Here’s a tip. If you’ve been with your partner a long time, and you’re yearning after the heady excitement of a new romance, take a look around. Don’t compare to movies or television either, just check out some real people in the fledgling stages of their relationships. Now doesn’t it look excruciating? All that angst, all that insecurity, all that grooming. Imagine going back to the days of incessant hair removal. How exhausting. I’m quite sure your average bloke has no idea how much effort a girl has to put in to impress him. Of course lots of them claim it’s not necessary, and that they prefer ‘the natural look’. Right. Because women are naturally smooth and sweet smelling with shiny hair and shaped eyebrows aren’t they?

Then there’s all that time you spend trying to figure the other one out. “Does he like me?”, “What’s he thinking?”, “Can he hear the ticking of my biological clock from over there?”. Women in a new relationship are constantly trying to determine how he feels and where it’s all headed. We do this by talking about it. A lot. Don’t kid yourself guys, all her girlfriends know everything about you. They’ve spent hours analysing your every move and hearing your conversations recounted verbatim. Your every word or gesture has been scoured for hidden meaning in our tireless attempt to define our relationships. Don’t feel uncomfortable, it’s better a girl talks it all out with her friends. If she didn’t, she’d be after you to ‘have a talk’, and you don’t want that do you?

It doesn’t help that men and women communicate so differently. Even one little word can mean two entirely separate things. For example, if you ask a man what’s wrong, and he says “nothing”, chances are he literally means nothing. Whereas if a woman has the same response, you better think really hard about what you’ve done to upset her. Because a one word answer from a woman is usually cause for alarm. It can take years to get past this sort of early stress and miscommunication. Personally it’s taken 15 for the hubby to understand even half of what I’m talking about. Who’d choose to go back and re-train a new one?