Seventeen Questions

My chum Nick has a way of putting things. Apropos of nothing in particular, but the sense he should be doing something for the betterment of chaps in general led him to send me a list of questions, and discussion points, answers to which a chap of the male gender should attempt to elicit from prospective girlfriends. I leave it to his own words and discursive nature.

Questions To Ask A Potential Girlfriend: A Chap’s Guide

1. Are you mad?

2. Is your bed usually covered with a large collection of soft toys of the sort more usually given to children?
3. If you keep a diary, do you have a wholly sensible and readily explicable reason for doing so, and for the types of things recorded therein?
4. On occasions on which you have said things that you “know” are not “true” (in so far as both terms can be applied to the matter in question), did you know that you were doing it (and that it is something different in kind from your normal approach to communication) and what your intended outcome was?
5. Given that some things are not capable of being usefully explained solely by academic analysis (e.g. why some like coffee and others do not), how readily do you stop trying to use your analytical powers to understand/ conclude about (to any further degree) something of import, and decide instead that the matter in question is impenetrable/ irreducible/ 100% subjective?

6. To what extent do you think that a large proportion of humanity often (a) appears to you disconcertingly or infuriatingly weird or daft or short-sighted, and/ or (b) is shudder-inducingly ugly, and/ or (c) is solidly nasty? 
7. With all the obvious qualifications and definitions and caveats, can you believe in any meaningful way something that you know is not actually true?

8. Do you like sex?

9. When you see a dog tied up outside a supermarket, what are you most likely to think?

10. To what extent do you envisage using the phrases “All men are bastards” or “the politics of penetration” in future conversations?

11. What roles/ features relevant to a sexual relationship do you think are essentially male or female (assuming a fairly normal heterosexual arrangement)? 

12. Have most of your previous partners of consequence wholly failed to take you seriously, or to show a level of consideration for your wishes/ preferences/ foibles that would be somewhere between kind and sensible/ appropriate?

13. Do you know what you want from a boyfriend, and does your experience suggest that it is easier to get such things by telling him that list or conversely that doing so is the last thing that is likely to succeed?

14. To what extent do you think that every relationship is built by people making compromises, and that a good one is one that is worth large compromises?

15. Do you currently hope/ expect to be a mother within 5 years?

16. Have you ever been made so angry that things that you or a partner own were thrown with vigour or destroyed utterly? 

17. Are there any questions that you would like to ask me?

If I can fit Nick's discussions to possible answers in the next post, I shall, else it shall be done piecemeal.

Seventeen Questions (continued)

( Nick's discussion points )