Dear Amritsar,
UUUUUGH! LONELY! NEED MATE! NEED MATE BAD! NEED MATE NOW!
RAAAAAWWWWWR! SICK OF DATING SCENE! SO MUCH PHONINESS! SO DESPERATE! SO MUCH SMOKING – FIRE! FIRE! UUUUUGH! SORRY ABOUT NOSE! FIRE BAD!
AWWWWWWRRRR! MASTER MAKE MATE! BEAUTIFUL STITCHING! WHITE STREAK IN HAIR! OUR SCREAMING BEAUTIFUL MUSIC! MATE PERFECT! PERFECT MATE!
WHY MATE HATE ME?
GGRRRRRARRGH! GAVE MATE DEAD LILIES! MATE THREW LILIES AT FACE! WROTE POEM! REALLY!
ROSES RED!
VIOLETS BLUE!
WE BOTH DEAD!
AAAAWWWWRRROOOOOOH!
MATE PUNCHED FACE! HARD! OOOOOWWWW!
WHAT DOING WRONG?
FM
Hey, Babe,
You know that comparing men to Neanderthals is just a useful – not to mention highly entertaining – metaphor, right? I know that you’ve been stitched together from the parts of many different men and have a somewhat diseased brain, but that doesn’t mean you have to embody the least evolved, most inarticulate, cave man-y aspects of all of them, right? Right.
Flowers and poetry are nice enough, and would certainly work on women who sit in restaurants and think to themselves I’ll have what she’s having…really. Now! What she’s having – I only have 35 minutes left on my lunch break, and this joke isn’t getting any younger! (ask your mother if you’re too young to understand the reference – Meg Ryan is an underappreciated comedy genius!), but different women have different tastes in romance – we’re not all made from the same mold, you know! – well, except for Angelina Jolie’s 27 clones, but even then it could be argued that how they are brought up – okay, that’s a disgusting image! – how they are…reared would likely give them all different approaches to romance, although it’s hard to see how any of them would like having poems written for them, unless they could tattoo the words onto their wooers’ bodies with a rusty sewing needle, in which case – gaack!
Some sentences are so needy that they just refuse to let you go. Thomas Pynchon has a lot to answer for!
Flowers and poetry are an age-old (if you consider the time from the release of 1937’s Gold Diggers of Ghana to today an age) romantic formula, but some women have moved on to solid food. Perhaps your mate is into naked stock car racing (some women find men driving around in circles in cars from which the roofs have been removed hot). Perhaps she finds long walks past tar sands tail ponds romantic – I understand the moon reflecting off the liquid remains of the oil extraction process can be quite lovely, and, since the two of you are already dead, the health issues are nonexistent! Perhaps she’s into Taylor Kitsch. Stranger things have happened (like corpses being reanimated, not that I’m judging…).
The point is that when you’ve tried traditional methods of romance – and had them thrown back in your face with gale force – you have to be either sensitive or creative. Listen to what your mate has to say – there may be clues to ways you can woo her. For instance, if she drops her love of spiders into a conversation, plan a trip to The Creepy Crawly Museum in Memphis, or, if she talks about how itchy the stitching that keeps her right arm attached to her body is, buy her a ball of designer string. They’re a little expensive, sure, but they are finely crafted and, in any case, the designer label always impresses a girl (except, perhaps, for Angelina Jolie’s 27 clones, but they were decanted jaded!). Just, uhh, don’t bother wrapping it.
If your mate doesn’t drop any hints into the conversation, you’ll just have to get creative. This does not mean building a scale model Taj Mahal out of matchsticks and duct tape, nor does it mean naming five of the eight cylinders of your car after her. Unless, of course, such courses of action work, in which case go for it. Romantic creativity can be inscrutable that way.
Dear Amritsar,
AAAAARRRRGH! NO UNDERSTAND! TOO COMPLICATED! MAKE SIMPLE! MAKE SIMPLE!
FM
Hey, Babe,
Sorry about that. I forgot the number seven rule of advice columning: know your audience.
WOMEN NOT ALL SAME! TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT!
I hope that helps.
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: To the woman who went to AshleighPaddingtonBare.com to get her seven year-old daughter a Christmas present: really? You really did that? I understand why your husband started divorce proceedings against you. In fact, if it was legal, I would suggest that he divorce you twice!