were dating an alcoholic, a smoker or an axe murderer, you would want to know if your partner has an STD. Early. So you can pull out (no pun intended) if you wanted to.

On the other hand, my nurse friend pointed out that herpes is only contagious in a flare-up, when it's actually showing. The rest of the time its fine. So really, you can only not have sex during specific times. Which means that his herpes can be equated to her menstruating.

How about you? How soon is too soon to find out something like this? And would it make you want out?

Bad Bed Manners

One of my girlfriends recently walked out on a guy for having “bad bed manners.” What was his crime I hear you ask? Refusing to put a condom on after being asked to do so. Several times. His first excuse was that he didn’t have any. When my girlfriend told him it meant no sex, he suddenly “found” a whole strip in his bedside drawer. (Nobody believes you forgot about a whole strip buddy.) And then, to add further insult to outright lies, he tried to put it in again without using one of the suddenly-remembered condoms.

Turns out bad bed manners has become a bit of an epidemic lately. Everyone’s doin’ it. Or rather, every man’s doing it. So gentlemen, for your convenience, here is a list of Top 5 Bad Bed Behavior that you should, at all costs, avoid:

1. Telling a girl to “Suck it baby, yeah, suck it,” when she’s giving you a blow job
Um, yeah, thanks. It’s not rocket science, I know what to freaking do. I don’t need an instructional blow-by-blow (so to speak.) Besides, what the hell else am I going to do with it in my face?

2. Calling a girl dirty names during sex
Unless you are really comfortable with each other, it’s not acceptable. In the same way you probably don’t want her calling you ‘cuddly poo’ in front of your mates, she probably doesn’t want you calling her a filthy whore, even if she is one. Particularly if she is one.

3. Cumming in her mouth without warning
This is never ok. Ever. Moving her head out of the way should always be an option. Just cause I’m licking the ice block doesn’t mean I want cream all over my face.

4. Trying to slip it in the back without permission
Simple. Think of yourself as a vampire. No entry without an invitation. Or you could die.

5. Commenting on any negative body part in a positive way
There is no smart way to do this. “I love your sexy fat” is bad. “Your little beer belly is so cute” is really wrong. “Your stretch marks really turn me on” is a stupid thing to say. Just like I’ll never say, “You satisfy me even though you’re small,” don’t tell me how much you like my love handles ok? It might be true, but we still don't need to say it.

Red wine love, champagne love

There are two kinds of love in this world, champagne love and red wine love.

Champagne love is the kind that starts with a bang. It comes pouring out of the bottle and needs to be drunk quickly, as fast as possible, lest it get wasted and before it goes flat. It’s usually loud, and drunk at a party, or a celebration. It goes straight to your head, it makes you feel giddy with excitement, it’s decadent, sometimes naughty, and always thrilling.

And then there’s red wine love. It sits, heavy and dark in the glass. You sip it slowly, cupping it between your hands and savoring the moment. It’s shared with close friends, or just with each other, and it gets better with age. In fact, the best, most precious of the red wine loves are the ones that have matured.

When we’re young, we’re all chasing champagne. But as we grow older, we realize that real value lies in red wine, that champagne always goes flat and often leaves you with an aching hangover (or aching heart).

But is it that simple? Is red wine satisfying, or merely settling? Can one have love without passion and excitement? Is there anyone out there who has both champagne and red wine? Is is with the same person?! :-)

Elephant Theory

So I was watching this David Attenborough documentary about elephants. Turns out, herds of elephants are all female. The bull elephant wanders alone until mating season, when he must find a herd to couple with. Often two bulls will compete for mating rights to the same herd, which means they will fight it out in tusk-to-tusk combat across the savannah while the females watch on. If they’re evenly matched, the fight can last up to 18hrs and result in death for the loser.

However, that’s not the end of the story. The victor must then choose the female he wants, but before he can mount her, he must chase her. Only if he catches her can he mate with her. So, despite the fact that he’s just fought an 18 hour EPIC BATTLE, he’s still gotta chase her to get her.

In the olden days, men fought duels and jousts, solved impossible riddles, performed feats of prowess and bravery in order to win the hand of the woman they love. But note: they always chose the girl first. The feats, the solving, the bravery came after they decided which girl they wanted.

Today, men have none of those requirements in order to win the heart of their one true love. And so women have to invent the obstacles. Why? Because fundamentally, we all want to be chosen.

In the final season of Sex and the City, Carrie says to Big, “Tell me it’s me. Tell me that I’m the one you choose,” to which Big replies, “Carrie...I can’t.” So Carrie flees to Paris with Petrovsky, until Big comes to rescue her. He stands on a bridge in the middle of Paris and he says, “Carrie, you’re the one I want. I choose you.”

Those are the words that every woman wants to hear. And because there are often no obstacles to winning us, no duels to fight, no riddles to solve and rarely are there Parisian bridges to cross, we are forced to create the duels. We start fights that we know are ridiculous. We play hard to get, we don’t answer phone calls, we are purposely difficult. We want you to show us that we’re worth it. We want to be CHOSEN. We need to be chosen. And so, every time a woman picks a fight for no apparent reason (none that’s apparent to men at least), you know why. It’s because what we really want him to say is, “I know you’re difficult, I know it’s sometimes hard, but I choose you. It’s you I want.”

We all want a Man On A Bridge. It’s Elephant Theory.