Lonely Hearts

As the weather warms up I am reminded that Spring has sprung and love is in the air. The wedding season is hitting full swing, and romance is everywhere.

Makes me ponder how long it'll be before my Beloved and I are meeting our offspring's prospective partners. Or chasing them off.  (I swear, as soon as he saw we were having a girl, my Beloved considered getting a gun!)

Both kids are still young enough that their thoughts haven't turned to romance just yet. Some of their friends have ventured down that track. But my little girl is still happy playing with dolls and my little boy is still happy with his first love: his mum.

It's adorable really, as the saying goes: a mother is her son's first friend, first kiss, and first love.  And we've all heard that old chestnut about girls marrying their father in a Freudian kind of way (Guilty, as charged).

And while people seem to be getting younger and younger when they start all this dating and more, we are sure (or maybe just hopeful) that ours aren't old enough just yet.

Like a lot of other stuff that's been around for centuries, the youth of today think they've discovered friendship and love, and created the language to go with it, what with all the BFFs, LOLs, LMAOs, and ROFLs (although I must admit to wishing I was still young enough myself to actually physically Roll on the Floor to Laugh, without the worry of whether I could get back up again). But OMG, for example, first appeared in 1917. British admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher first penned the acronym in a letter to the then-UK PM Winston Churchill.  I guess long hand was a bit of a bother with quills and things.

And since Newspaper classifieds charge by the word, people were being inventive back when they first started spruiking themselves in the Singles section of the paper. For those who've never had the need, or the novelty of reading them here's a bit of shorthand for what people want:

SW/M (or F) = Single White Male (or Female)

GSOH = Good Sense of Humour

DDF = Drug & Disease Free

BBW = Big Breasted Woman (well we know who'd be writing that one, don't we, since there's no alternative saying BPM?!)

IPT = Is Partial To

WLTM = Would Like To Meet

AL = Animal Lover

NK = No kids

NSA = No Strings Attached

Even the head of the Holy Catholic Church has had first (ok second) hand experience with the Singles section of the paper... I read recently that Pope Benedict XVI and his brother, 82 year old Father Georg Ratzinger, were surprised to learn that their parents met through an ad their father had placed in local Catholic weekly, Liebfraubote, if you can believe the London Times.

According to the report, Joseph Ratzinger Senior's July 1920 ad read: “Middle-ranking civil servant, single, Catholic, 43, immaculate past, from the country, is looking for a good Catholic, pure girl who can cook well, tackle all household chores, with a talent for sewing and homemaking with a view to marriage as soon as possible. Fortune desirable but not a precondition.”

36 year old Maria Peintner, an illegitimate baker’s daughter and a trained cook, replied. Word is she did not have a fortune, but they married four months later anyway. No mention was made of whether she was a BBW or not.

On a side note: I do wonder what it says that both their offspring chose the celibate life of the clergy...

And dating sites have been around almost since Adam was a baby. I am sure I saw an ancient cave drawing that seemed to suggest 'SW/M WTLM AL, to go Clubbing with'. (Insert groans here.)

So I shouldn't have been surprised when my son said: "You're my ideal woman. If you and I both went on eharmony.com you would be the first match they recommend for me."

My Beloved was flabbergasted that our boy knew what eHarmony was - he obviously hasn't spent as much 'quality time' in front of the television as I have with the kids. (Seriously, between ads for dating services and funeral plans, it's a wonder there's time for any actual programming on TV!)

After the laughter (from me) and the accusations of hurt feelings (from my son) died down I explained that it would be highly unlikely that both of us would be on any dating site at the same time, seeing how I'm already married....to his father!  Besides that, the age difference could prove a problem (for the record, my son says he wouldn't mind that, as long as she was like me. I see trouble with Cougars in our future).

For now all I can do is wait and see if my son does find someone like me to marry. And I can pray that he doesn't. Because I'm not sure she and me would get along.

And if my daughter marries a man like her father, well I'll be wishing her luck and keep the box of bandaids handy.

I'll keep 'em next to the shotgun.

Jx

©2012

Men oh Pause

All of us have heard the startling fact that men think about sex several times a day. Every 52 seconds, if you can believe this report.

We are all well aware that most women do not.

I agree. We’re too damned busy thinking about what to serve for dinner, or whether we paid that bill in time, or where the hell the other sock went.

By the way, according to the same research, a woman uses 20,000 words per day, while a man uses only 7,000.

I’m not surprised by that at all. Considering that the word for fellas is “Sex”, while the woman is busy coming up with excuses to get out of it.

If you ask me, if men had to do the whole menstruation and menopause thing, methinks the odds would be a little different (is it irony that those very words have 'men' in them yet it's the women that suffer?).

I do find it funny in a way, that a young girl looks forward to the whole puberty business with excitement and a certain kind of pride that she is “becoming a woman”. Give her a few months of visits from Aunty Flo and she’ll soon sing a different song.

So why, I wonder, do so many women get so upset when they’re closing in on the other end of things, worrying that their womanhood is somehow diminished? If we believe all the jokes and stereotypes, she’s spent the better part of 40 years cursing ‘the curse’ or trying to get out of her matrimonial duty, and should be happy that it’s almost over.

It’s not that the ladies don’t like the lovin’. Oh no, take a look at all the stories of ‘cougars’ currently on the prowl, looking for love in a younger form than perhaps the one they’ve been cuddling up to for better or for worse. Heaven knows Harlequin/Mills & Boon™ still publish enough of the sexy stuff (about 100 new titles every month at your local newsagent or favourite bookstore- I should know, my Beloved delivers them).

It’s just that women need to be in the right mood.

Whereas the typical man wakes up in it (hello morning glory).

And if you’re Mr & Mrs Average, time and place –not to mention privacy– is paramount for your paramour.

I swear I do not know how the previous generations had so many children. If it isn’t enough doing all the running around that a family requires on a daily (and nightly) basis, how on earth did the parents manage to find themselves alone in the bedroom with enough time and energy for intimacy?! Equally, I wonder how many have not been caught ‘in flagrante delicto’ and had to come up with a cover, or cover up, so that their children are not permanently damaged by the scene (do the words “Mummy and daddy are just having a little chat; we’ll be out soon” sound familiar)?

After a couple of kids, most couples I know have sadly resorted to what’s known as ‘hallway sex’: be it a quick kiss on the cheek or an outright “Screw you” as they cross paths, depending on the stress levels that week.

If they’re lucky, they’ll get lucky only a few times a month. And then sometimes it’s a case of just lie back and think of England, just to keep the other happy for a while.

It’s obviously been on my mind as I edge ever closer to that certain time of life, whether I’ll embrace the end of my monthly visitor, or feel saddened as the visits stop. I can only hope that Aunty Flo won’t take what’s left of my libido with her.

At least I can console my Beloved with the fact that in the time it’s taken for me to compose this post, I have had sex on the brain for a solid 37 minutes (give or take a couple of trips in to check on children).

So by my reckoning, I’ve matched his every-52-seconds no less than 42 times today.

That’s gotta count for something, right girls?!

Jx
©2010