privacy notice
Tormented? Driven witless? Fear not, help is just a short letter away
REKINDLING THE ROMANCE
DEAR E JEAN, I have a wonderful, intelligent, funny, caring fiancé. He’s the life of every dinner party, and when I’m working late, he makes dinner and greets me with a glass of wine. He takes me on impromptu adventures, writes sweet thankyou notes to my nanna and gives me daily back rubs. Me? I’m intelligent, quite pretty, mostly witty, rather successful (and, according to this description, a tad arrogant, apparently). I’ve done very well with men, but I’ve never really cared for someone until I met this man three years ago. So I have a wonderful fiancé... and I no longer find him attractive. I’m not sure what happened – the passion just fizzled! Now I dread going to bed with him. What do I do? I don’t want to break up, but I also want to enjoy sex. – Up In Smoke PS: Please do not suggest sexy lingerie or role-play. I need a longer-term solution. SMOKE, MY SNAPDRAGON You’ve got Auntie E’s word: no “sexy lingerie”. (Although I reserve the right to wear alabaster tap pants and matching garters while answering your letter.)
When a woman dreads going to bed with a man she loves, we must not only look to the usual suspects (birth control pills, antidepressants, antihistamines, painkillers, etc), we must also consider the prime suspect: your “quite pretty” carcass.
Much has happened to it since you met Mr Dinner Party. Ninety-eight per cent of your atoms have been replaced – not once, not twice, but three times. The cells of your epidermis have been shedding at such a brisk Dita Von Teese rate you’re not even clad in the same suit of skin you wore last month. Indeed, I’m actually answering a woman with a different body than the woman who sent her letter to me two months ago (that’s how long I’ve been mulling this answer, Miss Smoke). And your fiancé? Isn’t his body regenerating? Isn’t he getting atomic tune-ups, too? Is it any wonder that the moves that filled you with such joy in the beginning no longer spark the frenzy?
I purposely abstain here from making a fuss about the ebbing and flowing of desire. It’s so natural and varies so much from couple to couple (though many couples do experience a drop between years two and three) that I simply entreat you to believe that with kindness, distance (desire roars like a polar bear from afar) and tenderness, it will reflame, and precisely when you least expect it.
Wait. On second thought, why don’t we just give Eros, the god of love, a kick in the pants? Care for an elixir, Miss Smoke? Close your eyes, lean in and partake... See the lovely graph below? This is the formula that caused you to cry “Take me! I’m yours!” when you first snogged your lad. Since it’s a magic formula, the best way to imbibe it is with a kiss – and by “kiss”, I mean a kiss of the kind you plastered upon the chap in the first mad months of courtship, the beastly and beautiful kind that brings on the blitz of dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline and oxytocin and floods your frame with the most unspeakable cravings ever felt by woman! You may not want to kiss him tonight, you may not be in the mood to kiss him tonight, but do it! Kiss him twice, thrice, four times, forsooth! Let me know how you’re doing. I’m excited about this!
THE MALE GAZE
DEAR E JEAN, Shouldn’t we celebrate the women’s movement by burning our bras? I have small breasts and find most bras incredibly uncomfortable – I take mine off as soon as I walk in the door. So I’m happy that I have the option of going without a bra, but I find I get a lot more stares than when my breasts
are bound. Does not wearing a bra send a message to men I’m oblivious to? Is it not socially acceptable? What is your stance on going braless? – Pigeon Breast PIP! PIP! PIGEON Please. Men will ogle an old brassiere hanging on a clothesline. Chaps will practically propose to a cracker if it has two olives on it. You and your bosom are “the female form”, as Walt Whitman said, which “attracts with fierce undeniable attraction”. I wouldn’t advise bouncing around the office without a bit of shackling, but otherwise, there’s no such thing these days as “socially acceptable” – only in fashion and out of fashion. Right now, a liberated bust presents a classic image of glamour, simplicity and comfort. Bah! Unsnap! Release thy bazooms!
I DREAM OF AFRICA
DEAR E JEAN, I’m a 31-year-old doctor with a specialty in paediatrics and I’ve always had this idea about opening a clinic in Africa. When I was a teenager, I went there with my family on a mission trip, and I’ll never forget the look on the people’s faces when we offered medical help, food, shelter, etc. Since then, I’ve known Africa is where I belong. But my long-term boyfriend (also a doctor) thinks my idea is futile and my non-profit clinic would lose money. Do I care about money? No! I just want to help people. He thinks I should volunteer with Doctors Without Borders for two weeks every year, but I’m just not ready to give up my dream. If he really loved me, wouldn’t he support me? Should I keep the dream, or the dream guy? – Out Of Africa MISS OUT, MY LIONESS Keep the dream. Africa may let you change the world, but a man hardly ever does.
SHE AIN’T HEAVY, SHE’S YOUR MOTHER
DEAR E JEAN, I was speaking with my mother about feeling motivated to eat healthier, and she told me I’d “very noticeably put weight on” my legs. I was upset, so she said, “It’s not like they’re completely humungous or anything.” Like that would make me feel better!
Now I feel myself slipping back into starving myself and overexercising. Am I being dramatic? Or was my mother out of line? I’m having a hard time getting over it. It’s not like I’m overweight, so why does she make me feel like everyone is talking about my weight? – Sensitive Thighs MISS THIGHS OF THE THEWS I have two theories: first, some mothers are like the gods on Olympus. They create us, then they chain us to rocks and command eagles to eat our livers every day throughout eternity. Second – and just as true – we daughters are the gods, and our mothers sacrifice their careers, their independence, their sex lives, their shoes, their figures, their plans and their wits for us.
Re the shoe sacrifice: one winter, my own mother, the flame-haired bird of paradise Liz Carroll, was driving me to a social event in my local town, wearing her beautiful high heels encased in little clear plastic galoshes. As we passed a pond, she thumped the brakes, pulled the car over, retrieved a shovel from the boot and, saying “Let’s try your new skates!”, cleared the snow off the ice. I was five. Her beautiful shoes did not survive.
The matriarchal sacrificing and rock-chaining provides many mothers with a lot of weight about our weight. And as for your own personal legs, Miss Sensitive – well! Each syllable uttered by your mother is heavier than the thighs of 10,000 women. (And I don’t need to point out that every word you reply has the power to cut her to shreds, do I?) You sprang from her loins, you are flesh of her flesh; the woman made your thighs, for God’s sake – so, no, you are not being “dramatic”. Just say to her, “Ma! Please do not mention my weight ever again. It makes me want to starve myself.” You’ll have to remind her of this every week or so, but so what, it’s fun trying to keep a mother in line.
I kept Liz Carroll in line until recently, when, after 98 years on planet earth, wearing coral-red lipstick and her Oscar De La Renta hostess pyjamas, and with her hair done up with a turquoise bow, she shuffled off this mortal coil. She turned out not to be a god after all, but a mortal. It was the surprise of my life.
How do I turn a hook-up into the real thing? I met a wonderful guy on Tinder and, at first, it was just physical. But recently we’ve been having deep conversations and liking each other more – so how do I get us out of limbo and into the BF/GF thing? Let me remove the pressure of the “BF/GF thing” before it leaves you permanently damaged. You are not in “limbo”. You are in paradise! What you’ve got there is the real thing. Feeling uncertain is “the very essence of romance”, as Oscar W said. Relish it!