Blog

It was English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson who said, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Yet anyone with a broken heart would agree that to have "loved and lost" is akin to stabbing yourself in the eye with a toothpick while your heart gets twisted around like a corkscrew. In fact the only thing I can see that might be a positive outcome to emerge from a break-up is the fact that you either lose a heck of a lot of weight, or you can freely rediscover your penchant for vanilla fudge ripple ice-cream and triple choc chunk cookies. (Hey, at least it numbs the pain.)

Then there are other people - the more sensible ones among us - who will emerge from a toxic break-up with a list of lessons they've actually learnt in the process.

One such dude is Ben Karlin, the former senior editor of The Onion and editor of the book Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me. To him, break-ups can indeed teach lovers a myriad lessons for the next relationship. (That's if they're brave enough to put their heart on the line ever again.) ...

Who would have thought that bras would be around this long? Certainly not Germaine Greer, who in the early 1960s refused to wear a bra insisting it was a "ludicrous invention".

Yet exactly 40 years on, after her ground-breaking tome The Female Eunuch hit the feminist airwaves, it seems the undergarment is here to stay. Yep, a whopping 90 per cent of Aussie women own a bra, with most females housing at least six in their wardrobes.

But Greer isn't impressed with the lack of free-flowing bosoms on display. She recently wrote in The Guardian newspaper that bras had turned modern breasts into somewhat of a joke ...

"Women lie more and better than men!" tut-tutted a recent CBS News headline. The story emerged off the back of the surprising results of a survey of 500 women carried out by well-known US commentator Susan Shapiro Barash, author of the new book Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Women and Deception.

Her findings? The fairer sex do indeed fib more - about everything from love, to money, to the amount of botox they get inject into their foreheads. Yikes.

But before you choke on your cornflakes over the fact that your significant other might be lying about the amount of money she spent on her new pair of high heels, there's another lie doing the relationship rounds that might scare you into making every future girlfriend take a lie-detector test before you bonk her.

According to a 2004 survey, almost half of all women would lie to their partners to keep their relationships going if they became pregnant by another man ...

Something awry seems to be going on with modern men. As evidenced by Brendan Fevola allegedly passing around a nude photograph of ex-fling Lara Bingle (culminating in the photograph being published in a mainstream women's magazine), it seems that, instead of growing up, many Aussie men are actually becoming more immature by the minute.

Unfortunately, you can forget your modern man taking you to a swanky white tablecloth restaurant because nowadays you're more likely to get an offer to sit on his couch and watch him play PlayStation all night instead. (Especially since the mean age of those who play video games is 33, Geek.com says.)

Oh, and don't expect this breed of modern man to clean up his mess afterwards either. Oh no. Apparently there's now a whole generation of dudes who don't cook, clean or wash their own underpants, most likely because they're one of the 25 per cent of dudes aged 20-34 who according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, still live at home with their mum.

Unfortunately for modern alpha females, it's clear to see that, while the women have had to "man" up in order to survive in a man's world, the opposite has occurred for the opposite sex ...

It was Oscar Wilde who said, "Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others."

While Wilde might have been under the impression that a man with a heavier wallet scored more dates, more casual sex and would get more raunchy handwritten love letters, perhaps he also predicted that news would emerge in the future that rich men would be able to give women better orgasms.

Yep. According to the findings of Newcastle University psychologist Dr Thomas Pollet, who polled more than 5000 people (including 1534 women with boyfriends or husbands), the theory lies in biology.

In fact, just like Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories (he suggested that people choose their mates depending on their ability to reproduce), Pollet's conclusion is that, when a modern woman invests in a man sexually, there's a risk she'll have a child with him. Therefore, biologically, she is inclined to want to mate with someone who will be able to provide for her and her family.

(The other theory is that she wants to show off her ability to reach orgasm in order to impress her suitor) ...

"Never sleep with your mate's ex-girlfriend." Or so says one of the rules of the Bro Code: a set of unspoken regulations that exist between men and their mates, which are put in place in the hope of keeping the peace between Bros everywhere. Just ask a loyal Bro (as I did the other day at my local gym) although he almost broke a cardinal rule: you don't talk about the Bro Code ... especially with women.

Yet, while it seems many Aussie blokes adhere to the Bro Code, (after all, we are home of the origin of "mateship"), blokes in other parts of the globe just don't seem to be as diligent.

Take John Terry, former captain of England's football team, who, after being outed as having been ensconced in an affair with his teammate ex-girlfriend, became the subject of a nation-wide smear campaign.

Now, aside from Terry doing the wrong thing by his wife and kids, his actions and behaviour have led many to ask the inevitable question: how unforgivable should it be when one bonk's a mate's ex-girlfriend? ...

When Kate Moss recently came out saying that "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", health advocates, health conscious women and pastry chefs alike gasped in collective shock.

Why? Because, while we've long suspected that those who believe one can never be too thin nor too rich are simply an anomaly, we secretly hoped that models such as Moss were freaks of nature and could eat whatever their hearts desired without putting on an ounce of flab.

"It's in their DNA!" we argued, happily chowing down our second Krispy Kreme. "We could never look like that because it's not in our genetic make-up!" we shouted as we sipped our milkshake. Yet, sadly, the truth seems much more sombre.

These lollypop ladies do in fact go to extreme lengths to be that super thin and yet, the more we read about their fad diets, strict regimes and all-prawn diets, the more we feel bad that we're not out there trying just as hard ...

Quick question for the ladies: Has feminism f---ed up your love life?

If we are to go by a recent study titled The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, then it would seem that feminism is the reason women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. And if women such as Tyra Banks, author Lori Gottlieb and my friend Jay are anything to go by, then indeed the F word has created more problems for our romantic lives than the rise of internet porn.

I noticed this the other day, as I knocked back sushi with Jay, my perennially single 30-something girlfriend, as I became privy to yet another complaint by her about another man who seemingly did not live up to her expectations of what a "boyfriend" should be.

She'd been dating the dude in question for a couple of months, and yet, despite the fact that he didn't have a criminal record, a psycho ex-girlfriend or a drug habit, he nevertheless just didn't seem to make the cut when it came to primo boyfriend material. Why? I had no bloody idea ...

With Valentine's Day out of the way, you can bet your box of condoms that many people out there will be contemplating a break-up before the next sappy holiday rears its ugly head. In an indolent attempt to ease the dumping process, many have asked if it's ever OK to use the line, "It's not you, it's me", a cop-out if I've ever heard one. Others are of the school of thought that honesty is the best policy and usually, that entails telling your soon-to-be-ex that it's really them, and not you, who's the real problem.

So, if you're vacillating between wanting to dump your current beau and not wanting to let go of what you already have, (after all, there is a supposed "man drought" situation at hand), I've cobbled together a list of things that may (or may not) help ease the process and explain when it's not you, but definitely they, who is messing things up ...

Last week we ran one of our favourite debates: deciding what makes a "good wife".

Sentiments ran wild from "don't be a bitch and stop being a control freak" to "do not emasculate your husband" and "don't be a Westinghouse", which in reader Phil's words translates to this: "It's when the wife turns into a fridge and there's no sex or love any more. When that happens, for whatever reason, then plainly and very, very simply, the man will look elsewhere."

Of course the axiom came up (as it usually does on this forum), that in reality all men want is something quite simple: "a chef in the kitchen, a maid in the house and a whore in the bedroom". Who would have thought?

As with most Ask Sam topics, the question quickly got flipped: "So what then makes a good husband?" many women asked. "I'm sure the women will have lengthy lists!" replied the men. And no doubt we will ...