Himglish and Femalese

“

Out last week drinking champagne with three dazzling blonde women – it is the life of an Independent columnist – conversation dipped into their domestic arrangements. All were in their mid-thirties, at the height of their powers, but none was or had been married. Why, I wondered?

They were each a little melancholy at their single state – and for all the familiar reasons. The benefits of marriage just aren’t seen as clearly by the man as by the woman. It struck me that women today really need to know how to make men marry them. It’s a lost art.

—

(via gauntlet)

How very odd - I thought that Rod Liddle was not going to be the editor of the Independent after all.

Anyway, in case you are interested in a countering opinion by someone whose view of the world is not lodged in the 1950s, here is my advice for women on how to make men marry them:

1. Establish a solid relationship based on love, respect, and good communication.

2. Discuss your views on marriage. Ensure that they are roughly compatible. If they are not roughly compatible, you should probably not get married to each other. Be sure to consider whether you want to have a WEDDING or a MARRIAGE. If what you really want is a wedding, consider just having a generally very good expensive party without making any promises that are meant to last a lifetime.

3. If you still want to get married, and the man has not asked you yet, cry and be grumpy and withhold sex until he does. JUST KIDDING. Actually, I would suggest that would be a good time to ask him yourself. If he says yes, the outcome (surprise!) will be the same as it would be if he asked you. I know, amazing.

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“ …when women sat with men they ate rabbit food or other meals “of significantly lower caloric value” than in all-women groups. The more men dining with a woman, the less she ate.

—

Brain food: why single women eat salad | Science | The Guardian

This doesn’t surprise me at all - I, too, have fallen victim to this syndrome, feeling nervous about having a meal with a man I’m trying to impress and thus politely refusing dessert. What a shame! If you’re with someone who makes you feel like you have to alter your behaviour to something unnatural, then it may well be time to consider whether the man is in a relationship with you, or with a pseudo-you. I guarantee that you are more fun and lovable.

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“ According to the most recent CDC data, for women, “higher age of marriage is associated with lower probability of marital disruption.” If you want a healthy marriage, the cultural pressure to wait only helps. Unless you are poor, in which case an increasing number of women wait too long and end up raising children themselves in circumstances much more precarious than Gottlieb’s.

— What Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him gets wrong about successful single women. - By Jessica Grose - Slate Magazine This excellent and well-researched review of Lori Gottlieb’s MARRY HIM by Jessica Grose will be heartening for anyone who thinks they must make a conscious effort to dial down their standards in order to catch a husband.

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Himglish and Femalese: Just Ask.

Now, easier than ever to submit your pressing relationship questions!

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“

I would like to believe that this is a function of being young and naive and needing attention. I know when I was in my early twenties, mention of my boyfriend (if I had one) didn’t always make it into conversation, which eventually led to several sort of not-dates with guys I’d met at concerts or parties or whatever, which probably ended with them just being confused. At the time I justified it by telling myself that they had never specifically asked if I was in a relationship. But now that I’m older and wiser, it’s easier to just mention it. Casually! No need to make anyone feel awkward! Here, try it with me:

Lady: I’m from LA.
Dude: Oh, cool. My girlfriend and I just got back from there.

See how easy that was?

—

Let’s Do the Two-Step Monogamy Shuffle Again! - Dating - Gawker

I’ve been thinking about writing a post about this very phenomenon: how the fact that men and women are allowed to be friends (yay!) sometimes results in you going on an ambigudate (or even a not-ambigu one) with someone who is actually very much spoken for, but who fails to mention it. And Doree Shafer has summed it up brilliantly in this Gawker post: flirting is fun, even when you’re in a relationship. Being devoted to your partner doesn’t mean that you don’t fancy someone else once in awhile. But carrying on with the flirting to the extent that it turns into something datelike without mentioning your partner, when you are aware that this other person is getting the wrong idea about your interest? Uncool, immature, and potentially manipulative - both towards your unsuspecting new friend and your partner. Following the script that Doree gives here: highly recommended.

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Cheesy New Year’s headline goes here (or, JHE’s thoughts on a fresh slate)

Happy 2010, dear readers. I hope you have had a nice break and the holidays did not prove to be too much of a strain on your relationships - despite the fact that, as one wise friend of mine remarked, they are like ‘being caught in an avalanche of festivity and emotional chaos’. If things did go a bit pear-shaped for you and your other half over the holidays, I recommend that you not make any hasty decisions - give yourself some time to settle back into your normal routine before you conclude that his clash with your family over politics, or her awful decision to give you a terrible Christmas time, is grounds for a permanent split.

And now, with a fresh clean new year (or 361 days of one) stretching before you, have you made any relationship-related resolutions? I’m going to be honest with you: I am not sure I entirely approve of them.

While it can be nice to feel that we get to hit the restart button at the beginning of the year (oh, my gym attendance is about to improve dramatically), the temptation to decide that certain things will equal markers of relationship success can lead to some pretty severe disappointment, because these are goals that you simply can’t control on your own (unless, of course, your resolution is to be alone, but then again even that can sometime be easier said than done unless you live in a nice hermit-y place).

Managing relationships just can’t be done in quite the same way as weight loss or debts or whatever: ultimately, no matter how we try to unpack them into something that makes sense, their intrinsic intangibility means that they’ll never be as easy to direct. Which is good, really, because if you take this on board, then you can resolve to relax - and relaxing, in fact, is one of the surest ways to improve your love life.

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This probably needs no introduction.

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“ It’s sad I didn’t realize we couldn’t even be friends until you told me I should get a nose job.

—

Dear Old Love

Oh, here’s a rather good blog.

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JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems: Tell him, tell him, tell him, tell him right now

Dear Jean,

My older sister has been working in a bookshop for four years now and our family is very good friends with the family that own the bookshop. I’ve always “liked” the son of the bookshop owner, but over the past year I’ve become really friendly with this boy and come to realise that actually, I like him an awful lot.

My friends keep telling me that I should just tell him and that it seems like he likes me whenever he’s around me and that I’d regret it if I didn’t say anything before he goes to university next year (he’s two years older than I am and on a gap year), but I’m worried that if my friends have misinterpreted things and he tells everyone in our families, it’d be really embarrassing. I’m also hideously shy, so I have no idea how to even start a conversation like that. I’ve gone out with boys, but I’ve never asked one out, so I have absolutely no idea where to start.

If it was any other boy, I’d be inclined to just try and forget about him, but I’ve liked this boy for a good four years now and I don’t want to simply watch him walk away to university knowing that I had the opportunity to tell him how I felt but completely ruined my chances.

I know I’m probably being pathetic, but I honestly have absolutely no idea what to do.

- Feeling A Little Pathetic

***
Dear Miss Feeling,

Oh, how I feel for you. Everyone’s been in your position at one time or another. Even I have been there once in a while, and I am a relationship expert and was born in the 1980s.

So first of all: you’re not being pathetic. You’re just having a natural response to this situation, which is a fear of rejection. It’s a natural fear to have but it is such a shame when it gets in the way of people expressing their feelings - as I write in the book, sometimes it results in something that could be The Greatest Love of All becoming The Greatest Near-Miss of All because both parties are too scared to be the ones to put their feelings on the line.

Now, let’s consider the two possible approaches you can take to tackling this particular conundrum.

1) Say nothing. This way you will be able to avoid being rejected. It also means that you will likely spend your remaining time together hoping that he’ll say something; he might not, and then he will go away to university and you may well continue to feel a bit sad and pathetic.

2) Tell him you like him. He may respond, ‘great, I like you too!’ and you will feel awesome. But even if he doesn’t indicate that he reciprocates your feelings, you should feel awesome anyway, because you have been assertive and said how you felt which is a really brave and cool thing to do - something that he will recognise even if he’s not that into you if he is someone worth your interest. If he’s not able to respond in a civilised way, then you’ll know that he’s not worth your time, anyway. So basically? You win, whatever the outcome.

Tags: JHE Solves Your Relationship Problems

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“ Christmas - isn’t it romantic? As the song goes, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”… but it’s also one of the most stressful. If you want to make merry and nice (or even better, make whoopee), Jean Hannah Edelstein, author of Himglish and Femalese: Why Women Don’t Get Why Men Don’t Get Them, offers her top 10 tips for a romantic Christmas…

— Handbag.com: Christmas relationship advice by JHE

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