Boats are for Bonking

Any horny young swab would do well to buy or otherwise get his hands on a boat.

This boat must be large and comfortable enough for at least an overnight stay, and preferably good for up to five nights. Thirty feet of length is a practical minimum. If you're up for it, a sailing yacht is best for a reason I'll explain shortly. However, a motor yacht will work equally well, and provide fewer hassles. (Which any boater will recognize as an obvious falsehood, because boats are constitutionally incompatible with perfectly operating equipment. There's always something that doesn't work, for oftentimes unfathomable reasons.)

Equip your water-craft with these essentials:

+ high thread-count bedding, layers thereof: comfort is everything.
                     
+ enticing-smelling candles, potpourri, quality sprays: boats can stink.

+ pristine towels: luxury will speak for you.

+ champagne: natch.

+ tasty finger foods: smoked salmon, cream cheese, good crackers etc.

+ prepare at least one substantial hot meal per day: living on water = appetite.

+ wide selection of music: and don't forget something baroque :-)

+ extra pullovers, large shirts, thick socks: so you can keep your friend warm.

 By now you've probably figured out that I'm creating a water-borne girl-trap. Trap isn't fair, because the idea isn't to trick your wife or girlfriend onto the boat; the point is to show them a luxury fun-time and - most importantly -  get them away from the world.

Experience taught me that when a woman is away from her friends and family, she feels immune from the pressures of expectation. No-one will judge her. Consequently, she can be herself, let go, relax. What happens on the boat...only the fish and the waves know about.

And the answer to the question of why sail over steam: the skill of sailing is an excellent way to demonstrate your mastery of nature and machine. Plus the windy silence of a boat under canvas is a sound like no other.

Men, capitalize. The headache of boat ownership is well worth it.




Bottoms Up, Captain Cool.

Break-Up City, Population: A Lot.

What proportion of break-ups are amicable, do you think? One-half? A quarter? Ten percent? Five percent? Five total?

My guess is fewer than one in twenty bust-ups are mutually agreeable to the point where the two people involved are happy with the decision after two weeks. I base this on my best analysis of the asymmetry of most relationships, which in normal language means that one person is always more into it than the other. That's the point of stress in all our dealings on this quasi-romantic level - inequality of expectation.

There is no way around this notion that most relationships are pretty much doomed from the beginning. If you're a serial monogamist, you're living in a neighbourhood full of cul-de-sacs and regular, non-French dead-ends. It's the way the town-planner - the devil himself - designed it. If you want a continual stream of new lovers in your life, the price you pay is the angst and dislocation of perpetually reaching the end of the road, sometimes pretty soon after taking the turn.

Sure, some roads don't reveal themselves as going nowhere until quite some time later. That means when you do come to the "Wrong Way: Turn Around" sign, the break-up will be even more tearful, the recriminations way more cutting, and the hurt much longer lasting.

And I don't buy the whole schtick about women being more affected by a busted relationship than men. There are cold, callous women just as there are flippant, uncaring men, for whom a break-up is just another speed bump. Men and women process and reflect the consequences of the end of an affair (in the widest sense) differently. From that stems the different ways we communicate our emotions to the world. Even though men will use bravado through the loss, their dislocation is no less painful. Endless talking and re-hashing isn't our style.

There is a way out of this neo-modern hook-up and dump city. But for me to tell you would be presumptuous in the extreme.



Bottoms Up, Turn and Burners.

Sex After Marriage

One big - BIG! - advantage of marriage is the prospect of regular uninhibited sex with someone you know and adore. It's gotta be high on the list of reasons to get and stay hitched, right?

Well, I guess that's true of some couples, but I have a nagging suspicion that the tide of everyday trivia creeps up on lots of married folks. That initial joyous, lusty bonking gradually gets pushed out of the car and the laundry, back to the bedroom and eventually into the clothes hamper. How depressing. It must take a concerted effort to a) recognize the diminished state of such a sex life, and b) turn it around.

Part of the beauty of being committed to someone - sexually, and every other way - is the trust. I often wonder just how much married folks trust their partner with every innermost thought, especially their sexy fantasies and every other kind of erotic mind curiosity. No doubt there's editing of the stuff you think might turn him or her off, but that hopefully gives way to full and ardent disclosure. Again, I'm pretty certain that doesn't happen.

Wouldn't it be great if the marriage vows included an agreement to thoroughly explore each others' sexuality? It would be stated right up front, in the same breathe as honoring, cherishing and til death us do part, and so become part of the public announcement of the union. If someone does this at their wedding, I'd love to know the reaction.

I'm serious. I think a permanent part of marriage should be the conscious working towards the edges of you and your spouse's sex landscape, like Captain Cook sailing around the world to discover Australia. He didn't know exactly what was there, but had an inkling...and it wasn't like anything he'd seen before. Just as couples have date night and finance night and family night, they should (IMO) have a sex exploration night.

Think of it as drawing a deep map of your psyche you can use forever more for your pleasure.

We're all different, and there's no way to be taught any of this; we just have to go experience it. My point is that by bringing thoughts, likes, dislikes, desires and fears out into the light, you'll gain valuable understanding of yourself and the person in this world closest to you.

That's gotta be worth a shot.



 

Bottoms Up, Carnal Explorers.

Pinball Wizard

We spend time thinking about the first date and we spend time imagining a relationship, so let's begin to fill the gap between those two points.

First dates receive attention for the obvious reason: it's officially the start of something, even if nobody knows what. They are shiny and exciting, like taking a new iPhone out of the box, turning it over in our hands, feeling its heft and texture. 

Second, third and fourth dates do not have that same sense of magic. A person can only be new once. However, the greatest satisfaction often comes with figuring out the features of that iPhone; ditto the qualities of the new person. (Calling them "features" takes the person-as-device idea too far, don't you think?)

Let's also consider that someone's first date might have come on a bad day for them. Or they might have been at the top of their game. Either way, it's an information point that only subsequent dates can put in perspective. If that person made an impression worthy of a second and third date, at least figure on them being different - better or worse - than the first time. No-one is ever exactly the same day after day.

Whenever I think of myself going on a date, I try to figure out how I will come across to her. I know my behaviour extremes, how good my company can be on my best day, and how bad my company can be on my worst. We all pinball within a mood and response range. The idea of my dating approach is to figure out if her mood and response range fits mine. It's that lock and key thing again.


I think this is the value of those first handful of times spent together. We all more become the person we really are, which then places that first date more accurately into the big picture. That's why a variety of venues, times and type of date is important. You're attempting to provoke a reaction in your prospective beau, creating a set of data points. Wow, that sounds mercenary when written like that. Still, it's true.
 
No-one said dating was for the timid.



Bottoms Up, Behavioural Scientists.

Under the Doormat

Dating and being with someone should be as natural as breathing, shouldn't it.

Shouldn't it?

So if it's not that simple, why not, and why do we spend so much time working at it?

All successful relationships have one factor in common, which is a mutual fit of expectation and willingness.

Willingness is the lock into which we insert our expectation.

Expectation is the key we hope fits his or her willingness.

We all have a lock, and we all have a key. We're not only looking for the person with the right lock for our key, we're also hoping that person has the right key for our lock.

If you think the odds are bad for finding that person, be not discouraged. We all have the power to change our own lock and our own key. You decide whether you have one of those long, complicated, difficult to replicate keys, or whether you prefer a more simple style. Likewise your lock.

However, as with any endeavour in this universe, there is an element of luck - aka randomness - involved. You might have the most straightforward lock, and a standard (but secure) key, and still not find the one.

Not today, anyway.




Bottoms Up, Locksmiths.

Getting Lucky

Flatteringly, I've been linked (and Cut and Pasted) by Lucky Girl, for which I must invite myself to New York and buy her dinner.

God, wouldn't that be a fine thing, going to New York? Yeah, and not likely for the next little while (even if Lucky Girl actually allowed me to squire her around for a couple of hours.)

Which nicely leads me to the thought of dating in the Great Recession. Unemployed people date too, don't they? Underemployed people date as well, I assume, but with a much reduced budget. Noticeable in my cruising the bars is that while there are fewer people out dining, folks are still out drinking. But I'm in Florida, which no longer has any work apart from changing adult diapers.

Maybe dating with fewer dollars in your sky-rocket is easier. If there's less in the way of fluff between meeting and bonking, the decision is made earlier, and on more realistic grounds. I have gone overboard too early on a date. Big dinners, bottles of champagne, elaborate plans are NOT appropriate for the first TEN dates at least. That lesson cost me MUCHO money, I can tell you. And while flashing the cash can push a chick over the edge if she's wavering, it won't undress her if she can't imagine herself with you.

It's so often about how she thinks about you, whether she imagines herself in whatever romanto/domestic sitch she dreams about.


Bottoms Up, Job Seekers!




Pic of fast daters from here [link]

The Secret

Guessing now, but I imagine that men spend a minimum of ten percent of their lives thinking about women. That's 65,700 hours in the average male lifetime completely dedicated to contemplating the be-skirted sex.

And the marital status of the dude doesn't matter. Single guys spend their allocation wondering how to snare one; guys in relationships wonder if she is the one; married fellas have the complicated circumstance of having one bird in the hand and a nest and previous birds in the bush. That's not something about which I can authoritatively speak.

I'm writing a review of a book about a famous American man. Revealing his name would spoil the fun, but the following excerpt, which is a quote from a friend of his, caught my eye. Some truths about women are universal, even if we - all we men - think we know stuff others don't.

Here's how to woo a woman.

"(He) treated romance as a job - not as a conquest, but as a process. The reason that every woman who ever met him fell in love with him - and I've never met one who didn't - is because he put so much effort into it. Any woman who came to (his place) would be wined and dined. (He) would prepare elaborate meals with oysters, chocolate, strawberries, champagne - drugs, if that's what they were into. He had a magical ability to make a woman feel as though she was the only one who ever existed - he actually used to laugh at other men because he knew how good he was."

Aye. Make a woman the centre of your universe...at least while you're together. That's The Secret.



Bottoms Up, Lotharios!


Pic of cheer-leader from a now-defunct blog, so it's pointless providing attribution. I bet she likes an oyster and some champagne.

I Can Read Your Mind, Darling.

No I can't, sweetheart, so it would be easier overall if you just told me what you were thinking.

We have such difficulty doing this though, don't we? And when we think we know what we want, something in our head flips and there's another set of stuff we want. Dammit, this affects me at least as badly as everyone else, so I doubt it's a sex-based thing. My suspicion is that desire-drift grows from mental rootlessness - in other words, lack of a spiritual anchor.

There are two problems here:

1. Not knowing what we want.

2. Inability to communicate today's (or any) specific want.

The latter is a limitation of language. At the best granularity, I doubt we ever move beyond 80% efficiency when trying to get our thinking across to another. If the former - the actual meat of what we're looking for from the other person - changes direction like a school of fish, we transmit almost nothing.

Consistency is the answer. I should decide upon what I want, and tell the people who need to know what those things are. After a while, the message will get through.

Or I could find a woman who can read my mind




Bottoms Up, Communicators!

Pic from here.[link]

Friends With Benefits

Her: I thought you wanted to be my boyfriend?

Wombat: I do.

Her: When?

Wombat: Not right now.


Expectations kill relationships. They're the rocks that wreck super-tankers and sailing boats alike. No relationship is safe from them, and no chart shows them all. GPS works perfectly most of the time, but without knowledge of where not to go, metre-accuracy will only tell you precisely where you ran aground.

The ocean called "Friends With Benefits" is one with an unusually jagged coastline. As enticing as the concept appears, I fear most of us compartmentalize the 'friends' and the 'benefits' as if they can be. Like a watercolour Venn Diagram in the rain, those two can only bleed into each other with potentially messy results. Art is rarely the outcome.

Doc30ty highlights my point in her post. [link] Her male FWB half clearly didn't include exclusivity in his mental image of FWB. His thinking was more Benefits with a Friend, dare I say an expectation at variance with that of our beloved Doc30ty.

There are three ways to find a FWB relationship:

Friends first -> add benefits.

Simultaneous creation of friendship including benefits.

Beneficiaries first -> add friendship.

Is one way better than another? That's not for me to decide. What experience tells me is that my expectations will differ from my lady friend's, and the problem with that is that we both think there won't be any complications arising therefrom.

This is the temptation of the FWB deal: the simplicity of it appeals mightily, but it's impossible for any of us to not expect stuff beyond the raw acronym. We set sail in light winds and smooth seas but wake that night to the sound of crashing waves on gnarly rocks.



Bottoms Up, Landlubbers!



Diagram from here [link]

Edited for tense and incorrect plurals, as well as overuse of 'variance' - the usual thesaurus of Wombat idiocies.