7 days ago
Now I know why women fall in love with me
If asking someone for help makes you more attractive, as academics in China argue, then half my office must be in love with me. I arrive, my entry pass doesn't operate the electronic turnstile as it should, I seek assistance, and grizzled previously heterosexual ex-army security guards swoon with desire. I can't get the printer to function, I appeal for advice, and a flock of youngsters comes over all giddy. I press buttons on the coffee machine to no avail, ask, 'Does anyone know how this effing thing works?', and that humming sound is a dozen pairs of eyelashes batting coquettishly.
Professor Xijing Wang of the City University of Hong Kong explains that 'the reason why asking for help can be very useful to initiate romantic interest is because interdependence is essential in close relationships'. I can get behind that. The professor goes on to differentiate between 'autonomy-oriented' and 'dependency-oriented' help-seeking. The first type ('Please show me how to do this') does not stimulate the affection, devotion or downright lust my own incompetence provokes on a daily basis. That's because it's a request for information, not a cry for help.
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The second type, however ('I've got a problem, please make it go away') — that's the one that sends people wild. Because in asking, 'Can you fix this for me?' what you're really saying is, 'I need you! Now!' And we all want to be needed. It turns out that the old aid-versus-trade line 'Teach a man to fish' is precisely wrong. The man doesn't want to learn how to fish, he just wants a fish to eat, thanks very much. And, real bonus, the person giving him the fish rather than the fishing tutorial will then fall in love with him. Result!
Going back to Wang's point about interdependence in close relationships, it applies perfectly to my own marriage. My wife is, for instance, financially very astute. At school, when I was scraping a pass at maths O-level and choosing biology as my soft science option, Nicola aced maths plus physics, Latin and other complex subjects I dropped at the earliest opportunity. She then worked for a decade in the City as an equities analyst. It made sense when we got together, therefore, that she should handle our pecuniary affairs.
I don't recall saying, 'I need you to set up a joint bank account,' she just did it because she knew that if left to me we'd still have our money in cash under the mattress. And a hall filled floor-to-ceiling with unopened post, like those poor people who die undiscovered for ages. Besides being numerate, Nicola is also conscientious, while I am … less so.
Thus she deals with all income and expenditure, taxation, documents, bills, property and vehicular matters, insurance, pensions, holiday arrangements, legal issues, tradesmen, appliance purchases and maintenance, and any and all dealings with the government, council and utility companies.
Does my needing her to perform all these tasks turn her on? I can only assume it does. Although, granted, in recent years I've noticed that the sheer raw sexiness of me needing her to ring the Thames Water hotline about the blocked drain may be starting to wear off. Yeah, even when the drain guys keep her on hold for half an hour.
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So that's one half of our interdependence. How about my side of the deal? Well, my wife is a very capable woman, as described, yet the inescapable fact is that she stands 5ft 1in tall. Usually if she has to retrieve something high up (or even, ha ha, frankly not that high up, but high up for her), she'll use a ladder. But sometimes, maybe once every couple of months, she'll summon my greater height, strength and wingspan.
Moreover, she doesn't say, 'Can you show me how to lift this heavy box down off that shelf?' because that would be pointless. She'll say, 'Can you get that box down, please?' thus fulfilling the 'dependency' requirement guaranteed to ignite a fire in my loins.
Slightly less guaranteed these days, perhaps — especially if she interrupts while I'm busy watching the cricket — but even so, I oblige. You've gotta keep the magic alive.
The average secondary school pupil spends more than five hours a day on their phone. At university students are on screens for more than six hours a day. If that crazy level of usage continues and they fulfil their life expectancy, these youngsters will go to the grave having spent more than one third of each waking day since the age of 11 gazing at, and occasionally stroking, a small glass screen. It's a grotesque prospect.
We all waste time. My generation watched an awful lot of TV on fixed schedules, on three, then four channels. But there was such little choice that we ended up seeing valuable, educational, high-quality stuff as well as dross. For all the soaps and cop shows there was Attenborough, the news, riveting documentaries and costume dramas. Now you can watch, or half-watch, bland utter nonsense 24/7. Many of my student contemporaries lounged about laughing at Neighbours and Bullseye. But not all of us, and not for six hours, day in, day out.
The one cause for optimism is that most of these social media junkies know their addiction is bad for them. Seven out of ten of the subjects tell researchers that their phone usage impairs their academic performance. They know that all the froth and gossip and preening and posting ruins focus, feeds anxiety, impairs relationships. When I wrote a feature on Gen Z a while ago, I thought my interviewees, in their mid-twenties, would mock my abstention from social media. But they didn't. They were jealous, wistful, their eyes lighting up at the prospect of such liberty. They felt trapped professionally, socially, romantically, commercially, no one individual feeling able to make the first move and quit, such would be the consequences. I felt desperately sorry for them.
