ask e jean

Tormented? Driven witless? Fear not, help is just a short letter away

THE BREAK-UP ARTIST

DEAR E JEAN, If I were Adele, all my songs would be about this guy. He’s a complex character; a neurosurgeon who’s wickedly funny and intelligent. After eight months of us being crazy for each other, he broke up with me. I resolved to find someone better, online-dated, met okay men who all seemed to be fighting with their exes, rejected them all and fell back in with the man who broke up with me. It was a wonderful couple of months, then he broke up with me again for someone else. I missed him desperately. Two weeks later, he came back to me. It was romantic and fun and lasted another six months until he broke up with me yet again. That was 10 days ago.

He says he would marry me if a second marriage were in the cards for him. I’ve already accumulated one ex-husband, but if this fellow were game, I’d try it again. I adore him. He admires me and agrees we have great fun together, but he’s not certain he can commit. I have a wonderful life – children, career, many friends – but I miss him! I’m writing to you because he sent a text yesterday saying to call him and signalling he wants to get back together. Should I? I’m looking for nothing less than magic. I just don’t know why I’m holding on to this man so tight. – Back-and-forth BRACE YOURSELF, FORTH A hideous choice is before you. From this moment on, you’ll be detested by one segment of society – spiritual leaders, self-help book floggers and members of the Advice Columnists’ Yacht And Garden Club will never speak to you again if you do call Dr Neurosurgeon, and I will never speak to you again if you don’t. If the man were a cad, a drunk, a bore, a fool, if he hit you, disrespected you, tried to control you, I’d say, “Get him gone!” But he seems a good egg or, as you say, “complex, wickedly funny, and intelligent”. So call him.

Now, I know this goes against every syllable of advice from the Miss Lonelyhearts Advisory And Corset Committee. They’re forever telling women after a couple of break-ups with a chap to “Never go back!” (as I myself have advised many times in this column)… as if women are too feeble and oversexed to make the

right decisions. I looked you up. You’re about as unfeeble as a gorgeous, cultivated, brainy woman can be. So you know your affair is romantic, painful, sexy and marvellous because it’s so uncertain, right? Enjoy him! – Ravishing Regards, E Jean DEAR E JEAN, I like this idea a lot. But I still haven’t called. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll spend the night being killed by jealousy, thinking he’s with someone else. Getting back together has its advantages. Seriously, it’s what dreams are made of! But is the anguish worth it? – Back-and-forth FORTH, DARLING! You’re having more anguish anticipating anguish than feeling actual anguish. It’s hard to know anything for sure, so let’s spell this out: if you decide the pain of revelling and laughing and quarrelling and flying back to each other and possibly breaking up (again) is greater than the pain of missing him “desperately” – don’t call him. But if you believe the ecstasy of getting back together and giving yourself at least a shot at making a life together is greater than the regret of not giving it another shot, call him.

MORNING GLORY: MINUTE BY MINUTE

DEAR E JEAN, This is my morning routine: wake up at 6am. Fall back asleep. Wake up again at 7am. Look at my phone. Start shouting at myself. Enter bathroom. Exit feeling calm and fresh. Look at my phone. Discover I’ve spent 40 minutes in there! At this point, I’m no longer calm. I start getting dressed and looking desperately for the top I could swear was on the drying rack. Now it’s 7.55. This leaves me five minutes to do my hair – and I never go a day without a compliment on my hair. It’s 8.26am when I’m done. Feeling like I’m forgetting something keeps me in the house until 8.40. I get to work at 9.25 – late. This happens every day! I can’t get myself out of this rut. Can you help? – The Girl Who Runs Late MY GIRL Begin your routine 15 minutes earlier, and you’ve got yourself the kind of gorgeously ambitious day that F Scott Fitzgerald writes of in The Great Gatsby. To wit: 6.45: Open eyes. 6.45-6.46: Rise to sitting position. Raise glass from bedside table. Toast to “falling in love”. Drink 300ml of

water. All sorts of sweet, exciting health benefits are ascribed to drinking water first thing in the morning on an empty stomach (jolts metabolism, revs the digestive tract, thrills the brain and so on), but these claims never mention the main thing: it wakes a betch up! 6.47: Enter bathroom. 7.30: Exit bathroom. 7.31: Get dressed. Now, Gatsby had a lot of shirts, yes. But if you pry open your closet the night before and use your imagination, you can style four or five interesting outfits straight from the cast-offs in the back (I can only imagine what you may find in the front). Hang your outfit on the closet door the night before. 7.45: Hair. (And may Auntie E say, yours looks stunning!) 8.15: Exit house. There’ll be no frenzied loping through the premises, muttering, “Where are my damn sunglasses?” Everything you need for the day will be neatly arranged and waiting by the front door. Why? Because you put it there the night before. 8.58: Arrive at work. You can’t change the world unless you get out of bed.

A CURE FOR TEXTING LOGORRHEA

DEAR E JEAN, I need a new dating strategy. If I get hurt badly by a guy, I stay single for a while. Then a new guy comes along and sweeps me off my feet. But once intimacy happens, communication dissipates, and the guy starts disappearing. So I start over-texting him and completely scare him off. How do I calm down? – The Over-texter OVER, MY ORCHID Alas, I don’t have the answer. That is to say... I don’t have the answer. I have an answer, of course. It’s a little trick that works for me. Instead of telling myself to “calm down” as I punch out a text, I do the opposite. I fire up. I say to myself: “Look at this text! This is big, E Jean! This is colossal! This text is better than Shakespeare! It’s cooler than Beyoncé! This is the most sublime text ever sent by womankind!”

I’m not sure why it works. Maybe because I don’t ask my girlfriends for their opinion, or I stand up and hold the phone at arm’s length, or all the mental shouting lathers my brain into such a heightened state that it pops the champagne corks of adrenaline – and when the adrenaline fizzes, my mind becomes sharper, and when my mind is sharper, my text is put into perspective, and when my text is put into perspective, it’s easier to recognise that only a crazed imbecile would text the chap at that moment. Or perhaps because it just makes me laugh. Either way, I rarely hit Send.

PS: Texting too much/too little/too much/too little is the endless double helix of hell we all fall into. But if you hold off on shagging a chap until you’re more certain it’s true lust, you might be happier.

HOW A LADY TREATS A STRIPPER

DEAR E JEAN, For my birthday party at her house, my best friend surprised me with a stripper. Unfortunately, her husband came home early and asked (with a smile) how his wife behaved. We laughed and I said she only “took a glimpse of his boxers”. Which was true, but somehow this hit a nerve, and her husband became furious. So I guess it’s a question of etiquette: how should a woman behave when eye-to-eye with a stripper? It was my birthday and the stripper focused on me, and I didn’t know what to do! – Eye Of The Stripper Storm STORM, MY SNOW PEA No matter your age, social status or professional rank, or how many companies you run, when a woman is confronted with a gentleman who bursts into the room shaking his butt and winking his navel, there’s one rule: you must courteously scream and faint. You are then free to proceed with as much yelling and whooping as possible, with these caveats: 1. Never sit facing him, unless you can defend yourself by throwing hors d’oeuvres at him. 2. Never pull the stripper’s tank top off over his head if he has a lit cigarette in his mouth. 3. Never spank a stripper, even when he asks, as it’s best to ignore a child who’s behaving improperly. 4. Never post incriminating photos if your boss checks Instagram. 5. Never bend over to get something from your purse while the chap is performing. Trust Auntie E on this. 6. When the husband of the hostess arrives home early and asks about the male stripper, the hostess has only one reply: “Ha! Ha! Ha! He looked half as large as you!”