Wednesday 28 November 2012

21 Days of waiting....


[i]

To me there is no moment more perfect nor more comforting than the moment when you are laying down with your head on your loved ones chest listening to their heart beat.  Their soft skin cradled around your ear, the steady rhythm of their heart pulsing, the sweet scent of their cologne, it is all flawless.  In that moment I am warm, happy and could stay in that moment forever.  Of course forever laying like this is never attainable as one of you gets hungry, has to use the bathroom, gets too hot, or someone’s arm falls asleep; these absolute pure moments are short and fleeting.  This particular moment is a moment I miss, and I would love to say I miss it on an occasion but in reality I miss it every night when I lay down to sleep on a lifeless pillow.  Do not get me wrong, my short, fat, snorty pug is of endless affection and love to me, BUT he is not a man.   Another moment that I find myself reflecting on is the compliment.  Men, however awkwardly, or unintentionally have a way of giving a woman a compliment and women truly believe it.  It can be as simple as the food you have cooked is delicious to your ass looks great in lulu lemons but the moment that compliment is spoken there are those few seconds as the compliment sinks in, some of us blush, some of us smile it warms the soul to know that man that you care so deeply about approved you. 

It is these beautiful moments that I believe lead to the “abandonment trend.”  You all have either done this or have a friend who frequently does this.  One day you have your best friend, she calls you every day, and you drink wine, dance, chat, talk about going to the gym, or what have you.  Then suddenly she meets a man and a month later you have barely spoken to or seen her.  Some women freak out and are dramatic while most women do what women do, they call up their other girlfriends and complain.  They say how unfair it is that their best girl in the world has now become someone else’s best girl.  But, this does not change things, nor will it ever.  What is interesting is that men feel the same phenomena, and men, being male do not submissively take the rejection as the majority of women do.  No, indeed men fight for their man, and what occurs? Well, you as the naive, clingy new girlfriend become the enemy.   What essentially develops is a tug a war over your man’s affection.  It has been labelled by some “buddy vs. Girlfriend’ dynamic” Defined as: “When a character's best friend (possibly a Heterosexual Life Partner) and the Love Interest have a rivalry over "ownership" of the third party.”[ii]

[iii]

For men they have broken some bro code (for women it can also be labeled, crudely as a ho code):

“When your homie starts going steady with a girl, he takes on a new role: the boyfriend. Suddenly, the awesome dude you know is gone, replaced by (what you think is) a sissified woman-pleaser. He obsesses over everything She does; freaks out when She’s upset; talks about Her constantly. Seeing a man in this emasculated state pisses us off – and we blame the girlfriend for the change. We wonder what happened to our guy, who used to be so uncaring and tough with other women. We discuss ‘what this skank is doing to him’ between ourselves.”[iv]

How do women deal with such a phenomena, some of them choose to fight right back with their man’s friends. Recently Ms.J was experiencing this as her new man’s bud called her a C U Next Tuesday and she was livid, she expressed to me the next time she saw him she was going to “Let him have it” which of course she did, in the end her man is no longer friends with Mr. D (Mr. D will be a reoccurring phenomena as he is such a good name for the men in our lives who so many D words describe) Ms. K experienced the same phenomena with her man recently, his newly single friends were hungry for a wing man and thus they began the process of stirring up trouble.  She took the same approach as Ms. J, anger, she said “Mr. D (we will call him Mr. D for this story as I know him personally to be so many non-complimentary terms that start with this letter) is trying to start s%#t with Mr. A and is trying to get him to do stupid....” Women often view what men do together as this, just dumb. In return men retaliate:

 “We hate this because single guys are used to doing stuff together. We use our “man-time” to bond over the smallest of things, i.e. Pizza Thursdays and Paintball Sundays. Girls don’t understand these activities; to them, what we do ranges from “loser crap” to “big waste of time.” So they coax, coerce and sweet-talk their men into spending more time with them and less time with us.  Which is an unforgivable transgression. When a friend is busy getting laid, we get it. But seeing a man go for cocktails with Her friends when we could be watching all 6 Star Wars movies back-to-back is just wrong.” [v] 

Of course in this battle “Hilarity Ensues. Except when the friend is poisonous, the love interest is clingy or psycho-possessive, one or both might decide to Murder the Hypotenuse,[vi] leaving the other a Cassandra Truth[vii]. Less murderously, both start a secret war for the affection and attention of the third party, trying to slander the other while seeming innocent. By the end one or the other usually reveals they were less than ideal as a friend or lover and get cropped out of the picture.”[viii] In simple English the fighting continues until one of the fighters is annihilated out of the relationship. 

 

[ix]

 

            On the other hand, I have been guilty of this myself on many occasion the new girlfriend enemy buys the affection of the male friends.  This action is simple but it is also very manipulative, in my defense it is for a good cause, the mental sanctity of your man.  It may be as simple as baking a batch of fresh cookies conveniently right before heading to his place, or if they are work out buffs you bring the latest edition of Men’s Health for the loo, or if they are beer fans a case of their favorite beer, what a coincidence! These male enemies cannot keep the image of you as the wicked witch of the west as they enjoy reading their favorite magazine that you strategic placed by their favorite chair as they enjoy a fresh cookie straight of the oven, unless they have no soul, in which case run for the hills as all friends are a reflection of ourselves[x] and that means deep somewhere in your man’s psyche he too has no soul. (On a side note this bribery also works on your girlfriends love interests that get the ludicrous idea that you are a bad influence and you want to change their mind) Of course with your bribery you must also kill them with kindness and never make your man choose between the two of you IN the beginning. “In a world that is being reshaped by the relentless advance of technology, what stands out are acts of compassion and connection that remind us what it means to be human.”[xi] Eventually the friends will begin to see you as part of the herd, once you are fully accepted you will be able to spend time alone with your love with nothing but support from the rest of group.  However, by the time you have reached this point in your relationship you have also become quite attached to his friends, but this is a whole new realm of conversation that I will not be writing on today.  If all his friends are female it is very similar “Female friends can become territorial. It’s like dogs who mark fence posts with piss. If a new girl appears on the scene, all of a sudden, they feel threatened. Does this mean they can’t hang out with Bob anymore? What about cuddles? We’ve all been guilty of treating male friends as substitute boyfriends because we enjoy the attention.”[xii] But, the jealousy factor arises as well as some other complications that I am not even begin to try and understand.   

 

In the past 21 days I have been mourning the loss of Ms. J to the new girlfriend trend of abandonment and have been substituting my male friends for sure.  But, more so I find substituting different girlfriends, meaning longer and more frequent calls about random things, more texting and more plans to get together.   So in reflection an increase in social activity which really must be healthier than the alternative spinster approach. I have also began to miss the little things about men.  The waking up with someone and the fun of cooking breakfast together, the cuddling, yes I admit it cuddling is wonderful, the awkward moment before the first kiss,  and of course the physical intimacy.  However, these days have given me further insight into relationships than I have ever gotten actually being in one.    So it has been a learning lesson for sure.  This weekend should hold some excitement as Ms. A may come to visit and Cirque du Soliel is in town. 

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

[xiii]

 


[i] This is actually a photograph taken by Hayley Erickson of my dog on the beach in Powell River, BC.
[ii] “Why Men Hate Their Friend’s Girlfriends” George P.H Hall of the Black Dragon Jun 4/2012
[iv] “Why Men Hate Their Friend’s Girlfriends” George P.H Hall of the Black Dragon Jun 4/2012
[v] “Why Men Hate Their Friend’s Girlfriends” George P.H Hall of the Black Dragon Jun 4/2012
[vi] Hypotenuse = in geometry the longest side of the triangle, meaning one side of a love triangle in this particular example.
[vii] Cassandra Truth = the title comes from the mythical seer Cassandra, whose prophecies were always accurate but never believed due to a curse from the god Apollo.
[viii] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php
[x] “Friends, A Reflection of you!” Kenia Morales Eioba 12/03/2006
[xi] “It’s more important to be kind than clever” Bill Taylor Harvard Business Review August 23rd 2012
[xii] “Dealing with your boyfriends friends” http://www.nzgirl.co.nz/know/4952/
 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)