Q. I recently went skiing with a group of friends.
One of them was someone I have known and liked for years, so, as we were both single, we were put together in a twinbedded room in the chalet. Everything was fine until about the fifth night when she took off all her clothes and got into bed with me. I was completely taken aback — I thought we had both accepted long ago that we were just friends — indeed, I had even been joking with her that I would be sleeping with my underpants on back to front to prevent any inadvertent 'flashing'. I had no inclination whatsoever to do her bidding but, being taken by surprise, I made a bit of
a clumsy botch of saying no to this friend and might have made her feel unattractive, which I did not want to do. Mary, how can a man tactfully 'reject' a female friend without hurting her feelings?
A.S., Newmarket, Suffolk A. Ladette culture has led to disturbing numbers of women making inappropriate, spatchcock chicken-like presentations of themselves. Men can see them off tactfully by shaking their heads and murmuring woefully, 'You couldn't have known, you couldn't have known. . . . 'They can then cause a distraction by leaping out of bed to melodramatically pace the room reliving an incident in early adolescence. It was then when another, this time horribly unattractive, woman got into bed with them in the nude. 'It was so terrible that I was traumatised by it for months,' they can say. 'Ever since then I've always had to be the one to make the first move. And I
have to build up to it slowly. It's so tragic because now that you've pre-empted my making a pass at you. I'll never be able to see you in the same light again. And we would have made such a great couple!'
Previous page
