February 14, 2007
Posted to the web February 14, 2007
Maeve and Greg have been very good friends of ours for more than 20 years. They have been married for most of that time but they have always had a very stormy relationship.
For the past five years, they have been living fairly separate lives, but now they seem to be hitting a further crisis.
Maeve comes to talk to my wife Jenny and, of course, sometimes I hear some of the conversation. It seems that Maeve believes that Greg is now spending too much time with 'Marion from the office'. He is taking a clean shirt and his best shoes to work, and then working late.
His aftershave and deodorant supplies have been exhausted twice this month. Perhaps Marion would be getting the valentine rose this year.
At 41, she says she is feeling too old for all the mating rituals of 20-year olds but would like to find compatible new love. When she told my wife Jenny she would be thinking of marrying again, I could tell that Jenny was advising extreme caution. She said - Well, if all you want is a few sausages - why do you want to buy the whole pig?
I do not know if she was thinking of me when she thought of the pig analogy (or even the sausages!). Maeve was already drawing up a list of preferences for her next spouse.
He would be kind and attentive at all times. He would be an excellent cook. He would prefer 'soap operas' on the television, rather than football.
He would like to do all his own ironing and he would never snore at night. He may occasionally drink a little light wine - but never too much. It all seemed a bit final to me, with my friend Greg being sent packing, while Maeve was already aiming at finding a replacement.
For anyone faced with these lifestyle questions, we now have the Internet. I decided to ask Google (on behalf of Maeve) how a woman might find a new husband. Google gave me 'expatmatch.
com'. I tried to find a match for Maeve and found there were 23 men between 40 and 45 advertising for a partner - all in Mauritius. The photographs, pen pictures, email contacts and join-up instructions made shopping for a husband so very easy.
However, every one of these contacts left the reader with unanswered questions. There were questions in my mind, such as - why no photograph? Does casual or good humour mean 'not serious'?
Does 'good time' mean irresponsible? Does 'honest and hardworking' mean poor? It must be very difficult to hit the right note when selling your own qualities in less than 30 words.
Young people must be prepared. Perhaps all dating for the over-30s will be like this in our cyber-future. My next stop was 'AmericanSingles.
com'. This site was so over-crowded that I thought perhaps everyone in America is single. I took some time to read the self-descriptions and found out why everyone in America stays single.
Nobody could be that handsome, fun loving, outgoing, adventurous, athletic, humorous, wealthy and ambitious and still find time to play around with a website dating agency.
I have been worrying about Greg after doing this small piece of research. There is obviously no shortage of alternative husbands available in Mauritius, so perhaps he should be careful about losing Maeve.
If she is getting serious in her quest for a replacement I feel he should be aware of this. I tried to arrange a game of tennis with Greg so that afterwards we could have a few beers. We would then have a man-to-man chat about the fact that he had been 'found out'.
When I spoke to him he was obviously finding it difficult to schedule a game, so I asked him how he was spending his time after work. When we did meet, he promised me to secrecy and I should on no account tell Maeve what he was doing on Tuesday and Thursday after work. After I gave him the re-assurance he wanted, he told me that he was taking dancing lessons in Port-Louis (Why did I suddenly think of Jennifer Lopez in 'Shall We Dance'?
- were there any spare places?). He wanted to surprise Maeve on Valentine's night when they were due to go to a dance.
He was going to really impress her after 20 years of standing on her toes and hiding away from the limelight.
The next time Maeve came round looking for sympathy for the badly used wife, I was able to tell her about 'husbands-are-us.com'.
This would be ideal 'retail therapy' for a woman in her condition. It is an exclusive site for female shoppers. There are six levels, through which you may progress, and you can buy at any time, but you cannot return to a lower level.
At level one you are promised many men to choose from and they all have jobs. All the men at level two have jobs and love children. The men at level three have jobs, love children and are good-looking.
At level four the men have jobs, love children, are good looking and like to help with the housework. Level five men have all the previous characteristics and they also have strong romantic feelings. This all seemed to be getting better and better for the husband seeker, so I had a little look on level six.
Here it said :-
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