Breaking up is hard to do - female

Women, in contrast to their male counterparts, tend to favour the face to face method of applying the chop. Before you gals start taking the high moral ground, let's hypothesise why you prefer to do the "decent thing". I put it to you that you like to see the look of consternation in the man's eyes as you trot out a line such as one of the following (translation in brackets):

• "It's not you, it's me" (of course it's you. Sod off.)
  
• "I need some time to find myself" (Sod off.)
• "I need to be by myself right now" (Sod off.)
• "My life if too complicated right now" (I have a few other better prospects. Sod off.)
• "I'm concentrating on my career" (I'd rather do my boring job for eternity than listen to you drone on for another second. Sod off.)

I don't think there's a man alive who hasn't heard some variant of one of the above in some language at some time in his life!

Breaking up is hard to do - male

The preferred methods for a man to end a relationship are, by and large, cowardly in the extreme! The majority of men will try to ignore the woman in the hope that she gets the hint and goes away/breaks up with him. Unfortunately and ironically, this is often interpreted by a woman as him playing hard to get, or worse again, acting like a bad boy. This counterproductively increases his attractiveness in her eyes! On the plus side, if you manage to manoeuvre her into giving you the chop, you become the dumpee and the object of sympathy amongst your circle of friends. This of course can be exploited for your benefit and is much better than been known as the callous bastard who broke someone's heart!

If ignoring doesn't work, the next cowardly method involves some sort of non-interactive communication like a text message, email or letter (for the quaint!). This can be particularly reprehensible if it is a long term relationship that is being terminated, but is commonly used by the yellow-bellied for ending short term dalliances.

Slightly braver is ending it by calling the woman. This will obviously involve interacting with the soon to be ex-, but if you're lucky, she won't be available and you can leave a voicemail! Particularly sneaky individuals dial the voicemail directly and leave a message. Even if you unfortunately end up talking with her, you can exit stage left quickly by hanging up!

For the stout of heart and noble of spirit, the face to face method of splitting up is the preferred method. This is despite the fact that they know that they could be in for several hours of agony. Themes endured during this period include "please tell me what I can do? I can change, I know I can", "is it because I'm.....(any one of a 1000 things)" and "but I've hired the band and the caterers"!

Brewer's droop

In addition to facilitating romance at the beginning of the chase, (as described in the post on Dutch courage), alcohol also has a role in the actual consummation at the end! As you can see from the graph above, it's a double edged sword here also. A certain amount of alcohol can lubricate the wheels of lurve by reducing inhibitions. This encourages a certain amount of experimentation that otherwise might not occur. This will generally lead to a more pleasurable experience for all involved, although it may backfire, depending on what is attempted!

However, should a man consume too much alcohol, it will quickly become detrimental to the cause. Stamina, response and alertness are all adversely affected until the dreaded occurs. Yes, every bloke's worst nightmare - the little guy stops obeying instructions! This is known colloquially as "brewer's droop". Believe it or not, this is not necessarily always a bad thing for a man. I know of a case where a guy couldn't perform for this reason and refrained from getting jiggy. The next day, the woman thought he was a gentleman for not taking advantage of her as she too was intoxicated. This earned him many brownie points that he could exploit later!

For obvious physiological reasons, I'm not sure if there is a female equivalent of brewer's droop. Overdrinking will certainly reduce female performance to the "bag of spuds" level at best, while at worst causing them to wake up with no memory of how they got into bed or who they ended up in bed with is. It is not a good idea for anyone to drink this much.

Act your age, not your shoe size

There’s no denying it – women are more mature than men nowadays. I blame this on a combination of things. From a sociological point of view, men are no longer thrown out of the nest at the first available opportunity and sent out and hunt/forage for food like they were in the days of yore. Nothing makes you grow up faster than having to bring home the bacon or else the family/tribe dies.

Humankind in the western world has evolved to the point that food is readily available and parents mollycoddle their kids into their 40s and beyond! This tends to be particularly true with mothers (especially Irish mothers!) and their sons. Children growing up in a world of sky high property prices tend to live at home with the folks longer than previous generations. Thus, they are less capable of fending for themselves and the parent-child dynamic doesn’t evolve as it should. Fending for oneself is an important skill for a young man to learn as he’s expected to be able to look after his own household within a short period of time. However, often nowadays he’s lucky if he can tie his own shoelaces! A lot of twenty and thirty something males have grown up in their rooms playing video games and continue to do so in adulthood. The proliferation of lads’ magazines tells us it’s alright to be immature, drink beer with abandon and leer at scantily clad women. All these factors contribute to the emasculation of the modern young male and the “Peter Pan” effect, whereby young men don’t really grow up as much as they should.

Women on the other hand have gone in the opposite direction to an extent. Once almost universally considered subservient or inferior to men, many women saw their considerate talents go to waste. The woman’s place was in the home, after all. Female pioneers such as Marie Curie and hell, even Maggie Thatcher, had to battle severe discrimination to bring their formidable talents to the world. With the welcome advent of female suffrage and equality, more and more women started contributing to society in many different ways. This increased level of female responsibility and participation in society has caused the relative maturity levels of women to rise. They overtook their male counterparts some time ago and if this worrying trend continues, we men folk will soon be reduced to blubbering idiots (too late, I hear some of you say!)! To that end, I’ve decided to do my bit and give up video games….soon!

Guys who can figure women out

I know what you guys are thinking - where the hell did he get that 2.5% from? Who are these gurus and how can I emulate them? Just bear with me for a moment. They say 10% of the population is gay and in the case of gay men, we can assume that half (5% of men) of those are the feminine type and the other half are the butch type (what is the male equivalent of a butch lesbian anyway?!). Out of the feminine 5% of men, I postulate that half of those can figure out just what the hell is going on inside a woman's head! The ironic thing for the ladies is that the only men that have a hope of understanding them are the very ones who will never fancy them. Hence the maxim "the best ones are always gay". It's ironic for men too, because to have a hope of understanding women, you have to err, share their interests! It's a cruel, cruel world!

For the 90% of heterosexual men, unfortunately the bewilderment, perplexity, puzzlement and confusion must go on. We have to try and figure out just what is going on inside that gal's head at that point in time. While men are pretty much constant in their outlook, women are time variant depending on hormonal activity! As Reilly's first law on women states:

"You can't apply logic to illogical beings"

or

"You can't apply rational to irrational beings"

Even Einstein himself was not immune to this phenomenon. He might have been at home developing complex equations that accurately model/explain things like Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and the universe, but he was still clueless when it came to the chicks! He made the mistake of marrying an intelligent woman for his first wife and his first cousin for his second. Q.E.D.!!

Women who can figure men out

It's difficult to put a number on this, but I estimate it to be quite high. I could be biased because I am a man after all, but observations in the field have led me to arrive at this breakdown. Only the most naive of women or those with little interaction with the male of the species don't really understand what makes a guy tick. Some may know it deep down but refuse to believe it. It still amazes me when a woman says she can't figure guys out! I'll let you who don't already know into a little secret - men don't always think with their brain! It really is that simple.

Men are also hormonally governed, but in a completely different way. We are almost compelled to go forth and multiply on a regular basis (i.e. as often as possible). Our behaviour reflects this, so we are almost always on the lookout for possible action with a new mate or some sort of action with an existing mate (or both in some cases!). This is the basis for our actions at any stage in a relationship, be it at the very beginning or when the romance is in full flow.

When a woman has her "Eureka!" moment and realises how men work, the world is her oyster. Often, beautiful people are the first to twig it as they learn from an early age what a guy will do (anything!) to try and win her favour. Guys will always want action, but it usually the woman who stipulates if, when, where and how it will happen. This power over a man's most basic instinct is why I say that women rule the world, men only think they do.

After all, they don't say that "behind any great man is a great woman" for nothing!

How a nice guy can increase his chances

Following on from the posts on nice guys and pub/club dating, what's a nice guy to do if he wants some success out chasing women in the more traditional environments? Nice guys like going out to pubs, night clubs, bowling alleys etc too. It's just that occasionally they would like a bit of success. Like the bad golfer who hits only one good shot a round, it would be enough encouragement to persevere!

As I see it, there are 4 options:

1. Use Dutch courage to get into "the zone".
2. Develop gonads of steel. Having a neck like Lester Piggott's nether regions is definitely an advantage. If you drink, you can use option 1 to develop the requisite brass neck. If sober, this is not easy to achieve without extensive hypnosis/NLP/therapy!
3. Dress effectively to attract attention from the fairer sex.
4. Use a 'wing commander'.

Obviously, combining all four options should maximise the chances of success. The graph above shows the effect of each individual option on the nice guy’s chances of success. Left to himself, the sober nice guy has little chance. However, getting into the zone or developing the brass neck increases his chances significantly.

However, for the non-drinking (or drinking) man with an inherent fear or rejection, the wing commander is his best hope. If you can't approach women yourself, then it is vital that you have a friend/colleague/ acquaintance that can. This guy is known as the ‘wing commander’ and as the name suggests, he is the brave, selfless warrior that leads the squadron of ‘wing men’ into ‘battle’. You just point him towards a group of women and let him do his thing. If you don’t have a friend that fits the bill, hell, I'd even consider paying a guy to do it! It is only fair that the wing commander gets first choice from the target group, but as a wing man you can swoop in on his shoulder once he has done the hard work of breaking the ice. Any member of the group apart from the target of the wing commander is fair game. This allows a wingman to blossom where normally he would wilt. Of course, he can still crash and burn, but at least he got off the tarmac! The day my wing commander met his dream woman was a dark day indeed....for me! Some guys are just so selfish!!!

This group activity also has the pleasant side effect of strengthening the bond of friendship in the squadron. Such missions provides many sessions of happy reminiscing for years to come, often when some members have long since parked their jets on the runway, to stretch the metaphor to breaking point!