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.