Disclaimer: Girl tried to write her own review, but old buddy'Malignant' Manish kept interrupting and making it a collaboration.
Vatsayana says women reject men's advances on the following grounds:- Want of opportunity, anger at being addressed by the man too familiarly, difference in rank of life, want of certainty, thinking the man is attached to someone else, feeling he cannot keep secrets, thinking the man too devoted to friends, fear that he is not in earnest.
Mal-Man: Vatsayana never tried to make advances with a three-day-old bouquet with tag saying'To Mr. and Mrs. Nariman on their 25th wedding anniversary', or he would know the first reason for rejecting is bad gifts.
Do we really need this review? 90% of men reading this topic this don't even have a girlfriend. I know, coz its simple logic. Most men love to read manuals of equipment they don't own, compare insides of cars they don't intend to drive, go window shopping for gadgets they have no use for, and read magazines about sports they don't play.
Mal-Man: .And all of us fantasize about the kind of women we will never meet. Men like to think of future possibilities. Women are much too occupied with the present. Many, many, many presents, in fact. Let's do a pseudo-intellectual categorization - list the symptoms, so they can diagnose girlfriend type first, and general gift rules for those.
Okay. Symptoms: Sticky chocolatey fingers, soft toys on all flat surfaces, posters of boy bands. Cards with poems that rhyme. Love song CDs(compiled by you). Icecream.
Mal-Man: …Your girlfriend is a Mickey Mouse Clubber. You know, the 15-20 age group, At 21, you reach super-annuity, but some will refuse to quit, and stay members well into thirties/forties.
If you've got one of these, be happy. All possible gift ideas for them have been thought of already by gift-and-card stores.
Mal-Man: …'And in all sizes. Ideal gift: Anything soft and/or pink. Enough, let's talk about the kind of women I tend to meet…
Right. Symptoms: Conversation tends to be mostly quizz-ical. However trivial a detail it is, she wants to know. What they do with all this data is unknown *(Mal-Man: ., maybe they're beaming it into space as part of SETI search for alien life) * but it can't be worse than the Alexa project which is archiving zillions of billions of junk pages into a gigantic archive. Why do you prefer the blue shirt to the cream? What did your boss say? How did your evening go? Who's that Meghna in your address book? Where were you when Kennedy was shot?
Mal-Man:…Voila! theInformation Hog **.Women(with help from Al Gore) invented the internet to satisfy their info needs. What she wants is to hear you repeat verbatim every word that was uttered since you woke up in the morning, complete with facial expressions and hand gestures. Ideal gift is to make her your official biographer, so now at least she has a reason to ask'
Hmm, next. Symptoms: You feel there are invisible strings controlling you. She's taken over your social life, who you see, where you go, what jokes you tell, all decisions need permission.
Mal-Man: … My diagnosis? the Power-Troll. We men want promotions, bigger budgets, executive offices, the latest digital toy, Power-trolls may or may not wanna lead, but they want to influence and control you. and everyone else. Ideal gift? A sign that says'I'm the Boss in this relationship and I have her permission to say so'.
Last. Symptoms: She has 5 of everything. Including birthdays per year, and boyfriends at a time.
Mal-Man: theMaterial-Bunny **. Its simple math - The bigger, the better. The more, the merrier. Ideal gift? Your wallet. Hand it over to her safe-keeping, and ask her when you need some money. Much quicker that way.
Now we get to specific situations, and solutions for those.
The I'm-So-Sorry-But-Get-Over-it present
So, you've been your usual nasty/forgetful/lazy/too-dumb-to-operate-heavy-machinery self and you've managed to pi your girl off. Probably you told her she stinks at telling a joke, she retorted that you are the PJ King, and a slob and a bore and a. She ends up crying! You're thinking, 'This is so unfair. If anyone has a right to be pied, it's me'.
Mal-Man: Wrongo! Did you read the relationship End User Agreement? A girlfriend always has the right to be turned-off anytime, anywhere, without giving any reasons.
What do you do? You can go the manly route, give her nothing, tell her she's being a bore, or you can cave in, and buy her loads of stuff.
Mal-Man: Resist the urge. Fight it hard. Remember it’s a bad precedent to be setting. All you need to do is not make it worse, by sending her a book called'Simple Jokes Even A 10-year-old Can Tell'. And never bring it up again, or you wont be laughing till you find a dentist.
Let some time go by, and the next time you see her, simply wear a set of false teeth/mustache/eyebrows and pretend there's nothing unusual. If she has any sense of humor, the smile should be back.
(If it doesn't, don't call GNS. She don't date people with removable features)
The Its-your-birthday-so-I'll-sleep-it-off present
You're expected to feel appropriate awe for the red-letter day it is. D-Day arrives …are you ready? You've picked up the mandatory commercial peace-offering(card/ gift/flowers)? No?
Mal-Man: If all you could afford was a card, here's three simple things that work. a) give her something she thought she had lost(pen, earring, cellphone). Pretend you found it and have been waiting to return it. Now this requires some preparation - you gotta steal something of hers first, without her noticing b) enclose a picture of her. Doesn’t matter what she's doing in the pic, she could be alphabetizing her CD collection, they like to think you save pics of them. b) Quote something she once said and how much it struck you as extraordinary. If you cant remember a thing, make it up. It doesn’t matter.
The important thing is delivery. Make sure you deliver gifts in person, and emote.
Mal-Man: If you are a bad actor, and can't fake the right emotions at the galactic significance of this day, the quivering lip, teary eyes and all, there is one for you. Grab her in a big clinch, and rock side-to-side like a meeting of long-lost Arabs. It will pass for unspeakable *(GNS: unspoken?) *emotion.
The Congrats-you-picked-a-loser present
So your girl is getting married to some other guy and invited you to her posh wedding. You've met the sorry a-ss and his convertible, and while wild horses could not drag you to the wedding otherwise, you still have to show you're a guy of the world, and its her loss, entirely.
Mal-Man: If you're really mad, pi her off completely, ignore her and get the groom a nice gift. If you're only mildly bothered, give her something she won't/can't use - a ticket to a concert of a musician who she loves to hate. A book she already has. If you're not bothered and would not waste a penny more, give her a card that says'Your gift has been donated to the United Orphans Charity Fund'. As a pseudo-intellectual, tell her you don’t believe in commercializing gifts. And you don't actually have to donate anything.
continued.
