The Questionary Number Paradox

Over the past few days I've been privy to some very amusing relationship tit bits and it has reaffirmed a long held opinion of mine - before marriage men have lots of relationships and women mostly have none ... or so they say.

Seriously, ask ANY unmarried man if he's had any relationships in the past. To us it's a vanity number. Ages back it was the moustache that defined the man, but now it's the number of women they can call their "girl friend". I've seen friends of mine mention "relationships" that lasted two group dinners and a refused telephone number exchange :) It's not too far fetched to imagine this conversation for a man:

Man: Will you be my lover?
Woman: Nah!
Man: Will you at least sleep with me?
Woman: Nah!
Man: Can we be just friends?
Woman: Nah!
Man: *I think she secretly likes me and is playing hard to get. Good. One more to my list. Now I have dated ten women.*

Hence men (and I've been accused of this too) flash back to stories abt their exes. Number One did this, Number Two didn't do this, Number Three might have done this ... :) That's us. Virility is no longer abt sperm count ... it's the ex count that puts the ex in sex for us :)

HOWEVER, women are very different. Chastity is the order of the day for the ladies. Ask a girl, "Were you and X dating?" "Dating? We barely knew each other *for ten years*" In my limited experience, women adopt a much milder tone when it comes to classifying past paramours. "Friends" takes the cake most of the times, often appended with a "good" to give a slightly elevated value; sometimes they say "we almost dated" and occasionally they'll gush out a "yeah! We dated briefly BUT IT WAS NOTHING SERIOUS".

To sum it up, I propose the questionary number paradox - if every single man has dated ten single women and every single woman has never dated a single man then something is wrong ... hmmm!

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I wonder, ponder & finally surrender :

In most of my fights with my wife I always had the last word ... and it was normally "Sorry!"