What’s love got to do with it?

In the movie Sex and the City, there’s one scene where Carrie and Mr.Big talk about marriage. It particularly caught my attention because in this scene, Mr.Big is preparing their dinner, while Carrie just sits in front of him sipping her glass of wine. Around me, I know a few couples where the woman doesn’t know or doesn’t want to cook. One of my female colleagues confided once that she couldn’t even fry an egg. So, the other half of the couple is often designated as the cooker. And generally, the other half doesn’t know how to cook either, so they rely heavily on processed food, chinese and pizza deliveries, …

Yet, a male friend of mine, who’s a food lover, told me that his wife never cooks at home, because he’s the one behind the stove. His wife is lucky, I think. I just hope she’s not picky.

Many of my female friends told me they find a man who can cook and loves that really attractive. “A man who invites me in his apartment to prepare a meal to me, and by preparing, I mean really cooking something and not just heating a processed food or a delivery, can win me over, even if the conversation didn’t start that well” one of them said. “For me, who’s a food lover, a man who can cook divinely is certainly a plus. I do know how to cook myself, and I must say that I would get along pretty well with him. I also speculate that he will understand me better. My ex didn’t understand why I spend so much time behind the stove, and often told me he didn’t like what I cooked. He was allergic to any new meal I would prepare. We often fought about that, and this is probably why we decided to end our relationship” another one said. “A man who loves to cook is someone who thinks about the others, that’s what I think, and this is a quality that really turns me on” another one said.

Not all my friends or the women I know would be seduced by a man who can cook, though. It depends on their love for food. “I only eat junk food, and mostly the same thing all the time. In fact, I don’t care that much about food, I’m not curious. So, no, a man who can cook isn’t gonna win my heart just by cooking me a meal” A., 34, said. ” The only thing that interests me in a meal is the dessert. For the rest, I don’t care. So, he could be a great chef, I wouldn’t necessarily fall for him” M., 35, said.

So, do you know how to cook? And do you prefer cooking for the others, or people who cook for you?

Ah, technology! Without it, it would be difficult to live nowadays. But how did our parents and our grandparents before, when the mobile phone/ blackberry/ computer didn’t exist? Today, if you don’t have a mobile phone and a computer (for the blackberry, it’s another thing), you’re considered as an alien. Yet, when you think about it, those devices can also poison our existence and our love life. Because if you use them all the time, you basically ruin your social life, and can disqualify easily in the game of love.

Among the technological devices we use the most today, the mobile phone/PDA is probably the one we use the most. Personally, I don’t use it that much, for the simple reason that I usually forget to turn it on (and it drives my boss and my entourage a little bit crazy, because they can’t reach me). I’m more addicted to my computer (mailbox, blog,…). But among my colleagues and my friends, this one is like a drug and they can’t live without it.

When you spend your life hung at your mobile, it can be annoying for the people around you. It can be interpreted as if you don’t care about them, and find the conversation you have with the person on the phone more interesting than the one who’s speaking to you right now. In other words, it can be disrespectful.

One of my professional contacts is a very busy man, and it’s difficult to join him because he’s constantly on the phone. Yet, when I have to interview him or just spend lunch with him, he has the courtesy to hang up his blackberry. He once apologized because he had to receive an important phone call from his big boss during our lunch, but apart from that, he’s really acting like a gentleman. And I must say I like that.

One of my friends once told me she encountered the opposite of him on a date, and that he managed to exasperate her after just ten minutes spent together. “Each time that his blackberry beeped, he had to look at it to see if he received an email. And it beeped all the time. I had the impression he didn’t care about me at all. Each time I began a conversation with him, we were interrupted by his blackberry. At the end of the date, I just knew I wouldn’t spend more time with me, since he wasn’t able to give me a little bit of his time, and by a little bit, I mean not just periods of seconds” she said.

Of course, some people don’t mind about that. I’ve seen many couples both hung at their mobile while in the restaurant, and they seem fine with that. It’s a question of point of view. Yet, it’s best to be on the same wavelength in that case. You won’t have the same ability to understand someone who can’t live without his blackberry if you’re not addicted yourself to that.

So, do you mind if the people you’re talking to interrupt your conversation to answer their phone?

When I was younger and still a student, teachers would always place me beside the most difficult and insubordinate kid in the class, always of the opposite sex. They bet that the quiet little lamb I was would calm down her turbulent neighbor, and it worked most of the time.  I did remain friends with most of my difficult class neighbors afterwards, curiously, even if our characters were radically different. Back then, I had a kind of admiration for their insolent behavior, as I was really shy. And some of them were just impressed by how I could keep my composure in every situation (it has changed a little since then) and by my kindness (that’s what they told me).  The little exchanges we had in the classroom influenced a bit our behaviors: they helped me to be less shy, I helped them to remain composed.

In love too, this kind of dynamics can work. I met once a woman who told me about the relationship she had with her man. She was an absolutely loving and caring person, and she fell in love with a man who wasn’t exactly an angel: he had been arrested several times for drunk driving and violent behaviors. But she said that since he knew her, he wanted to improve his personality.”He was conscious he was a bad person, and he was amazed by my unconditional love. He knew that I loved him, no matter if he was angry or in a bad mood. That helped him to change his behavior. Of course, everything didn’t go smooth at the beginning of our relationship. We had little fights, but it evolved” she said.

This dynamic only works if the so-called bad person realizes he/she’s heading in the wrong direction, and is willing to change. “I noticed there was something wrong with me, as people were never happy to see me at work, or even in my family. When I met her, she helped me realize I was only thinking of me, and didn’t give a damn about the others’ feelings. She helped me to open up and to care more about the others, and since then, my social life has improved dramatically. I could never thank her enough for that”N., 40, said.

You can never force someone to change. It has to come from the other. Otherwise, you will fight all the time because you know he/she will never change and eventually get fed up with his/her behavior. “He wanted me to be different, more outspoken, more tidy, more this and that, but I didn’t see what was the problem with my personality, and we often fought about that. One day, I decided I had enough of his and his constant reproaches, so I left him”O., 37, said.

But I do believe we all need each other to improve ourselves. If we live only withdrawn on ourselves, we’re just becoming sinister people, and it’s never a good thing.

So, have you ever dated someone who helped you being a better person?

Some people only live for the others’ attention, and they will try their best to search for compliments on their achievements or just their personality. In other words, they’re called narcissistic. An example? “When I met B., he was absolutely charming, always giving me tons of compliments about me. But I noticed that his compliments weren’t just nourished by pure altruism, because it always sounded like he was asking me a question about himself underneath.  For example, he would buy me a dress, say I would look good in it, and expected me to tell him he had an excellent sense for picking the right clothes. It was really tiring to live with him”P., 34, said.

“Everything revolved around him. He couldn’t do anything without getting the others’s attention. He chose carefully his clothes to get noticed. He wore a lot of perfume, so it was hard not knowing he was in the room, he talked very loudly all the time, if he was on the phone with someone, everyone could hear his conversation. But he managed to get indispensable to everyone, and always got a tons of compliments for what he did . Living by his side was a little difficult, because I felt I was completely transparent” K.,39, said.

“He had the biggest car, the most edgy look, he wore a lot of jewelry, he would decide everything we do and he was with me because I thought he was admiring at first, but then I changed my mind”I., 34, said.

In my job, I have also to deal with those kind of individuals. And I must say that among CEOs, you can find easily a lot of those specimen. They’re the one who would ask for an interview (and send you before the D-Day the questions you’re allowed to ask them) on a regular basis, or the one who would constantly call you so you can include in your article their quotes, or the one who just can’t control themselves when there’s a camera in the room, and will do anything to get interviewed. They’re also the one who comes constantly in the pages of your newspaper, week after week, and the one who will congratulate you for your article, even if you basically took all his quotes and made an article out of it ( generally, if you’re a journalist, you feel a little bit manipulated by this).

Politicians too can be affected by this. In fact, I believe that when people around you always compliment you, you start to get used to it, and it inflates your ego.

So, would you date someone like that?

What’s the use of having a perfect body? Well, it is to have the pleasure to be the center of the attention on the beach. This place is the ultimate one for physical discriminations because when you’re in a bathing suit or a bikini (or a monokini…), you can’t really hide your body. For a woman, cellulite is the number one enemy and varicoses too. It’s really not that pretty to watch, and if you’re affected with that, you have two options: either you don’t care and sunbathe, or you just stay with your clothes on.

When I was on holidays, just beside my parasol, there was a couple of Russians, where Madam was sunbathing in just a thong. The light of my life couldn’t detach his eyes off of her thighs, which were  heavily affected by cellulite. But  she didn’t care at all about this detail, and honestly, she reminded  me of a Rubens paint, but  with a tan. And she seemed really at ease with her body.  On the other side of my parasol, there was a German family, where the mother sunbathed almost naked like the Russian, but curiously, the two teenagers kept on all their clothes including if they went swimming in the sea. The girl just stayed under the shadow of the parasol all the time, and avoided carefully all the rays of sun.  Maybe when we grow old, we just don’t give a damn anymore about our looks. This would explain that.

In front of me, I had to enjoy the sight of a young male who knew he had a great body. He had the one of a chippendale, and to compliment his shape, he chose a orange bathing suit that flashed on the whole beach. It was difficult not to notice him. He was there with two of his mates, but he was the only one swimming in the sea, showing his ability to reach the buoy to everyone laying on the beach, especially to two blonde girls who were sunbathing not very far from his towel. He managed to get the number of one of the girls, but when the two left, he began to cruise again on the beach for another victim, and he found her. His two mates just watched him laughing the whole time. I bet they were shy and hadn’t the guts to flirt with the opposite sex unlike their friends. Personally, I would have preferred his two friends than him. Vain people just make me want to run.

So, do you consider the beach (and the bathing suit) like an ordeal? Or do you just ignore the others’ look?

So, this is it: the Road Runner that is me is hitting the road again (and tells the coyote I know who is a Media whore to fuck off)…

More seriously, I’m off on holidays for the next two weeks. I’m gonna miss you all…

There’s one movie that left a strange footprint in my mind when I saw it for the first time: the unbearable lightness of being.

I didn’t know the script was inspired by the book of the same name written by Milan Kundera and I didn’t hear about the author before either.

In the book, but also in the movie, Sabina, a painter who’s Tomas’ mistress, always wore a hat when she and Tomas met to have sex. That hat had an erotic meaning between them. But when she wore that with one of her other lovers, it lost completely its meaning. And her lover just said to her it was ridiculous and asked her to take that off.

The little games we play with our lover are unique and don’t work with another one. Things can take a certain meaning throughout the time we spend with our lover and create a bond between us. That’s why it makes it so unique. Have you noticed that with each lover you have, you have different codes, behaviors, ignition tricks?

Some people used a lot of sex toys and can include BDSM into their sexual life. Some people don’t need that. I asked around me if people used any trick in the bedroom, and this is what I got:

“We just love to undress in front of a mirror, and often look at each other performing the sexual act. But apart from that, nothing else” H., 36, said.

“I enjoy the dime light of a candlelight in the bedroom” O., 36, said.

“We play our favorite songs”P., 37, said.

“From time to time, we use massage oil and scented powder. Sometimes, food like chocolate invite themselves in the bedroom” L., 36, said.

“Sometimes, we used sex toys like a vibrating egg or ring if we feel like it. Otherwise, we just go with the flow”M., 34, said.

“It depends on our moods. we can use sex toys, fine lingerie, food,… when we want to” I., 30, said.

So, do you use any trick in the bedroom?

In the unbearable lightness of being, Milan Kundera explained that we all need to be watched. He divides the people in four categories according to this paradigm. The first one needs the look of a infinite number of people. The second one needs the look of familiar faces. The third one needs the look of the one they love (and without it, everything falls apart), and the last one lives under a imaginary look coming from absent people.

This last category belongs to the dreamers. I’ve met many people in the first, second and third categories described by Milan Kundera, but this one is really an exception as he said. Yet, when you think about it, when we break up with our partner, some people still act as if they were watched by their ex, even though he/she’s not there anymore. My former director, who was in the middle of a divorce when I left his company, did everything in his life in function of what his ex-wife would have liked him to do, strangely, although his ex left him for her gym teacher. Of course, it was temporary, but it showed that sometimes, we can all fall into this dreamer category, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

People who lose the one they love by a tragic death can also react like that. I confess that when one of my best friends died in an accident many, many years ago, I still reacted as if he would approve or disapprove what I was doing, and it lasted years after he passed away. He was like a brother to me, and we often fought when he was alive because of my then misbehaviors. I wasn’t an angel at that time, and his loss basically put my life under a huge questioning. He became a little voice inside my head that told me not to do this, or to do that.

Recently, I watched a report where a young homeless struggled to get herself out of the streets after her boyfriend’s death, and she had those words for the journalist: “I know he wanted me to have a better life, so I tried my best to get out of my situation. The temptation to go backwards is always there, but each time I doubt, I think about him, and it gives me the strength to carry on” she said. She reacted exactly as I did, many years ago.

Reacting like that, as if we were watched by someone absent, can be really helpful to us, in certain circumstances.

So, have you ever been in a situation like that? And under which category described by Milan Kundera would you fall?

I will be off on holidays in a few days, and I thought it would be a great idea to give the commands of this blog to the readers during my absence. So, if you want to start a debate on this blog, feel free to leave me an email, and I will give you the access. Don’t feel shy!

Many years ago, when I just started as a journalist, I went to a seminar abroad where I met one of my readers. I found it (and I still find it) odd, because when you’re a journalist, you’re not supposed to have fans or faithful readers. At least, that’s what I thought when I began this career. And the guy I had in front of me just told me this: marry me. I remember I just blushed, muttered something and then walked away from him. Gosh, it was embarrassing.

This got me thinking: can we fall in love with someone just because of what he/she writes?

With my personal experience, I would say no. You can’t tell who I am just by the articles I write (the topics I write about are way different from what I write in here). Generally, my articles relate facts in the financial world. Hedge funds, the subprime crisis, private equity firms, stock exchanges, … aren’t particularly known to be sexy. And I try to be objective all the time. Yet, it’s true that each journalist/writer has his own style, but I won’t define mine as particularly outstanding. Besides, I’m not a columnist, nor an editorialist yet, and I don’t give my personal opinions in an article. So, if you read my articles, you can’t tell what I’m thinking. At least, I hoped so.

But once, when I had a lunch with B., my professional contact who drives me mad, we discussed a little bit about this, and he told me he often agreed with what I wrote in my articles. He said that he knew I was trying to be objective, but yet, there was always an opinion if you read carefully between the lines. Just by the way I select the informations, and I treat it, it becomes clear that I take a position against something. B. said that I turn everything serious into something absurd. This is how he perceives my articles, including the ones I write about his company.

Maybe he’s right. I tend to perceive this world as a permanent remake of theater plays from Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter or Eugene Ionesco. When you think about it, nothing really makes sense in this world.

Just before I met B. for the first time in real life, three months ago (I’ve known him through his work for years, and he’s known me through my articles), he had a strange experience in his professional life that pushed him to write a column in another newspaper, much more known and less specialized than mine. Every journalist in my newsroom read it, and it still makes us laugh now. Just because what he wrote was a little pathetic. But if it’s analyzed, his column can say this about him: he’s a mister-know-it-all, a little bit arrogant, paternalist, scornful, a famewhore and self-centered. And indeed, that what’s he is.

Yet, what we write just give some details about ourselves, but it certainly not give our whole picture. I’m not just someone who thinks this world is sometimes a little bit absurd. I’m sure B.’s not just all of these flaws… So, I don’t think it’s possible to fall really in love with someone based on his/her writings. If it’s the case, it’s like falling in love with an image, not reality.

What do you think?