This article contains strong language, sexual references and cheap prawn coleslaw
Have you found yourself single again in the last few days?
This week, the week after August Bank Holiday, is statistically the most common week for couples to split. Summer is over, obligations such as weddings, holidays, festivals have come and gone. The next diary commitments are not until December. Couples no longer need to compromise themselves by skirting around the cracks in their relationship with the use of Pimms and picnics. There's no longer any reason to brush over unhappiness in order to maintain a merry façade during engagements involving family and friends. This is the week the bomb, that may have started its arc at Easter, finally lands. The autumn months offer little other than attempts at repairing laughable bank balances and rainy nights in front of the TV tolerating each other after a fickle few months of fun in the sun. Research by professional analysts shows that this is the week that many re-assess. Issues that have been left unresolved are now grating at an intolerable level. Many couples choose to knock it on the head.
But how many tell the whole truth when having the break-up chat? It is an awful predicament. Being completely honest regarding the short-comings of someone who (at the start) was the light of your life, could trample their confidence, and that's plain mean. But being dishonest about the things that have been frustrating could mean that their next relationship ends for the same reasons, which wouldn't help them. Maybe bespoke critique would be the best compromise. But this is not often practical during the highly emotive final tete-a-tete. As a result people often fall back onto the same old clichés. I asked a few friends how many lies they have told in order to oil the wheels of a break up. For most the main consideration when shrouding the facts was their soon-to-be-ex-partners' ego. Also I asked them the oddities of how the break up happened. As quite often the final straw has nothing to do with the core reasoning, but are the catalyst for the long talk. Their comments reveal that when recalling the reasons for splitting the emotional differences are rarely at the forefront of the memories but the rude and crude details are...
A friend expressed to me how, on the day of finishing with her beau of 2 years, her fatigue turned into a shiver as she looked at her boyfriends' hands one last time then reeled off that old chestnut "It's not you it's me" when what she actually wanted to say was "Never again do I want to be woken up in the middle of the night by your belching after you have swigged the 2 litre bottle of Cola you keep as a bedside drink, then feel your stubby fingers and clammy hands maul my tits and twist my nipples when I have a class of 30 kids to teach 5 hours later." I got the feeling that subconsciously she was also worried about the day, years down the line, that the dentists' bill came through the door.
Another mate (a dedicated foodie) span off "I need some space" when what she actually wanted to express was "You are incapable of a semi-intellectual conversation without screaming about what a fine woman Margaret Thatcher was, and my contempt for you has now made me fixate on your weird fat stuck-out arse that gives you a waddle, it makes me wish that my beaver would heal over so that you'd never be tempted to put your Golden Virginia stained tongue near it again." Her decision was nailed after he went off to the shop to buy what he described as 'quality sausages' and came back with something she described as 'tasteless tubes of pig fat.'
To justify the end of a relationship, and usually for comic affect, both genders alike cite unsuitable genitalia. Some Penises are the size of prawns, others are like The Incredible Hulks forearm. Vaginas can be as baggy and scruffy as a wizards' sleeves or as neat and petit as a mouses ear. How physically compatible things are is simply luck of the draw and how you work around it. A rather base friend of mine thus described sex with her ex... 'I couldn't feel his cock in my clunge... nowt... I wanted a decent boning but sex with him was just two bodies slapping together, rubbish.' Another mate described sex with his girlfriend as 'throwing a cucumber down Oxford Street.' But from the research undertaken in order to complete this article it appears that no matter how you're fixed in that region there are aspects we can steer...namely ... hygiene...
A friend of mine refers to one of her exes as 'The Stinky Bishop' due to his refusal to give his bell-end a regular scrub. All other aspects of the relationships were fine. She tried regularly preparing sexy bubble baths in order to clean him up and would then over-express how lovely he smelt and tasted and how much it turned her on. Alas over the long term his pride over what he described as his 'man smell' eventually breached the boundaries of acceptability, leaving him...erm... 'Kraft Cheese' single (sorry!).
I had another mate who tried every possible avenue of approach regarding his girlfriends' rather infantile issues with cleanliness. In the end he gave up as he felt he could not express himself any more blatantly, short of saying "look, you've got a dirty arse". She would gladly squeeze out a gorillas' finger before bed time and not pay much attention to making herself presentable afterwards. For good reason he found this nauseating. In an attempt to be supportive I met him for a beer the day after the break up, I knew he'd be upset as they had seemed set on each other. I knew nothing of 'Brown-gate'. Man to man I asked him what had gone wrong. He said "I love her, she's clever, lovely, gorgeous, supportive, but she's dirty, and not in a good way... doggy-style was a winner for us but I ended up recoiling, I couldn't stand the Shitty-Shag-Waft... I'd tried to tell her, in the end I'd had enough." Shitty-Shag-Waft! I had to stifle laughter as tears welled in his eyes. He insisted on imparting more detail. Following his description I've never been able to face another chocolate donut.
Eating and toilet habits were mentioned repeatedly and with a great scope when it came to the reasons for pyramids of love collapsing under the weight of annoyance. They are the two things that couples definitely need to accept in each others daily operation, as it's a necessity of life. But it appears that due to lack of consideration and/or communication this is often the ultimate impasse. Anything from the clashing of cutlery on teeth during every meal, farting in bed, to loud sighing while chewing, skidding the pan, to refusal to eat anything that contains fresh vegetables. The most churning case I heard was a mixture of toilet and eating habits, and it gave a long-suffering woman everything she needed to banish her bloke forever in one neat unarguable package. During their weekly shop he would buy seven pots of cheap prawn coleslaw. Every morning, as she pressed the snooze button and slowly woke from her sleep he would be sitting in the loo having his morning bowel clearance, while simultaneously eating the coleslaw for his breakfast! He would then leave the empty carton and fork on the edge of the bath, by Friday there would be five stacked up as she showered, the smell of Dove Soap, toothpaste and shit merging into one.
The dirty bastard was 'dumped' on the 2nd of September