The Girl Whisperer

by laspapi

as published in the Sunday Guardian of Sunday April 8

The Share-Holders

If you ask a man which he’d prefer- his woman to “be intimate with” another man or fall in love with another- the man will reply, “She may fall in love but she mustn’t do anything physical with another man”. The answer of the woman is radically different. Women say, “I can forgive my man the lapse of “being intimate” with another woman but he mustn’t fall in love”. No one can explain this radical difference between the outlook of the man and the woman but it is as true as the moon controls the ocean tides and the monthly cycles of women.

How can a woman know when other women have stakes in her man or if he’s been with his secretary or his receptionist, the cook, housemaid or even the girl next door? It’s easy, as generally, men kiss and tell. This weakness in some way, is a manner of keeping score, of marking how many trees have been felled and where, and conquests are often exaggerated and blown out of proportion. Let no one be under the impression that women do not swap notes. They do too, even if not as unguardedly as men do. The man’s misdeeds can be discovered through his driver or junior colleagues. Men are not very good at subterfuge and a few gifts from the woman to a driver envious of the boss’s suavity and “successes” will throw up the most amazing details.

The erring man himself forgets to cover his own tracks after a while, and the usual clichés of finding lipstick on his collar or underwear, will come to pass. There’ll be the phone number on the scrap of paper in his pocket, the protective rubber forgotten in his wallet and similar clues. Men are just not very good at concentrating over long periods of time when it comes to undercover work. The stake of the share holder can be discovered in the body language of the erring man and his “concubine”. People who have been intimate cannot hide their body language from the trained eye. A person you have not been intimate with, can only come so close till you become visibly uncomfortable from the unwanted proximity and the intrusion in your private space. For those who have shared closeness of a certain sort though, the touch on the elbow or the knee in a crowded room, the long looks into each other’s eyes and the brushing past of each other as they go opposite ways through a door, reveal what they’ve been at. In their case, there is no discomfort in the invasion of each other’s private spaces.

The erring woman on the other hand is born intense and even if caught in the most compromising situation gasping for breath, will go to her death refusing to admit anything ever happened. When she stands on her ground long enough, the man begins to wonder whether to believe the evidence of his own eyes. It’s a strength women possess and which is not always used for good.
Except in a few cases, it is much more difficult to apprehend a woman who is “playing the field”. The man who will discover the erring woman must listen to his gut instincts and remember only the paranoid survive. If it doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t.