Resolutions not to make

Nobody enjoys signalling the “I told you so” look more than the lady who cohabits with you and keeps you from dying due to starvation, messiness, stupidity or any other natural male-induced cause. Which is why it is crucial that we men tiptoe around them utterly carefully, like walking on broken glass that is the temperature of burning coals. To follow up that rather smug success of a combined analogy, here are a few resolutions you might wish to avoid in 2016.

No Curfews:
Don’t go declaring how you will be home for dinner, or latest by 11pm. Watches have a way of letting us down when we are hanging with the boys, not showing the correct time and all or passing it all by too fast. Any such promise will only fall flat on its face and so will you when you stumble into the dark house way past midnight, because she has rearranged the furniture to trip you so.

No Abstinence:
New year’s eve usually ends up as a night of revelry for everyone except coupled men. The latter wake up to cold stares and nods of displeasure, their partners tut-tutting their behaviour the evening before, possibly (okay, surely) fuelled by a miscalculation of how many drinks we thought we could hold and how much we ended up downing. To remedy, we may hasten to take vows of a lifetime of no drinking. Don’t make any such calls. They are unattainable and when they fail you, you will have to find something else to top it — like selling your kidneys or buying her a sexy gardener who only cuts grass in the buff, notwithstanding the fact that you live in a tenth floor apartment.

Avoid Travel:
This is not a resolution but more of a slippery slope for the first two weeks of the new year. Don’t go away on business travel just as the year begins — it sends the wrong message. Travel in February will be less of an issue. Traveling when the Christmas decorations haven’t yet been put away is tantamount to murdering precious family time.

Avoid Parties:
The last thing a lady wants after having attended (and tolerated) many a party with us, is more parties. It is, therefore, best to stay away from them. A good moratorium is about a month. Brunches are good, but keep them intimate. These are sensitive times; play it safe.

Singular Resolves:
We men can’t multitask, so there is no point in trying to keep 15 resolutions going. Instead, make one resolution and stick with it. Don’t set the bar too high. And that shouldn’t be a problem since the year gone by was spent by most men lowering the bar of expectations more than it had ever been anyway. This year, my resolution will be to speak lesser. This includes talking back, interrupting, refuting, refusing, or even suggesting. This may lead to me hearing more, but let me not make any rash promises. As I said, one resolve at a time. That said, have a great year guys. Congrats, you made it through another 365 without proving Darwin right.

The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine

 

 

 

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