Something for the ladies # 27

Ladies: If there's ever been anything about men you've wanted to know but were afraid to ask, or wanted a male viewpoint on a certain relationship niggle you're going through, drop an email to us at todger dot talk @ googlemail dot com. We shall pick one out and answer it to the best of our capabilities.

This week's question...

SC writes: I've been with a chap for a couple of years and it's always felt a bit unequal in terms of effort and affection invested. A few months ago, after a particular exchange, I said I couldn't continue as it was too painful to care so much and receive such a poor level of return. After a couple of weeks, however, I swallowed my frustration and proposed trying to work things out.

While we were apart his ex-girlfriend got in touch out of the blue and they went for a drink. I was initially wholly unbothered – I'm not particularly jealous; I've always snared girls for group sex antics with those I've dated and never previously had a problem with exes etc. It transpires that she's keen on restarting things, though, and that they had 'a bit of a kiss'. As we were kind of split up at the time I was prepared to accept and move on, but I later accidentally see the start of a message saying something like 'I love having your cock in my mouth, God I missed you - thank you for my night of violation..'. I understandably want to check what the fuck's going on, so ask if he's considering reviving anything with her.

He unconvincingly dismisses what I saw as fantasy on her part, and replies: 'well, not at the moment, no'. So suddenly I'm bothered. This is surely an outrageous response - you don't leave open the possibility of resurrecting things with your ex if you're supposedly serious about who you're currently with, right? Rather than at least admitting it's objectionable he angrily calls my concern 'pathetically neurotic' and 'quite some feat of paranoia', which is actually the most galling part – I'm calmly rational and just want to know where I stand. If nothing happened he should go out of his way to categorically explain and reassure, however tedious, and if it did he should have the balls to be upfront. Amidst this uncertainty I'm supposed to be totally at ease with them hanging out. I would like to be, I just think it's an unreasonable expectation given the absence of clarity. The couple of friends I've run his line past have looked at me with confused pity for still being around, but I'm interested in an impartial opinion from you guys.

‘Mr Sex’ says: Fucking hell.

Alright, first things first; yes, he’s being a bell-end. Taking a reasonable accusation (“You’re carrying on with your ex”) and throwing it back in someone’s face (“You’re being paranoid”) is the mark of a twat and a Jeremy Kyle guest. Of course you’re going to be bothered about an ex appearing from nowhere, even if it didn’t involve text-filth, and if he can’t see that, he’s being a tosser. Taking into consideration your assertion that you’re giving a lot out and getting next to fuck-all in return, the only possible course of action is to realise things aren’t going to get any better, and get shot of him as soon as humanly possible.

What I want to address, however, is this nipping out and getting other women in for threesomes business, because – unless you’re careful as fuck, know what you’re on with, and have the right partner of similar temperament – it’s a recipe for disaster every time. Christ on a crisp packet, it’s hard enough to trust someone in a standard relationship these days – bringing other people into the mix requires monumental levels of trust, and intense boundary-drawing of Berlin-after-the-war-proportions. Otherwise, you’ll be onto a wrong ‘un from Day One: you might be thinking “Hey, I’m really open and understanding to my partner’s needs”, but the wrong partner will interpret that as “Wahey! My girlfriend doesn’t care who I give a portion to! Skill! Where the slags at?” (By the way, did you ever suggest that it might be a good idea if you could bring another man into the equation, and was he cool with that? Thought not.)

Of course, that’s not saying that an open relationship of the type you’re hankering after is impossible (and I’m hoping that one or two of our readers who dabble in that field might be able to put you straight here) – it just needs more work than the standard type. I suggest you move on, learn, and go after what you want with someone worthy of your openness.

Sam says: In this sort of situation, it’s all about watching what he's doing, and ignoring what he's saying.

1) While you're attempting to patch things up, he is getting together with an ex and clearly getting his end away.

2) He takes, takes, takes takes in the relationship and doesn’t give you what you want back – he’s a blood-sucking relationship vampire

3) He clearly doesn’t have much invested in the relationship, because he’s already warming up his Plan B.

He’s a lost cause. Forget it. Move on. The only question you should be really asking yourself is; why are you still with such a tosser? Why are you putting up with getting so much less than you give?

The problem is athough you don’t want to admit it, you’ve invested a lot in this guy. You’ve spent a couple of years in your life hoping that things will get better. They haven’t, but it takes guts to chuck away that investment. It’s a bit like having put a whole lot of money into your savings account, and then the bank is shafting you like crazy by not letting you take your money out and giving you an absolutely shitty interest rate. The smart thing is to cut your losses, get out and start up with a new bank that will actually treat you properly. The problem is when they suggest that things might get better, there is a little bit of you that wants to believe them, a little bit that hopes you really are going to get your hands on all that hard-earned cash again.

Try this little trick; every time you think about staying with him, pause, have a bit of a stretch (to shift you into neutral) and then think about the five worst, most horrible, awful things that he has done to you. Really remember them in detail, how they felt, looked, sounded, maybe even smelt. Really remember how horrible and shitty he made you feel. Then ask yourself; ‘Should I stay with him?’. Your brain is smart, and moves away from pain – I can pretty much guarantee the answer will be ‘Get the hell out, right now!’. Repeat as necessary every time you waver.

Also, if you are into the whole swinging thing, go out, get on some websites and have some fun with some other couples. As a woman you are in the position of power and get to pick and choose who you fancy most. That way you get to be the centre of attention, have people chase you, and get reminded that you are sexy and attractive and that there are people out there who are willing to give rather than just take. Hopefully it will give you some extra powder in your keg to blow this idiot off.

Readers of TT: Comment!

Sam: Bye Bye to your Bush

I saw this and had to share . . . alas, if only we'd used the bush removal cream eight years earlier . . .

'Mr Sex' and his Miniscule Spendings

Sorry to drag up old posts, but allow me, if you will, to revisit this particular topic. As I pointed out, the American porn industry generates about $13,000,000,000 per year, which is pretty impressive. Even more impressive when you realise that my contribution to that figure is precisely nuppence. Obviously, given my previous profession and my current one, I've managed to blag all manner of grot and toyness, but even before then I was a total mingebag to the sex industry.

Last night, whilst being unable to sleep, I worked out to the best of my abilities how much money I'd laid out over the course of my lifetime in the name of smut. And here it is;

Copy of Men Only, from mate who nicked it out of his Dad's garage, 1982 - £1.50

Phone call made to wankline in the back of Sunday paper, 1 minute, 1984 - £0.80

Porn video catalogue, 1985 - £0.24 (price of stamp and self-addressed envelope)

Vibrator, from Skegness pound shop and hidden in mate's car, 1990 - £1.00

Grand total - £3.55

Three and a half quid. Hm. That's not kept anyone in the business in tit jobs and hard drugs, has it?

What makes it even worse is that when I worked on wank mags, I was the Pogo Patterson of pornography. I learned one thing very quickly; the incredible bartering power of filth. At least once a week, I loaded up on grot, shoved it into a record bag, and would distribute it amongst the populace (who had the money for smut, but not the intestinal fortitude to pay for it) in return for all manner of services. Four copies of Penthouse - eighth of hash. One of Asian Babes, Readers Wives, Real Wives and New Talent - a second-hand jacket I'd had my eye on for ages. Big stack of filth - free drinks in the pub.

My biggest score was`a deal with a mate of a mate who would let me pick out three Playstation game in his shop for a bag full of porn CD-ROMS. Seeing as they were all free covermounted gifts on mags, and were found by me in a bin in the office, I'd say it was a pretty successful transaction. That's the great thing about porn - worth considerably more when you don't have it, worth considerably less when you do. If this recession everyone's banging on about really kicks in, I fully predict that all currency will be rendered obsolete and transactions will be made exclusively through wank material. Newsreaders will announce that the Escort has dropped five points against the Dildo, and OPEC has increased the value of a barrel of oil to an all-time high of 75 Razzles.

But anyway. If someone like me has spent arse all in the name of Porn, that has to mean that someone else has spent considerably more. So fess up, TT'ers - how much have you, er, spunked on porn over the course of your life?

Sam: Bombing on the basics

You know it always amazes me how many people bomb on the flirting basics. I was at a party on the weekend, packed to the brim with friendly Aussies, Kiwis and the odd noisy South African. Like any party, if you want to, it’s pretty easy to talk to anyone there – you have an immediate connection – the host. Wander over, start chatting and it’s the easiest question in the world ‘how do you know X (the host)’. Provides an immediate point of connection and conversation. Of course because you are all in the same boat, that person will always talk to you opening the path to whatever may happen next.

So as the night wore on and I continued to consume a few too many vodka cocktails I got chatting with this guy. Usually at parties I can’t help myself, and somehow the conversation came around to the girls he fancied at the party. And how he hadn’t talked to them, or rather particularly the one dressed as a rather attractive bunny (yes it was a fancy dress party).

Now unfortunately for him, I was too sozzled at this stage to make an effective wingman. I.e. wander over, chat to the person bunny girl was talking to. He gets to wander over with me, and the natural thing is for him or bunny girl to start chatting. Takes away all the fear of the approach. I got distracted by feeling a bit peckish and wandered off to the kitchen for a sausage roll. Cut scene to two hours later. Bunny girl is in the kitchen talking to another man, bunny fancying guy is out in another room chatting to someone else and still hasn’t talked to her. I am still way too hammered to do anything about it.

But good lord, it does truly amaze me how many people simply totally fail to talk to someone they find attractive. Even when there are copious quantities of inhibition reducing alcohol involved. Even when you are at a party where everyone is a friend of a friend, or at the very least a friend of the host and you must be ok, because well, you are a friend of the host! Even when you are a party where everyone is a friendly chatty antipodean and they will always talk to you. Even at an English party, they will always talk to you.

So if you are at a party, at least get off the starting block, please talk to that person you’ve got you’re eye on. Or if I’m there make sure you give me several pints of water and I promise I won’t wander off for a snack in the kitchen. We’ll I’ll try not to . . .

Danonymous Dan: Boffing the Nanny

Ok so some of you appear to want to know how my girlfriend and I met and how, against Atlantic-sized odds, we’ve managed three years. Well here’s the story of our meeting. At the time I was dating a girl in London, but things had been dying for a while, so when the possibility of a month away seeing my brothers, having weddings and going scuba diving came up I was all over it like tits on a top-shelf. My trip ended up in California visiting with my 3^rd brother and as it drew to a close, I was in no rush to head back, I extended my trip by a week. It was during this extended week that I met my current girlfriend…

I’ll just take a moment to explain my mind-set at the time. From a relationship perspective the trip was the perfect way to put a bit of physical distance between myself and my ex.  We were both bored of each other but neither had the inclination to end things. ‘Bad me’ had fully been intending to try and get his end away during the trip mainly for fun, but also make it morally impossible to stay in that relationship – screw ‘good me’ into a moral corner, if you will. Various things – including the knowledge that it was wrong to do so – conspired to thwart my attempts. I mean, if you’re staying in a hostel in the Cook Islands and you don’t manage to get your wick wet then your heart just isn’t in it.

The week extension meant my brother’s time off had ended and he was back at work, so he enlisted the help of the girl who used to Nanny for his children. The actual flow of events during our first meeting is totally jumbled for me, as I fancied her the moment I saw her. I’m not going to be as floptarded as to say ‘love at first sight’, but it was certainly ‘fuck me at first sight’. She’d just come from the gym and was wearing LuLu lemon workout trousers that looked like they’d been sprayed on in a latex factory. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her arse – which made conversation tricky as I had to stand behind her. However, I really don’t believe in love at first sight, but my nephew could have been licking the plug socket at the time and I’d not have noticed. She sounded confident, looked it and was pretty and seemed nice – I was smitten.

I still remember the thrill of talking to her for the fist time, doing my level best not to sound a twat, and pull off an air that suggested I was both sweet, but also Bond-like and able to kill a man with my sheer masculinity. I failed. She loves to tell people I was wearing ‘rafting sandals’ and looked a spod. In my defence, they were a pair of very comfortable and extremely practical Teva walking sandals, that I am sure bond would wear on is days off. At the time she was living with her long-term boyfriend of six years. He was a rather, er, limited individual who had a penchant for road rage and jealousy – one of those ‘fighty’ sorts. Not blowing my own trumpet (if only, eh?) but that wasn’t a hard act to follow and she and I spent two days seeing sites and enjoying each other’s company. I was enjoying myself so much I extend my trip again. There was, of course, still the nagging problem of my existing girlfriend. But that went away pretty sharply, because following the email announcing the second trip extension she phoned me up and said that she had been going to wait till I got back but decided it was best to do it now – then broke up with me.

I felt fucking great. I may have said thank you.

On day three we had we went to a Mexican restaurant in San Diego Old Town and drank till the small hours. We’d discussed the idea of getting a hotel room already, but under the rather transparent guise of it being too far get a taxi if Michelle got too drunk to drive back. Plus, and this is the important bit, Old Town is next to SeaWorld where my family (who had recently arrived from NZ on their way through back to the UK) were going for a day out as a treat for my two nephews. We got kicked out of the restaurant at about 11.30, said good-bye to her friends found ourselves in exactly the situation we had foreseen. Oh look, a Marriot hotel across the way and both of us with overnight bags… how convenient. We should get one room, right? They all have two queen-sized beds in anyway…

So we checked into the hotel room… then fucked each other’s brains out. Starting around midnight and finishing around 4.30 in the morning.  Yes, I boffed the nanny. The next day, it was a ‘fuck-knackered’ pair who did the walk of shame around SeaWorld. My parents tried to pretend they didn’t know of such things, my brother and his ex wife tried a divide and conquer method to get gossip and my nephews…well they just babbled about dolphins. That day was also the day that my girlfriend dumped her ex and moved out…

Lee: Is it wrong if it's dead?

Many years ago, me and another comedian were both bemoaning the fact that we had both been having a lean spell. He had been having a particularly lean spell – he had three women who had knocked him back in three days, all using the B word. We were doing a gig in Leister Square and crying on each others shoulders. One of our rules was that we would never go out with someone that is in a relationship. That is just not happening.

A couple of weeks later that went out the window. For a single guy, that was an entirely new seam that you didn’t realise was out there. There were loads of women in relationships that are dead, and they are just looking for something else, more so with women. I feel that when women are in relationships, they are looking for something to jump ship to. They need a confidence boost to move on. This happened to me a lot of times, and you think, well this is the role I’m playing, I’m having fun anyway. Occasionally you would find they were looking to jump ship to another relationship, or they just use you as a bridge to jump to another relationship. There was one girl, who was in a really bad long term relationship, it was dead. Rock hard dead. We were having some fun, and then she met another guy and I started to keep my distance, I knew she was looking for a lot more than I was prepared to give. I held her at arms length eventually we drifted apart, she met a guy, she had a child and they are all happy happy. I’m not saying I was responsible for that, but I was involved. Because otherwise she would have been stuck in this other dead, abusive relationship for god knows how long. Because people do that, because people are frightened of being alone. So they won’t leave that relationship until something else is on the table. It gives them the confidence to believe that there is someone else out there.

Is it right or wrong? Well I remember when I was having conversation in a pub when and we were talking about what you would do if you came home and your bird was shagging some other bloke. My mates were saying they would beat him up, do this, do that and it got around to me and I just said ‘I’d just walk away’. All my mates piped up saying ‘but there’s some bloke shagging your girl’. I just said, well it’s over. What’s it going to do? And for him, he didn’t wake up some day and think, ‘I’m going to shag Lee’s Girlfriend’. He’s just met her. Chatted her up, she’s responded. It’s nothing to do with him. It’s all to do with her. What I am going to gain from picking a fight? I should just walk away. I’ve stayed the same since that. When I’ve been the outsider, I haven’t set out to ruin a guys life, it’s already over. If anything its ended it quicker for him than he would have ended it himself. The quicker it’s over, the quicker you move on and maybe find something better.

I don’t feel bad about any of that, because I’ve never set out to hurt anybody. And if someone has shown attraction to me, whether they are in a relationship or not, is irrelevant. We are now attracted to each other and that’s it. Likewise, I wouldn’t cry if it happened to me. If they stray, then the relationship is dead.

You can see Lee Saturday night at the Fym Fyg Bar.

'Mr Sex': An urgent question for Americans, Jewish males, Masai Tribesmen, etc

OK, this has been bugging me for ages, and I could do with an answer so I can sleep at night; I'm guessing that a sizable proportion of our male readership are circumcised, yes? And we've already discussed that there's a few advantages to that - you don't have nob-cheese issues, and you don't have something that can easily get caught in a zip. Well done. Good for you.

But here's the thing; the one advantage us polo-neck sporters have over your lot is that our danglers come ready-lubricated with our own in-built sleeve, meaning that we can pretty much joff off whenever we like with no need for any paraphernalia (apart from something to catch it in, of course). And from pretty much any American TV show that touches upon male masturbation, I've divulged that hand cream is the lubricant of choice.

So here's what I need to know: how the fuck do you get hold of it? I mean, it's bad enough when you're at the till in Tescos, and your selection of Pot Noodles, microwave meals for one and low-grade pizzas are practically screaming out your singleness, but having a tube of Nivea or whatever on the conveyor belt...fucking hell. From where I'm sitting, you might as well rearrange every tin in your trolley and make them spell out the words 'HEY! I'M GOING TO HAVE A WANK IN A BIT, EVERYONE!'.

So what do you do, my no-skin brethen? Do you tell the girl behind the till that you model jewellery for QVC, or that your mother's laid up again with Psoriasis? Do you close your eyes and wish yourself a thousand miles away? Do you brazen it out like a good'un? Or do you use something else?

Come, chaps: share.