Sex Detective vs Love & Marriage

Love isn't usually my imaginary domain as a pretend detective, I tend to leave that to professors, poets and pussies, but you don't investigate as many relationship issues as I do without picking up a few ideas on the whole romance thingy.  Personally I eschew romance on the basis that it wastes valuable fucking time, but alot of you out there seem to get something out of it, so I'll tell you what this hard-boiled, street savvy sonovabitch knows.

Love - the type that's actually interesting, not all that unconditional shit you have with kids and pets (boring!) - generally progresses through three fundamental phases.

1. Infatuation
Yep, the whole crush n' lust phase.  You meet someone attractive, your eyes lock, you both smile and idiocy ensues.  The woman/man of your dreams is also attracted to you!  Great, you (probably) think, that'll let me spent money on chocolates, flowers and grown-up restaurants instead of duct tape, illegal prescriptions and basement sound-proofing.  You get all goofy and nervous around each other, check your phone every 5 minutes whenever you're apart, and start acting annoyingly chipper around your friends and colleagues.  You also have sex.  A lot of it.  More than you ever will later in the relationship.  Entire weekends are spent boning and ignoring the chafing so you can bone some more.  Well done, you've just turned your life into a Disney/porn hybrid of romance.

A,k.a the fun, clumsy bit.

2. Bonding
So, 3-6 months have passed and you guys are settling into a routine.  You've met each other's families and friends, and you're now universally accepted as a 'couple'.  Those initial buzzes you felt around each other are waning, and instead are replaced by an expectation of reliability and cohesion.  You start to share emotional information not just about your past but also about your mutual future.  You'll spend more time but less sex together because you're learning to accept each other as comprehensive people (including each other's flaws, habits, traits and dreams).  Sooner or later you'll move in together just to kick it to the next level.  Co-operation becomes a priority and co-dependence creeps in.

3. Familiarity
After a few years you'll realise that your identities have merged.  You've learned everything about the other pseron that you ever will for now, so it's a case of living and working together as one.  You can happily leave the toilet door open while conversing with your partner.  You may also have a couple of kids kicking around.  The whole of your relationship is now greater than the sum of its parts.  Congratulations, you are now your parents, the circle is complete.

Exceptions to the rule
It doesn't work like this for everyone, of course, and it doesn't always run the full course.  Some couples start off as platonic friends and hence bypass the whole silly infatuation phase because they've already bonded on a deeper level that would make dating ironically hilarious.  Funnily enough, although in the minority, these often prove to be the most successful relationships of all.  You have already bonded emotionally and socially, you already know all about each other, and you already trust each other because you're friends.  It's also the difference between loving someone because they're beautiful, and them becoming beautiful because you have learned to love them.  I've only come across a couple of instances where this has occurred (big shout out to Shaz and Stu, by the way) but it's fantastic to see and often explains why second marriages work so well. 

Other couples have trouble transitioning from bonding to familiarity because being familiar with a partner means tolerating every little annoyance all the time.  You put any two adults in the same house for a few years and irritability is inevitable.  Some people just can't hack that, and after a drawn out campaign of idiosynchrocratic attrition one or the other decides that splitting up is healthier than fighting homicidal urges.  Living together is not the same as growing together, and learning to do the latter synergistically is what makes all the difference.

Marriage
We are only ever as good as the promises we make, which is why I rarely used the P-word.  In my culture an oath carries mucho weight, and breaking an oath carries harsh consequences in terms of social status.  That's also why I belive that marriage as an institution is a noble decision.  Look, before you get all "What?  The Sex Detective is pro-archaic ritual/religious dogma?" just shut your fucking holes for a second and hear me out.  In the 21st Century of Western society you can take or leave marriage as you wish.  No one's forcing people to get hitched.  Hell, most of you are pro-marriage anyway because you support that right to be afforded to deserving gay couples, right?  All I'm saying is that I think it's a pity that sometimes people decide to get married for stupid reasons like keeping their families and/or gods happy instead of doing it to publically declare their intrinsically motivated long-term committment for each other.

Goddammit, Japan, I was trying to make a serious point here.

Rant: Hell, I've known some girls who get more excited and obsessed about the wedding than the actual marriage.  Fuck you, princess, if you're going to burst into tears because the flowers don't match the table cloths on your wedding day then chances are you don't deserve the man patient enough to put up with your spolit brat attitude anyway.

Every serious decision we make in life is a test of our true character.  If you decide to get married then make damn sure that you understand one fundamental truth: marriage serves to celebrate committment, not reinforce it.  Signing that piece of paper won't magically make you a better couple, only you can do that.  Ever since 'no fault' divorce laws came into effect, that piece of paper can be thrown in the bin at any time for any reason that constitutes irreconcilable differences.  So give it some serious fucking thought, people, instead of day-dreaming about white picket fences and and a 'set and forget' lifestyle, because when you finish walking down that aisle the real work is just beginning.

The secret is to kieep it fresh by not wearing anything under your blankets.

Is it your relationship? No? Then fuck off.

There's a few things that'll fuck up a sex-based relationship - bad sex, no money and the most insidious of all, a third party.  It could be an individual, it could be a group of peers, it could be an entire family.  People can't fucking help themselves, they just love to butt in and meddle like hell.  Whether they're telling you how to parent your kids, or bad mouthing your partner, or just making insanely baseless judgement calls on the nature and condition of your relationship in general, the result is inevitably the same: it places that relationship under duress.  This is where rules and norms need to be established if you want to save yourself and the partner you love from some soapie style dramas.  Sure, we all have opinions on other people's lives, and we're chock full of personal prejudices as a result of our own stupid mistakes, but there have to be protocols, folks, and a little common damn courtesy.  So here's a few pointers for those who assume the right to criticize the relationships of others.

1. Only give your opinion if you are expressly asked for it
The odds of you knowing the full story and nature of someone else's relationship are highly unlikely.  You don't live with these people 24 hours a day, you're not privy to their darkest secrets or most intimate feelings.  You don't know their entire biography, their deepest fears and covert dreams.  If a friend or relation expresses hassles in their love life, they're looking to vent and use you as sounding board, which is only fair given all the times you whinged to them about shit.  If they ask your advice, give it, but know that it is only advice.  And that it is only yours.  Speak your piece then shut the fuck up.  In this capacity you are a consultant, not a bodyguard.  Your pissy friend or relation is an adult, which means it's up to them to find the balls to help themselves.  The best you can do for them is lead by example, not talk endless trash the scutter back to the shadows like a cockroach.  So, only help those who ask for help, leave the rest alone.

2.  Your opinions are a projection of yourself
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but happy people seem less likely to rag on others.  That's because they're too busy being happy, making money, having amazing sex and not letting others meddle in their shit.  Unhappy people, especially those who have failed miserably in the relationship department by getting stuck in a shit-boring sham of a marriage, or constantly dating losers, are far more likely to start flinging crap at others.  They live to spread their cynicism, doubts and conspiracies because, well, they don't know how to make their own lives work properly.  Just because you don't have the guts to find and fight for love, don't try pulling others down into your masturbatory self-loathing.  Projecting self-pity just tells me that you deserve to be alone, preferably in a basement full of rape-beetles.  And if that sounds cruel, it's nothing compared to the cruelty of trying to molest or sabotage another adult's romantic life.

3. Allow people to make their own mistakes in love
People fuck up all the time, but as functional adult human beings we reserve the right to do so.  See, many folks hate this rule, especially parents (regardless of how old their offspring is).  They're hard-wired to want their kids to be happy, but here's the conditional clause: only if it fits in with their version of happiness.  Your parents are always going to try to tell you how to live your life - and, sure, they often have worthy knowledge to impart - but they don't actually get a vote when it comes down to who you fuck or marry.  Not in a free, democratic, Western society anyway.  If they did you might as well bring back arranged marriages, feudal serfdom and child slavery.  No, the only people who get to decide on a serious relationship are the couple who have to directly live with that choice.

Vicarious co-dependence is a bad habit that some families can't seem to shake.  Sometimes an intervention is required.  Sometimes couples have to elope instead.  I know that not having your family on your side when you hook up with the partner of your dreams can be a hassle, but choosing to be a slave to their controlling whims means that you're simply not mature enough yet - regardless of age - to have a successful relationship anyway.  Remember that these are the same parents who chose your horrible clothing and gave you bowl haircuts when you were 3.  You love them dearly, but do you really want them ruling your love life too?  Because, trust me, their taste hasn't improved much.

4. Stop insulting those you care about
When you start pissing in someone's ear about their ridiculous choice in partner, or belittling their relationship, the only thing you're really saying to them is "you are too retarded to make worthy decisions".  You are directly insulting your friend or relation, their beloved and their ability to function.  It is discourteous, and worse, disrespectful.  If you don't like your mate's missus, then tell that to his missus.  With him present.  Sure, you're probably going to lose a friendship and a few teeth, but it is the only circumstance in which you can justify expressing your heart-felt protest without being a coward.  Otherwise, swallow your bile and get back to being his mate.

Oh, and if your thinly veiled motivation to 'watch out for your friend' is actually based on your own wankful, sordid desires then you're either a Lurker or a Murker, in which case you need to be put down anyway.

My duties to those I love when it comes to their relationship choices are very clear: a) to be there for them if things go to hell, and b) to kick the everliving shit out of actively dissuade anyone who does decide to meddle in their affairs.  And I take my duties very seriously.

The flip side
This sentiment goes both ways, of course.  If you're in a relationship and you ask my advice as a true friend, only accept it on the grounds that it is only my advice.  Also, I don't particularly give a shit who your partner is.  Not deep down.  Chances are the only reason they came into my life was because you've been fucking them on a regular, exclusive basis.  Stay with them and work it out, or have a divorce/break up, it won't really matter to me either way.  If you're talking to me it's because I'm your friend, not theirs.  I'm only ever on their side if you're on their side too.  That's how loyalty works - fighting for those you respect even when they fuck up.  Especially when they fuck up.

And if you ask me straight out what I think of your partner then I will tell you that they seem okay, regardless of any opinion I may personally harbour.  Yes, that's right, I will lie to you if it means supporting your choice, because I don't like to think that you're weak enough to need my permission to do anything in your life.  Hell, it's not like I actually know what's-her/his-face anyway.

Sex Detective's Guide to Breaking Up, part one

Nothing lasts forever, including how you feel about the love of your life.  If you're lucky the pair of you survived the lusty attraction phase to bond on a more organic level and resigned yourselves to the fact that no one else is going to put up with you.  However, for each happily settled, long-term relationship there are many, many failures.  The reasons for these are as unique as the relationship itself in every case, but the baseline result is that you no longer feel the same way you used to about your partner.

There's nothing particularly rational about emotionally co-dependent, sex-based relationships.  No one (who isn't a sociopath) decides one day to suddenly feel 'that spark' when they connect romantically with another person.  There's a whole lot of subconscious, biological shit going on to do with oxytocin, dopamine receptors, pyscho-visual cross-referencing and invisibly stinky pheromones when you start crushing.  All that stuff culminates, hopefully, in you falling in love then boning each other senseless for a few months.  But those chemical highs are a short-term buzz, there to encourage you to spend an obscene amount of time together so that when it wears off you're already addicted to each other.  And it's just as well that euphoria slackens off, otherwise, as a species, we would be too busy making babies to look after babies.

But like I said, long-term love isn't always the outcome, and one day you may just wake up feeling decidedly rational about something as irrational as a romantic relationship, and start thinking that your partner isn't someone you want in your life forever.  If that's the case then your creepy, neighbourhod Sex Detective has a few factors for you to keep in mind as you psych yourself up to end things with them once and for all.

 Not a big fan of the C-word?  That's okay, I forgive you.

1. Thou shalt be a cunt
Surprisingly, very few people feel all that good about breaking someone else's heart.  Not regarding the decision itself - they're fine with that bit - but the process involved.  I get bizarre questions from otherwise smart adults like, "I want to dump her but how do I do that without looking like an asshole?" 

The first thing you must accept if you choose to dump someone is that you will look like an asshole when you deliver the news.  No exceptions.  Ever.  It doesn't matter how well reasoned you think your justification is, the other party will feel that you just wronged them.  If you consciously try to look less like an asshole in the process you will just end up coming across as a weasly, patronising asshole.  Which is even worse.  You must accept the fact that as far as the dumpee, their friends and their family are concerned, you suck balls.

And don't for a second think you've escaped this bitterness "because they seemed cool with it when I ran it past them" bullshit.  The only reason they played it cool was to try to save face, idiot, not to spontaneously agree that they aren't good enough for you. 

Embrace being the cunt, though, instead of fighting it.  It will actualy be your best tool later on.

2. Thou shalt be cruel
Another even more baffling question I've heard is, "How do I break up without hurting her feelings?"

The same way you break an egg without cracking the shell, moron.  Impossible. 

Most Earth-humans with even a shred of self-esteem feel hurt when they get rejected.  When you dump someone you take that one step further by rejecting someone you already previously accepted.  So it's kinda like rejection squared to the power of dump.  Compare punching someone in the face with punching them in the balls.  One is worse than the other, right?  Well, dumping someone who's actually in love with you is more like grabbing the back of their head and using that to punch their own balls.

Listen, if you are too afraid of hurting your partner's feelings then you probably don't have much reason for being in a serious relationship in the first place.  Feelings get bruised all the time between people who share a close, intimate relationship, often unintentionally.  And even if you were somehow able to miraculously dump someone without hurting their feels then either they're a sex robot or you haven't really broken up with them at all.

"Sex Robot, we need to talk..." 

3. Thou shaly be a cruel cunt 
One fantastically sinister thing about us humans is that most of our emotion-based decisions occur subconsciously a few moments before we consciously think of them.  All our conscious mind does in these scenarios is seek mental justifications for that decision after the fact.  Intellectually and technically we're the masters of the biological hierarchy, but emotionally we're still reactive mammals.  IQ just let's us come up with fancier excuses for our moody actions.

The point I'm reaching for is that your decision to end a relationship has probably been brewing for a while, and that only a lazy habit cycle and the other person's expectations have barred you from giving it serious and full consideration before.  But now your mind is made up.  No negotiation, no counselling, just you serving a subpoena to Dump Court.  Well, if that's how you feel then that's okay.  And as I've said, there's no nice way this shit is going to go down.  So if you can't do it nicely, make fucking sure you do it effectively.  Now is not the time for doubt or ambiguity.  If it was you'd be looking for the means of resolution, not dissolution.

Firstly, you have to be prepared to feel extremely uncomfortable.  Your soon-to-be-ex is going to run either hot - screaming tears and shitfits - or cold - numb surrender, possibly masked by babbling always fake agreeance.  You know it's not real agreeance because if it was they would have dumped your ass first, dickhead.

4. Thou shalt be a cruel, crystal clear and concise cunt
If you just hung up the phone or arrived back home thinking "Shit, that went well," then you've obviously just failed at breaking up.  People who are in love with you have their own 'irrational justification machine' in their head.  It's called false hope, and unless you stated your case very clearly to them they will just think you're not being serious.   Also, if you use pussy terms like "I need my own space" instead of real imperatives like "I want you the fuck out of my life, you soul draining mouth-breather", they will just think that all this is a hiatus until you 'find yourself' or similar hippie bullshit.

45 reasons?  More like '1 reason' repeated 44 times.

That being said, breaking up is the one time you must rely on emotional arguments instead of logical ones.  The moment you start listing technical faults with the relationship ("I don't like the way you talk about my cat," "Your eating habits turn my stomach," or "Your constant fisting of my sister really grates me.") you open up apologetic debate, with your target now promising to clean up their act and stop wearing their Sister Fister T-shirt.  Those sorts of discussions can go on for hours while the dumpee deconstructs the relational history to scavenge verbal ammo and launch counter-attacks.  In other words, they will try to coerce this confrontation into 'just another fight' that all couples have.

But the truth is that the moment you walked through that door or made that call you were no longer a couple.

Do you know what the one thing is that your redundant partner can't argue with?  How you feel.  There's a strange, intrinsic vs extrinsic emotional dichotomy in us that goes something like this: only I can make myself happy, no one else; however, other people can quite readily make me feel unhappy.  As an example, see that look on your ex's face just as you dumped her?  That's you making her feel unhappy.  And that sense of overwhelming relief coursing through your brain now that you've ended things?  That's you making yourself happy, even if you had to be cruel to get there.

So, just keep it simple and full of statements.  "I am breaking up with you," is always a good start, as is "This relationship between you and me?  Over."  In response to the next inevitable question ("Why, dear god, why?") reply with "Becuase I no longer love/care about/trust/even remotely tolerate you."  "Because the mere sight of you makes me vomit," is also effective, but be prepared to back it up with actual puking.  Nobody can argue with optical-reactive vomiting.

Then there's the nuclear armageddon reason, the one that maximises both harm and effctiveness: "I've fallen in love with somebody else."  Hell, I've deployed that statement before even though it was untrue, simply because I know it works.  I've even had the bruises to prove it.

Don't be afraid to repeat and reinforce your intent either.  Some dumpees will strive to wear you down into a state where retracting your decision seems easier than executing it.  Don't bitch out.  It won't change how you feel, and unless you think pity is a solid foundation for a loving relationship, things are still doomed.

Visual aids also help to get the message across.  Expedite the

process by slapping this sticker on his/her car window or front

door. 

The Aftermath

Dennis Leary said it best when asked how he made his marriage work for so long with his wife: "We stay the fuck away from each other."  The only exceptions to this rule involved eating and sleeping together.  When you break up with someobe you simply subtract those two activities as well.  But there will always be circumstances where you and the dumpee have made that particular advice difficult.  In fact, there are 4 levels of relational intensity that make going your separate ways increasingly difficult:

1. Boyfriend/Girlfriend
The nature of your relationship was pretty much the same as one in highschool: you sleep together and do things together but you don't live together.  Breaking up with someone under these circumstances is by far the easiest because you have geography on your side.  Oh, and as a tip, if they have anything of yours at the time of break-up, things that you really want to get back, then you're a moron.  Either let them keep (read: destroy) whatever it is or reclaim it surreptiously before you drop the bomb.

2. Housemate couple
You live togther, sharing the rent on a place.  Inconvenient when it comes to Operation: Dump, but still not very arduous in terms of process. Obviously one of you needs to move out.  Pronto.  If you're the dumper then you've already made preliminary plans to either buy out their half of the bond or to sacrifice your half if needs be.  Also be sure to protect your stuff.  Even the most reasonable, logical person can become a seething glob of hate-filled pus and bile when rejected by someone who previously claimed to love them.  There is no such thing as maturity of emotion when dumped, only maturity of behaviour, and that can fluctuate like hell.

3. De-facto/Married couple
So, you've married the boy/girl of your dreams, but they turned out to be a nightmare because the marriage occurred in your 20's when you still clung to ideals and delusions of eternal happiness instead of focusing on what you really wanted.  Your only option now is divorce, a wonderfully messy business that keeps so many lawyers in business. Also, in this country if you co-habit a place as a romantically involved couple for 3 or more years then guess what?  You (or they) can claim de-facto status, which means they can get up to half your collective shit.  That means that dumping them is going to get legal, in which case you have to consider just how much you're prepared to pay or lose to get out of their life.

4. With kids
Worst case scenario for dumping, at least in terms of aftermath.  If you share kids with someone you need to accept that the someone is going to be an ongoing part of your life, no matter how indirectly.  You'll be able to tell this by the way you constantly complain about them as you compete for your kids' affections.  Seriously, you really bitch and moan because your ex will always be around in spirit if not in person.  Also, your kids probably look a bit like them too, so have fun with that constant reminder.

But wait, I ain't done with this shit yet, check out part two...