Last week’s Love Gods column was sadly blighted by the fact that our supplicant middle-aged lawyer  was a distinctly unsympathetic character.  This week it’s different.  Our plaintive female client is in a terrible pickle, albeit one involving a husbandly type presciently diagnosed last week by Dr Troppo.

Samantha Brett has fallen down on the job this week, however, and failed to post her weekly reader’s question.  Perhaps she’s still shagged out by the excesses of Valentine’s Day.  But never fear.  I’ve resorted to pillaging Kate de Brito’s Ask Bossy “blog” at Rupert’s place instead.  I assume she’s related to that moron Sam de Brito who conducts a “blog” at SMH, so she obviously knows a lot about forebearance if nothing else. 

Anyway, here’s this week’s reader’s letter (let’s call her Narelle):

I have been with my boyfriend for six months. A year ago he had a one night stand (with a condom). The girl got pregnant and kept the baby. He insisted that they take a DNA test, and it came out that he is the father of the baby. This woman is 23 years old, lives at home with her parents, has no job, is not going to school, never got her drivers license, does not have a car, or a bank account. She is very illogical and irrational, and he hates her (as do I).

He is being responsible and giving her money for the baby as well as spending time with his now 6 month old son. He still has to tell his own family about this (since he just found out 2 weeks ago). He is very stressed out, but determined to do the right thing. The babys mother is ok with his friends and family meeting the baby, but not I. I feel she is doing this just out of jealousy. She voiced her anger that he continued to date other women while she was pregnant, yet she was a one night stand!!!! Why wouldnt he date other women? He told her that too.

We love each other, and our relationship is great. We are really happy with each other. He really wants me to meet his son. He was saying that he will try to have me meet the son without her knowing, but I dont want to be hidden!!!! I feel angered by the fact that his friends and family will meet the baby before I will. I know she is just being spiteful. she sais she doesnt want the baby getting attached to me and being sad when we break up. I feel it is presumptuous of her to assume we will break up, and i dont think a 6 month old baby can get attached like that.

I want him to stand up to her, for me. I am so mad that she is trying to push me out of this.  What if when he brings her by to meet the family, I will be there, but he doesnt tell her until she gets there? What is she gonna do? I know she wont keep him from the baby, I know she probably wont even say anything. She never tells him anything when they are together with the baby, but as soon as he leaves she texts him about how shes mad over one thing or another, or she feels this, or she needs that. He does not pick up her phone calls, yet when they do speak on the phone, she is just as unconfrontational as she is in person. What should I do? Should I tell him how I feel? Should I wait and see what happens. I dont want this to be the reason we break up. I want to be ok with the whole situations, if Im not I owe it to him and myself to break up with him.

Also, when I meet the baby I want to love it because its his, not hate it because its hers. Please help me! My boyfriend is 24, I am 21. We really love each other, and I think the relationship has great long term potential, but this situations can make it or break it. 

Our Love Gods’ advice is over the fold, and you’re welcome to help too, in the comment box. Continue reading →

I’m beginning to have serious reservations about whether we did the right thing in letting these Love Gods loose on Samantha Brett’s unsuspecting lovelorn readers.  Poor Shami, tender ego shrivelled and crushed underfoot!  But did that stop our Love Gods?   Oyster and bacon nibbles indeed. And prescribing experimental drugs!  I mean, look what happened to that confused actor chappie Heath Ledger.   As for that dreadful Ringschott, he’s beyond the pale.  Telling poor Shami he’s a loser who should just change his name to Wayne. Dr Troppo’s Receptionist will hear about this.   What if Shami hurls himself in front of the 8:35 express from Werribee?

Hang on.  I’ve just looked at Ask Sam’s reader problem for this week, and I’m feeling much better now.  This bloke is anything but a delicate little blossom, a 45 year old lawyer no less:

“Am I a player?” asks Moz, a 45-year-old male reader who describes himself as “a barrister, consider myself smart, fit and good looking – oh and only a little arrogant,” and who is single and looking for love.

He writes this to me in an email:

“I’ve been on RSVP sporadically over the last 2 years and have quickly met some great women (not all from there but most are) who I quickly shag, but then quickly feel they are not the ‘one’ and, not wanting to lead them on, even though the sex is great (and no, unlike the meeting, shagging and ending, that’s not quick!) I tell them I don’t want to continue…

“There have probably been 6 or so like this over that time, none at the same time, many for two – three weeks, some as long as a few months – the latter ending more because the women became a little too, understandably from their point of view, as objectively things were going well, ‘serious’. Which for me meant I should end it then as there was always ‘something’ – even though I was enjoying the company and given time I might see there was no real problem. However, I trusted my gut and told myself its best to end it.

“A good girlfriend says I’m being too choosy and always finding little faults:

• she is kinda big (no, she is average – just larger that my skinny ex..)
• she is too serious too soon (no, after a couple months of near constant contact, weekends away with kids etc., she starts making plans into the future like a holiday together, so nothing big).
• she has droopy breasts (this was one of the shorter relationships… otherwise beautiful, funny, intelligent woman)

“Ok, so I have all sorts of problems – I’m shallow, not over my ex? Commitment phobia? maybe, although I don’t think so, it is besides the point – does it make me a Player?

“Does dating, shagging and then calling it within a couple of weeks/months because you can’t see ‘the’ future, mean you’re a player? Sure there are guys out there who just want the sex but I believe there would be many men like me who are labelled as Players who don’t think they are – or are we?

Do I detect a whiff of masochism along with the evident sadism?  An exhibitionist at any price?  What sort of advice does this joker imagine he’s going to get even from Sam’s readers, let alone our Love Gods?  Anyway, we’ll see over the fold:

Continue reading →

Well, last week’s inaugural edition of Ask Troppo’s Love Gods seemed to go well. I certainly haven’t heard from our supplicant reader Gen, so can only assume she was well satisfied with the advice our Love Gods gave her.

Unfortunately, one of our putative Love Gods in Nabakov has found himself otherwise engaged, and feels he won’t be able to discharge the duties of a Love God with his accustomed sobriety and attention to detail. Luckily, we’ve managed to co-opt George St Clair, another legendary expert in the subtle arts of love and romance, to fill the yawning chasm left by Nabs’ premature withdrawal. George is a free spirit who enjoys cool dialogue in hot tubs, talking to his friend the wind in unspoilt Byron Bay and taking his Nova Sterling kit car for a spin down the Great Ocean Road with a lady friend or two. He knows how to respect your personal space while also lighting your fire. We feel privileged to welcome him to the Troppo Love Gods team.

Meanwhile, Rex Ringschott was charged with Gross Misconduct under the Love God Disciplinary Code, after unsubtly propositioning Gen in a very tacky comment box contribution. However, taking a cue from Harbajan Singh and the Indian cricket team, Rex claimed to see this as an unpardonable slur on his integrity and threatened to take his Love God Rod and depart if found guilty. Mindful of Nabakov’s earlier withdrawal, we took a pragmatic decision to downgrade the charge to Misdemeanour Flirting, to which Rex sulkily entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to be severely chastised by Dr Troppo’s Receptionist. What form the chastisement may take is not yet known.

What with all this turmoil in Love God ranks, we’ve hardly had time to think about the romantic needs of our love-challenged readers. Fortunately, the SMH’s Samantha Brett has kept her mind on the job at hand (as did Rex, though in a different sense). Her latest Ask Sam problem comes from a male reader named Shami, who asks:

I was going out with this girl for the past three weeks and it was quite full-on. Then last week it started to die a little. We had a detailed chat and she says that she “really, really likes” me and the “sex is great”, but she still hasn’t felt the “vibe / spark / connection” that she has been looking for. Now she thinks that it won’t work out with us!

After a long chat she was convinced that we haven’t spent enough time together and that she would give it another go. But now I have this feeling that even if we try again it won’t work and there’ll be too much pressure on me to generate that vibe.

I’m really confused and have always been confused with women about what they want.

• What do you (if there is anything) to generate that spark?
• If there is no spark, can it be created?
• What do women usually look for and like in the first few dates (in terms of that spark)?

Our Love Gods’ advice is over the fold:

Continue reading →

Sometimes I’m overcome with a feeling that Club Troppo’s tone is rather too uniformly earnest and worthy. Dr Troppo’s posts sometimes help to dispel the ennui, but I can’t help thinking more is needed. There’s so much more to life than politics, law and economics. Love and relationships for a start. Judging by the mix of material found in the MSM, most people spend a large slice of their lives talking or reading about dating, relationships, love and romance.

It’s high time Troppo dipped a toe into the murky waters of love, romance, sex and dating. And what better place to start than the SMH’s wildly popular “blog” Ask Sam edited by Samantha Brett? It’s said to be responsible for a large proportion of the online SMH’s daily “hits”. And no wonder. It’s a seething maelstrom of real life melodrama and post-teen angst. Yet the advice Sam and her callow readers actually dispense to their lovelorn correspondents is pedestrian at best. Accordingly we here at Troppo have decided to help. We’ve assembled a team of world-weary but wise and deeply compassionate life counsellors, who will be let loose each week on one of Ask Sam’s romantically (and often intellectually) bereft correspondents.

Troppo’s impressive panel of Love Gods includes Dr Troppo (and perhaps on occasion his Receptionist); arts reviewer extraordinaire Darlene Taylor; legendary pseudonymous blog commenter Nabakov; Jen McCulloch; Nicholas Gruen; erstwhile Troppo author and commenter Geoff Honnor; Saint in a Straitjacket and Rex Ringschott. Of course, they won’t all have time to advise our chosen victim correspondent every week, but we hope to get at least two or three wise and caring panel responses each time, and of course you our gentle readers are most welcome to contribute your own wisdom in the comment box.

This week’s reader problem comes from Ask Sam correspondent Gen (not to be confused with my wife Jen, who is in fact one of Troppo’s Love Gods), who asks:

I happened to have a one night stand on NYE (my first one) and this guy has continued to message me and I’ve been messaging him back. I am feeling like I really could like him and I may have ruined any chances of something deeper because I slept with him the way I did. Is there any way this could work? Is this salvageable? – Gen

Like me, you may detect a faint whiff here of the social attitudes examined by Anne Summers in her seminal Australian feminist work Damned Whores and God’s Police. But not Sam Brett or her pimply readers, their perspectives tend decisively towards the less cerebral. And good job too. But enough of the blatherings of this misanthropic middle aged curmudgeon. What do Troppo’s Love Gods think about Gen’s romantic dilemma?

Continue reading →