Ramzi Suleiman
Fifty ways to leave your lover
There are many ways to leave your lover. Some say,there are fifty ways. But what struck me is the fact that quite often,men and women do not use the same ways. While there are ways in which they both go by, there are otherswhich are used almost only by men or almost exclusively by women. I have personally walked ways in which I passed by many men, but hardly a woman. I reckon that there are other ways in which a passing-by will come across many women, but hardly a man. You seldom run into a man who,one night or day,may have said something like: “Let’s separate, but stay friends”, which implies, among other things: “I don’t love you anymore, but I have an unfinished businesses with you, so why don’t you stick around for a while!”.Women say that all the time.
This is a tough one, so one example is a load. Those of you,who wish to consider this matter further, couldcome up with their own examples.In fact, if you dig into the matter, you discover that men and women differ even in how they depart from things that they value. Take cigarettes. I don’t mean to actually take them,God forbid! I mean, take cigarettes as an example. When a woman sees that it’s time to end her engagement with a cigarette, she will move her arm immediately anddecisively, point the burning head of her cigarette towards the floor of an ashtray, and start bumping it, elegantly but firmly, against the ashtray’s floor.
A man would rarely do that(originally I wrote “a heterosexual man”, but the adjective “heterosexual” was deleted by the language editor, who turned out to be a homosexual). Men usually don’t put off their cigarettes before they have sucked the hell out of them. Seeing that it’s time to end his engagement, or what’s left of it, a man will hesitate several times before he slowly moves his hand, bend down to what looks a retreat posture, pointthe burning head of his cigarette towards the floor of the ashtray, and suffocate it to death.
I am not passing judgments about what’s better, or what’s less cruel (from the perspective of a dying cigarette). All I’m saying is that men and women use different ways to leave their lovers. I gave one example, but there are plenty. They also use different ways to finish offcigarettes,which a minute ago they were sucking passionately.