Fatal Flaw

A friend of mine recently started dating a new guy, who is gorgeous. I mean, he is a really desperately good-looking man. He’s also funny, nice, well-mannered and doesn’t wear jeans that are too tight or skinny. All very good news.
“So, what’s his fatal flaw?” I asked her over dinner.
“He doesn’t have one!” she said excitedly, her eyes glowing with fanatical joy.
“Honey,” I said as gently as I could. “All men have a fatal flaw.”

A fatal flaw is the one thing that turns out to be a deal-breaker, unless you are so hooked on the sex/so deluded you think you’re in love/accidentally pregnant that you decide to try and keep brokering the deal.

Usually, the hotter and more perfect the guy appears, the more fatal the flaw. As examples let me cite Two-Fifty Dave, who seemed cute, interesting and successful. He was, except that on our first date at a very average coffee shop, he asked me for $2.50 to cover the cost of the coffee I’d just had.
“It’s actually $2.80, but $2.50’s fine,” he said, magnanimously.
Or Third-Date-Steve, who suggested that my refusal to have sex with him on our third date made me ‘a cock tease who expected him to buy before he tried.’

There was Alcoholic Andy, who threw up on my Agent Provocateur lingerie and filled the water glass on his bedside table with vodka, Energizer Jeff whose cocaine habit become apparent on a weekend away at a remote farmhouse and Pee-On-Me-Matt who...well, the name speaks for itself really.

My girlfriends have dated “That’s-Not-Herpes-I-Promise Tom”, “You-Look-Just-Like-My-Ex-Will-You-Dye-Your-Hair Jonathan” and “I-Will-Never-Love-You-More-Than-Jesus Richard.” Then there’s “Married Sam” although we now refer to him as “Married Mr. X” because turns out he lied about his name too.

It may sound jaded but these days, when I meet a boy, I’m immediately wondering what his fatal flaw is. And the more perfect he is, the bigger the bomb.

As for my friend who’s dating Mr. Perfect, turns out he has a fatal flaw too.
“What is it?” I asked her. “He’s pretty great, so it must be big. Is it sex with animals? Does he molest his dog? Or is it more that he can’t live within 50 metres of a school?”
“Well...” she replied. “You know how you said it must be big?"
Uh-oh.
"It’s not.”

Turns out, it’s so tiny she can give him a blow-job and still have enough room to suck on a lollipop and talk about Barack Obama’s foreign policies with anyone caring to listen.

Yikes. The only thing I can do is hand over some tissues and remind her that Pee-On-Me Matt is, surprisingly, still available. (On the plus side, he has the good manners to always sleep on the wet patch.)

How to dump somebody before you actually get together

A friend of mine recently wrote this guest post on the Faux Dump. We've all been there, but I'll let her explain:

There's a certain grey area during those early stages of a relationship (before a relationship really becomes a relationship) where things often dwindle and die on one side. Perhaps you're two dates in, you've gotten to know each other better, and now you've realised that your date has all the charm of a used condom. Maybe they made a really bad joke about menstruation while you were out for coffee and you both ended up in Awkward Town. Or maybe there's simply no sexual chemistry. Whatever your beef is, ending things at this point can be difficult. If you'd made up your mind one date earlier, you could have just given them the flick by ignoring them altogether, but now you find yourself too involved to be able to simply break things off by ceasing contact and avoiding the other party. However, you're not quite involved enough to warrant a traditional break-up including an explanation of what went wrong and vague promises of friendship. In this situation, one needs to execute a Faux Dump. This is where you say, quite simply, "I'm just not feeling it."

To claim you're "not feeling it" is by far the most humane, ego-preserving way to end a relationship. It doesn't point the finger, but rather blames the failure of the union on some abstract, uncontrollable issue - a chemical imbalance or point of fate or whatever. Something is simply missing, but it's nobody's fault. (Of course, in reality, it's their fault. It's always their fault. You have probably fantasised about them being hit by a truck because they are so irritating you wish they would die a million times, but it is inappropriate to mention this during the Faux Dump. Overall, your objective is to get it over with as quickly as possible and then forget about the whole thing, not unlike an episode of Two and a Half Men.)

But be warned: despite all its padded corners, the Faux Dump will not often be received calmly. This is because when you claim that you are not feeling an interest in pursuing things, you are implying that the other party did feel an interest. And this is humiliating for those with fragile egos and passive-aggressive conflict resolution skills (aka most people currently alive). For this reason, the other party will still get defensive and feel the need to make bitchy, vindictive comments illustrating the various ways in which they too were "not feeling it." Don't take the bait - the best way to deal with this little outburst is to swallow your pride, smile, and say, "Well I'm glad we're on the same page." And then, get the fuck out.

.
If only I'd read this before last weekend, where I accidentally said the words, "It's a pity you chose brains when God was handing out large penises," I'd have handled that break up a lot more gracefully.

You can follow Annik at @neekatron, or read more on her sex life, conversations with her mom, and her amusing friends at http://annikskelton.com/

Jennifer Aniston Theory

A friend of mine who was recently broken up with discovered that her ex has a new girlfriend. A hot new girlfriend. And a new job. A great new job. “Oh my goooodddddd........” she wailed on my couch. “How is this justice?! He cheats on me, he breaks up with me, and he gets to move on and move up while I get fatter and older and more single by the day? Whhyyyyyyyyy??”
“It’s Jennifer Aniston theory,” I say sagely, passing her the Baskin Robbins.

Everyone knows that Brad Pitt cheated on Jen with Angelina Jolie. When they broke up, she got all the bad press, while he went on to father a rainbow family and become one half of the most powerful couple in Hollywood—that scary entity known as Brangelina.

While Brangelina were photographed in glamorous locations doing glamorous things with their multi-coloured babies, Jen’s career took a post-Friends nosedive and she dated a series of dropkicks and love-rats. The media have become obsessed with her single status, with headlines ranging from “Lonely Jen can’t find love” to “Jen’s biological clock is ticking, she’s never going to have babies, and she’ll die single and alone,” which, let’s be honest, is the headline we all fear.

And it just doesn’t seem fair. Jen is hot and rumor is, she’s nice too. Oprah Winfrey calls her one of the most charitable celebs ever, but Angelina cornered that market with her UN ambassador badge. The sad part is, so many of my girlfriends (and me too) have been Jennifer Aniston. And there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about.

I don’t have a solution to this, but I ask you all out there....have you been Jen? And how did you deal with it?

"Faux-gasm"

Every girl has faked it. Every. Single. One. Boys are always so outraged when I say this--I’m usually greeted with a host of rebuttals from “It’s never happened to me” (yep, and you were the biggest she’s ever been with right?) to “I can always tell when it’s fake” (as long as you’re talking about her hair extensions, I believe you).

There’s this old joke that always makes me laugh:
Why did Moses wander the desert for 40 years? Because even then, men wouldn’t stop and ask for directions.

It’s true though, men have a real terror of appearing like they don’t know what they’re doing or where they’re going. And I don’t just mean on the road. Navigating the female form is a complicated process, and more importantly, a delicate one. It requires a certain degree of knowledge and know-how to successfully bring a woman to the end of the journey and yet, most guys seem to think that it’s merely a matter of turning up and sticking their key in the ignition.

A girlfriend of mine dated a doctor once who is the worst offender to date. They went away for the weekend and it got so bad, she took to faking her orgasms just to end the torture. At one point, just to check whether he was even paying any attention, she faked it as he was humping her hip bone. As I later commented, “Dude, if he couldn’t find your clitoris and his face was right up in it, I doubt he’s a very good surgeon.” Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last past the weekend.

The last date-pash I had, the guy went in with his tongue practically hanging out of his mouth. I, being normal, kept my mouth firmly closed. His tongue ended up ramming into my lips, and when I opened my mouth to go “WTF?!” it ended up falling in, where it then proceeded to flop around like a dying fish before I pulled away and put us all out of our misery.

The problem was, I took one look at his face and realized the misery wasn't mutual. He had that proud, self-satisfied look on his face and I just couldn't, couldn't tell him that my moans were a desperate plea for air rather than a product of my desire for him.

Yes, hundreds of girls are experiencing the 'faux-gasm', faking their orgasms in order to avoid an awkward conversation. And the older we get, the more unbelievable it seems that guys don't know they're playing in the wrong postcode. For a woman, it's a no-win situation: point out that he's licking your inner thigh rather than anything relevant, and he's going to get offended, but tell him you faked it and boys tend to flip out.

So guys, the next time you get offended that a girl has faked it, I suggest you remember two things:

1. She took one for the team. It's not like she got anything out of faking it (except a brief moment of respite) and

2. Don't wait 40 years to ask for directions. Women may not be able to read a map, but we do know when it's time to tell him to get lost.

The Man Diet

A friend of mine recently announced that, as New Years are all about New Resolutions, her 2010 was no different. She had resolved, like many others, to kick old habits, begin a new diet, and lose dead weight. She planned to achieve all of the above with one simple solution: A Man Diet.

Buddhist philosophy teaches that the human body requires one day off every week to purify itself. Devout Buddhists fast in order to give their digestive systems a break and recover from the constant overuse. Hindus often fast on religious holidays, suggesting that our preoccupation with food—the sourcing of it, the preparation and consumption of it—occupies so much of our time that by removing food entirely as an issue, our minds are free focus on higher thoughts.

In the same way, the Dating Detox is intended to give her body and mind a break by removing a need and replacing it with higher thoughts. And the results are immediate. By not putting herself through the torture of wondering if he likes her, if he’ll call her, if he’ll return her text, she can step back and stop treating every man like a potential shag and pay attention to what he’s actually saying. Sadly most of the men she knows have fallen in her estimation because of these new standards, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

And there is no longer the pressure of going out on the weekend and feeling like she needs to compete with 18 year olds whose bodies don’t feel the cold and whose tits don’t feel gravity (although, as I watch them teetering in their tiny dresses in the middle of winter, their tic-tac nipples suggest they DO in fact, feel the cold). Instead, she can dress weather-and-mood appropriate, secure in the knowledge that she’s judged on the content of her character rather than the context of her crotch. She no longer has to be vigilant about waxing or contraception. She can wear comfy panties 24/7, instead of pretending that having a g-string riding up her ass makes her feel sexy. She’s unaffected by the Man Drought.

There's just one downside. Turns out, you deny your body of one thing, and it craves something else. As she herself admitted, “I’m glad I’m on a Man Fast, because if I wasn’t, I’m not sure I’d get lucky. Because now, I’m fat. Happy, but fat.” And when I think about myself, thin but exhausted by maintaining de-forestation in Brazil and denying myself that last slice of chocolate cake, I wonder if the pursuit of happiness is in fact, making me unhappy.

So, I guess if the trade-off is getting fat or getting laid, I know which one I’m choosing. Hello Double-Choc Cookie Dough Ice-Cream. Mama’s home and wondering if you want to come to bed with me, bad boy.

"Down-Dating"

A friend of mine recently introduced us to her new boyfriend. She'd been raving about him for weeks, and I'd been expecting a cross between Chace Crawford and Hugh Jackman, so imagine my disappointment to find him....well, to put it delicately...fugly.

While my friend is a gorgeous blonde with an impeccable sense of style and a dry sense of humor, her chosen beau was well past chubby (ok, he was so far into obese he couldn't even see the signpost to Chubby Town. If Obese-City was on 4square, he'd be the freaking MAYOR) and I'm pretty sure his hairline hasn't seen any actual hair since the late 90s. He wasn't funny, interesting or particularly bright, and his resulting inferiority complex made him downright rude to her friends, despite our best efforts.

This wouldn't be a big deal if it was an isolated incident, but everywhere I turn, all over this fabulous city and indeed all over the globe, women are indulging in a phemonenon I'm dubbing "Down-Dating." Really gorgeous girls are shacking up with duds and drop-kicks who, in a normal world, shouldn't even get a first date. I'm not talking about the vacuous or the ditzy either; bright, cool, talented, beautiful women are hooking up with men who have nothing to show for themselves except their ability to snag afore-mentioned hottie.

Don't believe me? Explain this:

The gorgeous Kate Moss with the gungy Pete Doherty


Hot Sienna Miller, not-so-hot Rhys Ifans

And the stunning Jen Aniston with scrag John Mayer

Interestingly, Down-Dating is only limited to women--hot guys are certainly not going for their visually disturbing counterparts. So why is this happening? Is it just the Man Drought driving us to desperation, or something more sinister?

It's common knowledge that ugly guys have to work harder. Just like small men are better in bed (they know they have something to make up for), ugly men need to be nice guys and good human beings in order to get the girl. And so, hot women date them thinking they've made a fair trade-off, which is "Ugly guy, but he'll be great to me."

Well girls, I'm smashing the urban myth that gross guys are nice people. You know what the above three couples have in common? They're no longer together. In every case, love-rat guy cheated on super-hot female.

The thing is, these guys are perfectly normal until they hook up with their significantly-hotter other. And it's a Law of Dating Nature that other women are interested in any guy that can get a hot girl, because they're all wondering what secret weapon he has. And so, like moths to a flame, we're drawn in, trying to discover whether it's his scintillating wit, his vast wealth or just his willy that got him the girl.

It's easy to confuse all this female attention with sexual interest, but the truth is, as soon as these guys dump their hot girlfriends, they lose the only thing that made other women interested to begin with. And yes, it's true that while some love-rats go on to make a career out of Dating-Up, it never ends well for the girl.

So ladies, if you're going to date a guy for his personality, make it a hot guy. Because the only thing that you get by "Down-Dating" is an ugly Facebook album, and in Kate Moss' case, a crack addiction, which I imagine she needed to bring herself to have sex with Pete Doherty.

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.