Gender-ally Speaking – A Pocket Guide for the Sexes.

Girls and boys – they make-up approximately 100% of our Earth’s human population, despite being native to Venus and Mars respectively.  Sadly, the ‘boy-girl relationship’, not to be mistaken with the ‘lady-boy relationship’ native to parts of Thailand, has experienced its fair share of obstacles.  From miscommunication to general misunderstandings, what’s clear is that between the two groups, much like a bootleg DVD with subtitles (also native to parts of Thailand), too much is getting lost in translation.  So for any of you that have ever been picked-up, put-down, pushed aside or pulled-inline by the opposite sex, but for whatever reason, you didn’t know why, this guide my friends, is your new bible.

First off, a quick history lesson on relationships.  They were invented in the year 43 B.C. by Noah son of Lamech who boarded animal pairings onto a ship for 40 days and 40 nights of sea-based ‘relations’.  Thus trade-marking and giving us the term ‘Relation-Ship’.  Then in the year 1486, RSVP.com bought the rights to the ‘relationship’ name and got a 510 year jump on the internet.  Their idea was to create an effective way of helping people around the world to get over the doom and gloom of the Dark Ages by pairing like-minded individuals of the opposite sex together for the sake of enjoyment on land.  Several decades later, San Francisco, Sydney and most of Germany purchased a stake in the franchise and tweaked the ‘opposite sex’ feature significantly to cope with the mass post-World War 2 funk everyone was in.  In the years that followed, the ‘relationship’ brand was opened-up to the public so that citizens by birth-right could all become minor shareholders and have greater access and freedom to operate the product to fit their own needs, a process that continues to the present day, everywhere except in the Middle East.  Sadly, since then we’ve witnessed a growing dissatisfaction with the ‘relationship’.  With no apparent operation manual, decreasing understanding of its operation and maintenance abounds.

Now that the history’s out of the way, here’s the reality.  The general consensus is that neither guys nor girls have any idea what’s going on.  Girls talk to other girls, guys talk to other guys, who are all as clueless as one another.  So like children at a special school trying to cheat off each other, they end-up getting the wrong answer no matter what.  So here’s a list of general info that may help navigate you through the haze of foundation, blush and Lynx deodorant that we now call ‘the boy-girl relationship’.

First point – know the status of the relationship.  This doesn’t mean consulting Facebook, because in five minutes I can find 13 guys who have Jennifer Hawkins listed as their wife and the ‘Terminator’ listed as their brother so you know it’s essentially become Wikipedia’s retarded cousin.  What I mean is, know when you’re being hit-up by a buddy or just being hit-up for some booty.  Now girls, this is where I need you to pay a lot of attention, because this is about to rock your world – you do not have as many male friends as you think you do.  100% of the time, if a guy’s single and is friends with you, he’s either gay or interested in you.  And unless you’ve seen him in a compromising position with one of his football teammates, you can count on the latter.  Your first tip-off should be this – if a guy feels the need to reaffirm his ‘B.F.F.’ status with you, you can be sure he just wants to check on the progress of his ‘B.E.D.’ status with you.  Any ‘B.F.F.’ that looks for a pat on the back is asking for a slap in the face.

If you’re having trouble identifying this guy, let me help you out.  He’s usually the guy that even if he’s in the middle of rural bushland with minimal cellular reception, will somehow find a way to be one of the first to comment or click ‘like’ on your newly posted photo or status.  And you’re probably thinking to yourself right now “No, we’ve been friends for years, that’s way off.”  Well let me tell you this, guys will hang around longer than a dedicated partner of a coma patient waiting for a sign of life.  Odds are he is your friend... for now.  But in reality, he’s just waiting around long enough for you to exhaust every option and make as many bad choices as you can until he doesn’t look like such a bad one.  It’s also known as the ‘Shane Warne effect’.  Now for an important safety warning – ladies, if you post a ‘posing picture’ of yourself, (you know which ones I mean.  The ones that you secretly took 34 cracks at ‘til you got it right before you posted it, and then when you get complimented on it you say things like, “Oh no, I look awful lol!”) – Well if any guy on your Facebook profile writes something to the effect of “looking hot” or “stunner” – delete that douche.  You’ll be saving yourself an awkward pick-up line, vapid conversation and being the recipient of a ‘Rohypnol cocktail’ later on in the relationship.

Also very important to keep in mind that the way you’re looking at a relationship’s status is completely different to how a guy is charting its progress.  It’s a widely accepted notion amongst men that relationships are like employment – even if he starts off as a lowly receptionist, taking after hour calls and running errands, slowly he’ll move up within the organisation until he’s in a much better position.  Preferably something with a nice room and a headboard view.  It’s a subtle difference but what you call being a good ‘B.F.F.’ he calls ‘extended work-experience’.  To the guy, he’s essentially doing an apprenticeship, and we know how much you love a tradie!

Another point of caution – be aware that as illogical as it seems, a guy invariably believes the car he drives will exponentially increase his chances of hooking-up with you.  If you’ve already got to rely on this methodology fellas, my advice would be to roll with a motorcycle.  It’s perfect – just the right amount of wheels, more power than is necessary and the fact that no matter how much the woman you’re transporting might not be interested in you, she has to wrap her arms around you and cling on for dear life until the end of the journey.  On some level, girls really do have a visceral love of them.  All I’m saying is you never saw a Chiko model straddling a Ford Fiesta with unsurpassed fuel economy.

Next-up – learn to communicate verbally.  This means addressing the issue of texting – both via phone and Facebook.  Example; barring if they’re in surgery or operating heavy machinery, no guy or girl should take more than one hour to reply to a text.  Any more and they’re most likely playing games with you, and if you want to play games on an electronic device, buy Tetris.  If you want to have a conversation, pick-up a phone.  As a sidenote, the text message isn’t indicative of real conversation girls.  There’s a reason that ‘phoney’ is spelt the way it is.  If it were indicative of real conversation, you’d go out for a date, ask a question and an hour later the guy would look back at you with a cheesy smiley face and just say “lol.”
On top of this, if you’re over the age of 18 and haven’t made grammar your bitch, pick-up the phone because texting is only going to hurt you.  Bad grammar is the new nose-picking of social faux-pas, and it’s just as big a turn-off.  It paints a bad picture of the relationship’s future.  Best case scenario you’re going to end-up with the wrong inscription on your wedding rings.  Worst case scenario, your weekly ‘couples time’ becomes waiting in line at Centrelink because the workforce tends to frown on resumés that look like they were written by a 13-year old girl via SMS.  Bad grammar can be a big early deal-breaker and there’s a good chance the other person is silently judging you.  It’s not fair I know, but it’s called ‘Preju-text’ and it happens.

Now for a fun fact, and girls, this is a really important piece of bite-sized knowledge for you – the longer the message a guy sends you, the less thought that’s gone into it.  And God help you if you’ve gotten the ‘one word’ text or Facebook comment where the guy either just writes your name or “hi”, because not only does he want your attention badly, but he’s desperately trying to not look interested and get you to make the first move.  Oh and you can be sure he’s run that message past all of his friends and most of his immediate family to proof-read before you even got a glance at it.  To make an informed decision, jot this formula down.  Before you get a message from a guy, give him about two hours in the bank.  Then subtract one minute from that two-hours for every word that he’s written to you.  The time you’re left with is the approximate amount of time he’s spent just composing and fine-tuning that message.  And if you’re headed out to catch-up with a guy that’s just sent you a text with less than six words, well then I’m afraid you’ve unwittingly just bought yourself a front-row seat to the ‘Muppet Show’.

Also important for you to keep in mind – appearance is a big deal and looks are as important as people make them out not to be.  No one ever looked a across a crowded dancefloor checking out someone’s sense of humour.  Keeping this in mind, I’m sorry girls, but stop getting so angry at other girls who’ve had work done.  There’s no sense in angrily chastising ‘fake’ boobs.  They’re not fake – you can see them and you can touch them so they’re real.  Unless you go to feel one and your hand passes through like a hologram out of Star Wars, then they’re real.  It’s just a modification.  If you renovate your house, that doesn’t make it a ‘fake’ house!  As for the fellas, the female gender is totally aware that they have the upper-hand in the looks game.  I can explain the reasoning behind this very easily.  You could be the most attractive guy and that may just get you a date, but if you mess-up the first impression on your date by doing anything stupid or inane, a girl can instantly be turned-off.  They’ll call all their friends and give you a worse review than if they just sat through ‘Big Momma’s House 3’.  But girls, it’s just as important that you know, we’re not so discerning.  If you’re an attractive girl, you could run over our mother, kick our dog, spit in our cereal and we’ll still justify it to everyone by saying, “Yeah but she’s hot!”

Another important note for both guys and girls – the ‘looks to brains’ ratio is not uniform across the sexes.  I went out with a girl recently who had both and girls can because they’re able to multi-task.  A girl can focus on appearance while still doing some non Cosmopolitan-based reading.  That being said, there are sadly a lot that exercise the right to choose not to.  However girls, if you’re expecting the same from guys, then you’ll be sadly disappointed.  It happens, don’t get me wrong, but that’s mainly with guys who were fat in their formative years and then got their looks later.  So they still had a chance to get the IQ up before the cholesterol went down.  Also, I’m sorry to disappoint more of you girls out there, but there is no such thing as a juice-head with a brain.  For every kilo of muscle, feel free to subtract 15 IQ points.  It’s why you’ll never see an obituary that reads ‘Nobel Prize-winner and Mr. Universe finalist’.  They tend not to have a lot upstairs, and according to all medical research, not a lot downstairs.  It’s also the reason why ‘creatine’ sounds so much like ‘cretin’.

This leads me to my next point – make sure you’re reasonable in what you’re looking for.  So to the girls, don’t say you’re look for a ‘bad boy’ that you can turn good.  If you really were then where are Ivan Milat’s groupies?  Surely he’s a bad boy.  Some would say the baddest.  In fact, I’d say that if you’re looking for a fixer-upper, look no further.  You’ve found the commission flat of fixer-uppers.  But guys aren’t fixer-uppers – that’s why shows like ‘The Block’ work the way they do – with inanimate buildings rather than men.  If girls had their way, Scott Cam would rock-up to a house in the eastern suburbs, take an unemployed biker with a criminal record and go to work on him.  Remove the existing rotting framework, install some high school education, do some landscaping, extend the downstairs area and ensure there’s still something going on upstairs so he’s ready to go to auction.  But no plaster… he’s had enough of getting plastered.

The next part of this ladies, sorry but you’re not going to get that happy medium where you find someone who’s got something dark about them, but is also reputable and caring.  This isn’t ‘Beauty & the Beast’.  You rarely end-up with a bikie that loves to baby-sit and are more likely to end-up with a priest who touches kids.

Finally – Ground rules for if you make it to the dating stage.  This is the final and perhaps the most important yet most commonly mishandled part of the boy-girl relationship.  These are three of the most important “do’s and don’ts”.  Firstly, to both genders – don’t say you have a type. This is essentially relationship racism.  It’s as offensive and prejudicial as saying you have a type of person you’d employ – “Um, I’m really just looking for someone taller and not Indian.”  You don’t have a type of food or t-shirt.  Sometimes you’ll try something on and decide you like it and maybe even want to be seen in public with it on you… wait that sounded weird.  I digress, and sure you may prefer French cuisine, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy a cheap pizza.  Catch my drift?  Don’t be afraid to give new things a chance.

Next, and this is mainly for the girls – if you’re 25 or over, you’re legally obligated by a statute I just made up from a constitution I just fabricated, to provide a person with a minimum ‘3-date tryout’.  It’s a warranty to insure you and the person interested in you against the pickiness that’s kept you single into your quarter life.  And guys, don’t set the standards so high.  There are plenty more fish in the sea, but if you aren’t prepared to slay a few dragons to get to the princess, you risk spending the rest of your life waiting around, with your rod in your hand.  And on another note, no guy should ever call a girl after 10pm if he’s pursuing a relationship.  Nothing wholesome was ever sought-after past 10pm. You’re either after greasy potato cakes & chips or a booty call.  And unless the girl you’re calling is Greek, it’s unlikely you’re calling about the former.

Ultimately, not since the mass consumer hysteria over the ‘Yo-Yo’ and ‘Yo-Ho Diablo’ have so many people partaken in a venture that they have absolutely no idea how to operate, with the exclusion of course of the Australian political system.  In spite of that, maybe what’s best about the boy-girl relationship is that often you just don’t know what you’re going to get out of it and you can’t explain it.  It’s like an X-rated Kinder Surprise, where one in ten eggs contain a kick in the nuts but the rest have something great inside for you to play with.  In any case, as long as you make sure your intentions aboard the ‘SS. Relationship’ are honourable and you don’t plan to take a leak in the dating pool, you should be fine.  That being said, whatever you do, keep the guide handy and it might just mean you avoid your ‘happily ever after’ becoming a ‘happily shortly after’.