Things not to say to your boyfriend part three and four

Double whammy:

"What do you mean, IF we have children? Why can't we have children? I want children." (In repsonse to a simple throw-away comment in which he said "if we have children one day...").

My head is mental.

Two minutes later: "I weigh more than I ever have in my life, but I'm a healthy weight. You need to be a healthy weight to conceive." (part of unwarranted monologue about why I don't hate fat people.)

Apparently I am determined to convince my boyfriend that I am the sort of woman who steals sperm.

Let's talk about sex, baby

Boys are well known for talking and thinking about sex all the time. I'm generalising, but it's okay to do that with facts.

So, imagine my surprise to find out that boys dislike talking about sex in the context of their own sex life. This doesn't apply to when they exaggerate about their own sex life to their friends but only when talking to their girlfriend about the reality of their sex life.

The question is, how does one start a conversation about issues in one's sex life with one's boyfriend without making him feel inadequate?

You could be forgiven for thinking "easily" (after all, we're all grown-ups here, and it's just sex), but you would be wrong. There is literally nothing you can say to a man about any issues you have with your sex life without him assuming that you are just days away from leaving him for a well-oiled gigalo.

Try it out. Every statement you might possibly try and make to your boyfriend will be heard as "You are inadequate."

For example...

What you say: "I'd probably like it if we had sex more often."
What he hears: "You are inadequate and I am unsatisfied."

What you say: "I don't want to have quite as much sex as you seem to want to have."
What he hears: "You are inadequate and so bad in bed I can't bare it more than once a month, and that's being charitable."

What you say: "I'd like it if we spent more time cuddling."
What he hears: "You are inadequate and I see you more as a fat friend than an Adonis-esque lover."

What you say: "Would you like to try something different or kinky sometimes?"
What he hears: "You are inadequate and dull and I have a great deal of kinky experience with highly-sexed male models sporting obscenely large manhoods."

The list could go on.

So, what can we do? Have the "You think I'm inadequate" row ultimately ending in tears and retractions or keep the lip stiff and the porn handy?

You tell me. My girlfriends and I are at a loss.

Dear Man,

When one of your treasured possessions is not at your fingertips please remember that I am your love, your treasure, your esteemed princess, not a mischievous elf with a penchant for hiding socks.

Please know that when I helpfully recall the last time I saw said item I am not subtly admitting to being the last to have used it. Then hidden it for fun.

When I tell you I am sure I saw it on the table last week I am not implying that I saw it, used it and moved it to somewhere I knew you would never find it. Like a drawer or a bin.

When I suggest hiding places for your keys or wallet, like last night’s trouser pockets or the desk top where they are always kept, please don’t seethe and assume that I put them there when your back was turned because I like it when you’re late for work.

When I tidy up I do not throw all of your favourite things in the bin. I only throw your favourite things in the bin when you make me mad, and when I’m mad I don’t tidy. I throw your stuff in the bin.

Dearest Man, when one of your treasured possessions is not at your fingertips, remember that you probably put it somewhere stupid and look in the least likely place for it.

If you strongly suspect that I have hidden said possession, look in the drawer where said possession is supposed to live. If I have touched it that is where it will be.

Dearest Man, I have labelled the drawers.

Lots of love,
Woman.

Money, money, money

My boyfriend and I are fairly typical when it comes to topics we most hate to venture into together. Who is better at scrabble (me), who does the most housework (me), who has the moral high ground (me), who has the nicest feet (me), who snores (him). And so on.

But the topic we hate the most is money. We have a system which is a little bit like the game you play as a child where you close your eyes and spin around really fast, laughing merrily all the way until you fall over in a heap and bang your head on the coffee table.

This month he banged his head on the coffee table last week, following which I gave him a high and mighty lecture about how spinning around so fast, no matter how much fun, was only going to result in a horrible headache and no social life for the next three weeks. He was suitably ashamed.

Until this morning, when I too banged my head. Really hard.

As I wept on his shoulder, complaining that not only had I given myself an almighty headache but I could no longer afford the repayments on the coffee table, he swept the moral high ground from under my feet by saying only “I love you and it will be ok.”

He does it on purpose to make me feel bad. Bastard.

So, what with it being a new year and therefore traditional to promise to be new people despite inevitable failure, we have made a money-plan. We have vowed to make a list of outgoings and incomings and spend only what we agree each month.

Most likely this will add a brand new layer of arguments to have about who has overspent and on what. (Him: taxis when running late to work and fine scotch; me: hair appointments and wine.)

It will also mean forgoing random trips like our recent outing in London which mainly involved drinking our own body weight in Sambuca and Champagne followed by an impromptu stay in a hotel having missed the last train. This hedonism was made worse (the next morning; at the time it was great fun) by the fact that the original plan that night was a cheap drink or two in Weatherspoon’s.

Not that we’ll miss such things having also promised to not to drink or smoke anymore.

Doomed to failure or New Year, new us? Only January will tell.

I am totally unreasonable. My boyfriend is a saint.

I just asked my boyfriend if he wouldn’t mind ever so much doing the washing up tonight. You, like me, may think this reasonable considering that I do practically all the housework without complaint or praise, do all the cooking bar the odd night (he’s cooked about twice since he moved in), do all the washing, remember to change the bed sheets, and even make him the odd packed lunch.

But you, like me, would be wrong.

You see it was my turn to wash up tonight, and because I asked him to take my turn after 9pm he had by that point set his mind accordingly to that befitting of a non-washing up night. Not only to have to wash up when it is actually my turn, but to do so when he had mentally prepared himself not to have to wash up is Totally Unacceptable. Even I, a completely unreasonable woman, can see that.

After all, I’m at home all day (except the days I’m travelling around the county to go to meetings) so surely it is only right that I do all the housework plus the washing up every other day including those days where I cook. I feel simply terrible. Clearly he is right. Poor lamb.

You see, I work from home. Not in the “housewives should get a salary because it is hard work and clearly not something that everyone without loads of money or a rich husband has to do on top of a full time job” sense of the phrase “working from home”, mind. Rather I work from home in the sense that I am a senior marketing professional with quite a lot of responsibility.I just lack office space.

However, that’s hardly the point. I am at home. I am woman. He leaves the house to work. He is man. Clearly I should do all the housework, every day and be eternally grateful that he doesn’t mind doing the washing up every other day (when really I should be doing it whilst simultaneously practising my pelvic floor exercises). In fact, when he washes up, I should probably suck him off to thank him.

But do I? Do I fuck.

I don’t know how he puts up with it. My boyfriend is a saint.

A hotdog, Megan Fox and an almighty row.

One would think that a trip to paradise would revitalise one. That one would come home smiling, full of tales and more in love than ever.

Clap-trap.

Don’t get me wrong, our holiday was wonderful. It was paradise. We smiled, laughed, swam, sunbathed and had lots of hot holiday sex. It was awesome. It looked like this:

But something happened on the way home. Suddenly with reality around the corner, the contrast with what should be and what was became almost too much to bear.

It began with my wanting a hotdog (on a totally unrelated note, I cannot use a gerund without thinking of Dakin propositioning Mr Irwin in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys – “my sucking you off is a gerund”). But I digress. I really wanted a hotdog but I couldn’t find one. I don’t think I was too unbearable. I simply seethed quietly to myself. My boyfriend, who clearly had forgotten everything he had ever known about me decided to say, over and over, in what can only be described as a “lady’s” voice “Do you want a hotdog? Aw, are you going to get mad if you can’t find a hotdog?” Well yes, as it happens, I was.

Then I found a hotdog in Kuala Lumpa of all places. It was a stop-over from Singapore. “Can I have ketchup?” I asked the man. He seemed to twitch but I really couldn’t be sure that he had acknowledged my very reasonable request, so I turned to my boyfriend, who by now was even more agitated by me having walked the course of the airport three times in stifling heat carrying three hefty works of female fiction which I’d bought to avoid any further conversation with him on the plane. I asked him “Is he going to give me ketchup?” “I don’t fucking know, ask him.” he tersely whispered. “Perhaps we should just spend the next two hours apart?” I suggested. He declined, and instead directly me to sit quietly and eat my hotdog in peace, while he sneakily tried to document the “hilarity” with his camera.

I think you can see the anger most in my eyes. A smile proves nothing.

And so it continued, with my boyfriend doing everything wrong for the next fourteen hours of travelling.

Things he did wrong included, among other things, choosing the wrong check-in queue behind the really slow people and watching Transformers twice on the plane for the sole reason of drooling loudly over Megan Fox to purposefully annoy me. Then to top it all off he refused to join the mile high club with me, the (albeit tanned) monster.

Finally back home we took comfort from the kittens and the day off to come. Then we went back to work and spent a week in cold war climaxing with a screaming morning row over what time my boyfriend should have left for work, which didn’t solve the problem of him missing the bus, but did make us realise that grumpiness at such a level could not be sustained.

We’re currently on best behaviour, which is working out quite well so far. This is probably because we have decided to embrace our addiction to Dexter and therefore have been watching the series back to back each evening. This severely limits the need for conversation which so far has shown a directly proportional reduction in hatred. So far, so good.

So I went and had a spray tan…

I’m going on holiday to Rawa Island tonight with the boyfriend. This girl lives there. Apparently it is paradise. I believe her.

Sun, lots of sun. I love the sun.

Without a doubt the people there will tanned. I am very pasty. I decided this wouldn’t do. I am vain and I like to be adored. There is not a chance I’m hanging out on a beach filled with supermodel lookalikes in the popular red and white stripped look us Brits Abroad champion.

So I went and had a spray tan. It was weird.

Firstly, there’s the uncertainty when the young blonde girl in white asks you to take off your clothes before stepping onto the apparatus whether she means now or when she has left the room. Like with doctors. It has always puzzled me that it seems outrageously rude to watch someone undress (oh perverted hedonism, Sadé would applaud) but perfectly acceptable to prod them and, as it happens, spray them with a tanning hose (it would be funny if it wasn’t true) when they are in the buff.

So I tentatively tugged at my shirt until she walked out of the room promising to return when I was ready, I.E. naked but for a thong and standing on the apparatus.

It was about that time that I noticed the apparatus was opposite the door she had just walked through in order to return to the bustling salon. The bustling salon in which people sat being beautified in full view of the door and, I concluded, in full view of my pasty white flesh when blondie returned having, of course, to open the door wide enough to walk through it.

I tactically stood with my back to the door somehow, and childishly, concluding that if I couldn’t see their scorn it would make it slightly less true (I know; I’m self-centred). Standing there, I felt a little like a prisoner of war ready for my water-boarding and wondered if my position, in the circumstances and in such close proximity to the tanning hose, was a tad submissive.

The hose was hard and cold and I felt like I couldn’t breath, especially when she did my face. I giggled and wondered if I should enter the world of S&M.

Over the following eight hours I acquired an interesting colour, the nickname David (Dickenson) and a new dish cloth having stained my linen shirt. It was the only loose black clothing I had and those are the rules. Frankly I would have preferred to ruin my cheap white t-shirt, but ho-hum.

Finally I was allowed to shower to see the results. Brown. Even. Good, I thought. Though, a bit patchy around the frontal knickers area. Lace was possibly an unwise choice, I concluded. I look a bit like I’m still wearing them, except for instead of black they are now fleshy coloured with a hint of tangerine. Nice. Am thinking either lights off or knickers of the peep-hole variety until that fads. Nothing puts me off my stride like not at all contained hysterical laughter and finger pointing at my almost rude bits.

All packed and ready to go. See you in two weeks!