Thus Spake Sara Thustra

1. If you sleep with a man at his place for the first time, whether planned or impromptu, and his bed is crisp with 900 count cotton sheets, scented with a musky-masculine aroma, the coverlet creased back invitingly, perhaps a single red rose on the pillow, candles burning, jazz playing: this is a dangerous man, practiced at seduction, who will most likely break your heart. Conversely, if you sleep with a man at his place for the first time, whether planned or impromptu, and he makes you to wait in the foyer while he hastily sweeps empty beer cans and cigarette butts off the bed and when you enter, the room reeks of cat piss and the corners are impenetrable with tacky gifts from his mother: this is a man who’s just happy to be here and he will most likely break your heart. It will take him longer but it will happen with time, believe me.

Thus spake Sara Thustra.

2. It’s up to you which abyss you’d prefer to stare into. I recommend the seducer. At least that way you can feel good about yourself. You traded up. To be broken by the slob is self-abasing. You knew better but you went there anyway. You competed with mama or sister or old girlfriend or ex-wife and lost. Now the abyss stares back at you. In the meantime, you gave away your sensibilities, your charity, your infinite feminine wisdom to fill the slob devoid of soul in an attempt to better him and now you’re kicking yourself for wasting your time and can’t seem to find your keys and you’re cleaning incessantly or lying abed feeling sorry for yourself, most likely eating. Get a grip. Thus spake Sara Thustra.

3. You may think it’s harder to loose the seducer. You’ll miss the great sex, the romance, the way the seducer keeps that Dorian Gray portrait of you in the attic and never lets you get old or fart or get fat but trust me, when that goes there’s a part of you that will say, good things don’t last forever, que sara sara. On the other hand, when the slob goes, there is no consolation. I hate to use a financial analogy but, you invested in a cheap stock and your investment made the stock more valuable. You are now susceptible to a hostile take over when the slob begins to think that he has inherent value and puts himself on the market. You get bought out for pennies on the dollar that you blow on a transitional lover. Now you’ve lost your seed money and it will take you many months, maybe years to save up that much to invest again. When you loose a seducer, you usually feel good about yourself to have had him at all. You’ve sold short, made a little cash and now you can move on. As will I, since I can not develop this analogy further.

4. But, Sara, you say, I’m looking for a long-term commitment. I want a man who will father my children, I want a home and a family and a future in partnership. To that I say, I want a unicorn but it’s unlikely I’ll ever get one because unicorns are mythical beasts. And so is your pipe dream so stuff it. You don’t want marriage and family, you are simply operating under the delusion that there is “safety in numbers”. You just want a safe harbor to anchor your little sloop. The seas are so choppy out there and you are so small. And the marina looks so friendly with all the other little sloops tied up so nicely together. Examine your motives and see if they will stand up in hurricane season. Do you really want a husband or are you just feeling a little lonely and bored and tired? I will admit, there is a strong feminine drive to motherhood and motherhood is difficult alone and, connecting the dots, one would conclude that marriage is the preferable solution to this dilemma of solitude. It’s good to be logical but let’s be analytical, too. Let’s not throw in the baby and the bath water. Many very admirable movie stars have had babies without getting married and so can you. What are movie stars for if you can’t aspire to be like them? And harking back to my original premise, look at some of the more successful Hollywood marriages and you will notice it’s betwixt the starlet and former seducer. The seducer turns doting father and devoted husband. We love these love affairs; they are so operatic and satisfying.

5. But Sara, you say, I’m not good enough to snag a seducer. To that I say, with fingers in ears and eyes closed, la-la-la, la-la-la. Every seducer faces a moment in life when he, too, becomes lonely and tired and bored. It’s not a matter of being good enough. It’s a matter of being in the right place and the right time. Just practice some Feng Shui and get in the right place at the right time. Here’s a tip; seducers are like serial killers. Right when he’s about to self-destruct you will see his randy behavior accelerate. A different woman every night. Wine, women, song, twenty-four seven. More and more and more beautiful women in meaningless congress. You may even see a lowering of standards to include even more and more and more women. It’s quantity he’s after not quality because he can feel the clock ticking on his virility and mastery of conquest. He’s on a collision course with impotence and his first major heart attack. He sees the cracks begin to appear in his façade. Could it be he’s not as charming at 40 as he was at 20? Where did 20 years go? Picking up a sloppy 20-year-old drunk is a little more charming than cleaning up after a piss soaked 40-year-old drunk snoring on the cold linoleum. He’s looking at 20 years of negative amortization. Get in there, girl, before he runs back to his high school sweetheart or first wife. Give it the old college try. And if it doesn’t work out, refer to paragraph two.

6. Well, now, that doesn’t sound very appealing, you may sniff. But you must listen to Granny Sara. This is an abyss you definitely want to stare into. Here is your stone, now I’m going to show you the birds. Have an affair with this man. Treat him well, be his grounding wire. Get pregnant. Have his baby. Show him his redemption in the familiar face of his own child. Allow him to reconcile his foolish, wasted years in the rich, rewarding endeavor of fulfilling the needs of his adoring offspring. Have two or three especially if he’s over 40. He’s satisfied, relieved. What you’ve known all these years is now clear to him; he is not the center of the universe and he’s glad to know it. The pressure’s off, he’s refocused and you have your family. Ta-da.

Thus spake Sara Thustra.

7. For my dears who already married the “safe” guy, who are now alone and licking your wounds, let me address you by saying I am one of you. You married slightly beneath you. Not much but just enough to feel slightly superior. You knew it was a mistake from the beginning but you did it anyway because you were lonely or tired or bored. And you wanted a safe harbor in the storm and you wanted the friendliness of all those colorful little boats snuggled up the marina. And you thought you were smart enough or humble enough or ready enough to compromise fierce independence for a little affection and warmth that you turned the “I” into “we” and the “me” into “us” and redefined. It was hard but it was worth it. For a while, you were happy and safe and all tied up. You had a child and redeemed yourself, reclaimed your purpose. You strove for partnership in all things as long as it was 70-30 in your favor most of the time. After all, you had sacrificed more by denying your self to better him. You put your self, your drive, your ambition, your personhood at his disposal in order to make him worthy of your time. In return, he gave you companionship and place to dock. He wasn’t challenging except in his dogged determination to resist your help. Ten years later, you are a shriveled, lifeless thing and he has blossomed into powerful, independent, immortal blood sucking vampire. What the hell happened? I’ll tell you. You threw good money after bad, you idiot. You should have cut your losses after the first two years.

8. The first two years were okay. He respected you and what you had to offer. Then, little by little, after you put him through school, gave him a child, made him a home, derailed your own career and, in general, drug him kicking and screaming into adulthood, he hated you for the very things that attracted him to you in the first place. You had fulfilled your purpose but he only heard you singing the same old tune. What more could you possibly want? You have a house, you have a kid, and he certainly makes more money now than he did when you met and he was a towel folder at a health club. Why aren’t you ever satisfied? And why do you harp on his faults over and over and over and over. Why can’t you just forgive him and be done with it since he has no intention of ever changing his behavior one iota even though he continually says he’s sorry for being disrespectful and inattentive and ungrateful and demanding sex just because after all you’re husband and wife why should he have to bathe or be nice to you or hold your hand every once in a blue moon. Doesn’t he give you flowers and give you flowers and give you a flower and if he’s feeling really generous or guilty, give you flowers unless he says to himself, fuck that bitch I’m not buying her flowers it doesn’t do me any good? Besides, his father never had to treat his mother with any respect and she still ate his shit with a fork for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you certainly aren’t like his aunt Sylvia who was a goddamn saint and slaved for her husband and boys and cooked them each their favorite meal every night even though that meant cooking three different meals and she never complained, she loved them and that’s how she showed it but you, you’re never satisfied. Everything has to be clean and you constantly cut into his sitting around time with projects and more projects and forcing him to finish that project he started four years ago and never finished and starting a new project. You just can’t be satisfied. You are a bottomless pit of aggravation and you won’t fuck and you’re not interested in anything he’s interested in, like who killed JFK and why the government is conspiring to make him miserable and how the election of JW Bush was a goddamn coup and his hours and hours and hours of gardening that has the same yield as what you can buy in the grocery store for three bucks and his determination to forsake his twisted southern Baptist values and become a Tibetan Buddhist and his home brew that tastes like Boones Farm after the twist-on cap’s been off for about nine days. And you won’t fuck.

9. Men are not complicated creatures. And either you love them or you don’t. Decide now. Decide once and for all. Are you a woman who loves men or are you a woman who puts up with them because you are not a lesbian?

10. If you are a woman who loves men you should attempt to rise above the petty aggressions that men must engage in because they are men. You must look beyond the dick wagging and swaggering and wound nursing and shrill warning cries and swelling they evince when, like some species of lizard, they try to appear larger than they are to protect themselves. You must embrace all this with compassion and understanding.

Me, I say fuck it. And that’s all the fucking I’m going to do.

Thus spake Sara Thustra.

11. Why you sound awfully bitter, you may say….Fuck you, too. You and the unicorn you rode in on.

12. Let’s say you are a young woman and you have you’re whole life ahead of you. You have the safety of youth and you are looking for love. It is my humble opinion that you should look for an older man. This will be hard for you because older men are gross. No question. But I will extol their virtues. If they are older men, and gross, they are so tickled to have bagged a young chick that they will undoubtedly treat you well. You don’t have to be exceedingly attractive and everything you say will be cute, every little thing you do will be magic. If you can overlook the fact that they imagine they are fucking their daughters or perhaps a niece you can make a pretty decent life together. They will secretly be patting themselves on the back for their undiminished prowess and if you can bide your time, they will die when you are still relatively young enough to eventually find a man your own age.

13. But if you are insistent on finding love in your own age bracket, I suggest you attempt to find your intellectual equal even though he may not be physically attractive. If you are ambitious, you may want to attempt someone who is a bit intellectually superior. At least, after he breaks your heart, you will have learned something. Really learned something. Instead of having to look for the “lessons” in the experience, like Where’s Waldo, you may actually have learned quite a bit in the time you spent together. When I say “intellectually superior”, I mean someone with a background in philosophy or literature or comparative religions. Not a structural engineer. Whatever you do, stay away from medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists or dentists. Trust me.

14. If you insist on falling in love with an Adonis, I can offer you no advice. You are in no man’s land. Only about 1% of the human species falls into this rarified category. If I were you, I would not even attempt it unless of course I, too, fell within this 1%. And if I did I would not be writing this much less reading it. But for the sake of argument, let’s say I did. Let’s say I graced the cover of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan magazines. I would more than likely have had many affairs because I truly, more than anything, love to see my own effect on others. It gets me off more than sex. I can not believe my extraordinary luck to be beautiful, desirable, alluring and I would need to see it over and over and over like a card trick I was just on the verge of figuring out. The power, the enormity of it, never quite reaches my consciousness. However, my Midas Touch is, at best, unsatisfying and, at worst, tragic and I will more than likely settle down with someone plain and disdainful of my beauty or even abusive. Because I can not own my extraordinary beauty. Beauty belongs to everyone. And everyone will feel entitlement to it. And if I don’t live up to its democratic distribution I will be shunned as arrogant.

15. In the same vein, let’s suppose I am plain but brilliant. Who do I pursue? My advice would be no one. Stay home with a good book. But that advice is hardly ever heeded until it’s too late. So, again, I would say do not go slumming. Look for your equal or slightly superior. And suppose you are in that top 1% of human beings to whom Albert Einstein was a dim bulb, what would be my advice? If you want true love, baby, hide your light under a bushel. Nobody likes a smarty pants. Wait a minute, you say, isn’t that contradictory to your previous statement? And to that I say, refer to the smarty pants theory and shut the fuck up.

16. If you are lonely, unattached and unlikely to ever meet someone with whom to share your life and find your destiny do not, under any circumstances, collect pets. Nothing is more sad or likely to kill any hopes of finding love than a house full of feral cats and incontinent dogs. You can add the stuffed, plush variety to that. Suppose one day, while you are watching Law and Order and eating cheesecake, the mailman should break his ankle while delivering your Lillian Vernon catalog. You charitably bring him inside and fetch him an ice pack while ten felines reeking of excrement, coughing up hairballs and hopping with fleas snuggle into his crotch. If you are the type of woman who decided in paragraph nine that you love men then you must be vigilant even if you are currently alone and not even looking. Fate may throw you a Hail Mary pass. Keep your glove on.

17. If, however, in paragraph nine you decided to pack it in, I can tell you where to get some good kibble in bulk.

18. Sara, you say, I am in a relationship that is actually quite good. I can talk to my man and he listens and responds. He understands my needs and does his best to fulfill them. He is astonishingly attractive as well as empathetic and attentive. He compliments my hair and my fashion sense and enthusiastically participates in home improvement and design. He is well groomed and has impeccable manners and exquisite taste. He is sensitive and caring and does most of the cooking. His male friends are not boorish but, to the contrary, delightful and witty and love to sing show tunes as an ensemble. To this I say………uhm, That’s nice.

19. Can you answer the question: Would you rather be right or happy? What was your answer? If you answered “right“, I would advise you to go into law or government. Because being right is significant when dealing with decisions that last for generations or effect millions. But in matters of the heart, one on one, right has very little currency. Sara does not often like to reveal her dark side but in matters of the heart, one on one, one should let death be one’s guide. Suppose the person you are dealing with is dead. More than likely from a horrible protracted illness or a senseless random accident or a victim of a brutal crime. Would you then have to say to yourself, I wish I had treated him better, I wish I had been more kind or generous or loving or forgiving. I wish I had valued the time we had together and let the small grievances slide. Kind, generous, loving, forgiving will trump right, just, fair, equal every game. This is not to say Sara recommends you be a complete pussy in any confrontation. I’m just saying that life is short. And in this short run you might be happier if you weren’t right all the time.

20. But do not confuse being kind, loving, generous, forgiving with being debased and used and devalued and ignored. I trust you to know the difference.

21. To those of you who have been heart broken, who are currently wallowing in misery, I say go for it! I bless every bon-bon eating, badmouthing your ex, drinking excessively, man-bashing, weeping hysterically, cursing, breast beating minute of your exile. Now snap out of it. Carl Jung once wrote: That which we do
not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate. Do you want to go through this again, and there are some that do, then continue with this self-immolation . Over and over again, the same scenario will play out like the hand that works unseen, the man behind the curtain. There’s got to be a reason why you pick such losers. Men, who will, without question, treat you like dirt. If you’re like me, you like the challenge. But trust me, this is not the Olympic games, you do not have to strive for a personal best. Again, if you are like me, at one point, you will play against type and attempt to settle down with the opposite of your normal choice and then, just when you thought that Found a Peanut song was finally going to end, damn if you didn’t find another peanut. To my mind, it’s like the difference between the old and new methods of teaching math. In the old days, students would drill math facts over and over and over and over and over until it was a rote, conditioned response to know that twelve times nine was…whatever it is. These days, third graders are taught to reason out why twelve times nine is … whatever it is. It takes longer, but they don’t have to repeat the same lesson over and over to get the same answer. And neither do you have to repeat the same mistake over and over. If we ascribe to the belief that there is a reason for our being here, and that reason is to learn and grow and advance a level on the existential ladder of development then lets just say that ten times twelve is 120, that’s easy, minus 12 is…okay, minus 10 is 110 and minus 2 more is 108. So, nine times
twelve is 108. Let’s move on.

22. If you are the type of woman who regrets the things you did for love like squander a fortune or cheat your best friend or surgically alter your body I have to tell you, this is not front-page news. Every woman, who, in paragraph nine, answered men men men, we love men! knows or should know that a woman will do anything for a man. You will kill and eat your children for a man. And the fact that it’s surprising is astonishing to me. And the fact that you regret it is hypocritical. You did it, you do it and you will do it again. And then feel bad about it like when you ate that whole Death by Chocolate chocolate cake. You poor thing, Sara knows how you feel. She just has no respect for you. Edith Piaf, the great chanteuse, sang Je ne regrette rien. I regret nothing. And if you’ve ever heard that song, you know the melody is not melancholy, like that insipid song from a Chorus Line. Rather, it’s a rousing, strident, defiant march. Like the French national anthem, Edit sings:

Non, rien de rien,
non, je ne regrette rien!
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait,
ni le mal;
tout ça m'est bien egal!

Nothing, nothing, I regret nothing! So what does Edith have that you don’t have? What does Edith know that you don’t know? No fear. And no need to be politically correct. Edith doesn’t feel like she has to do the polite thing and feel contrite for the evil deeds she did for love. And that’s rather alienating. You know what happens to people who are not politically correct. They are vilified. And you know what happens to people who are contrite. They are forgiven. You would not be miserable unless there was something in it for you. So go ahead. Be miserable. If that’s what you want. If that’s what you need. Eventually an arm will reach out to comfort you and on the other end of it will be another man who’s just hoping and praying that you’ll be evil for him too.


23. If you are a fairly well adjusted young woman who prefers men your own age and feels lonely or tired or bored and are thinking about looking for a man with whom to share the rest of your life, I suggest you find an intriguing hobby. I suggest rug hooking. It’s inexpensive and takes very little time to acquire the skill but produces spectacular results. If this doesn’t appeal to you because you are not particularly crafty, as an alternative you may acquire one, I repeat, one pet. I suggest a ferret. They are friendly, amusing and smell bad. This may, in a way, prepare you for the kind of relationship you will enjoy with a man.

24. Do not assume that any man is or will be faithful to you. All men, regardless of their morals, have a form of Attention Deficit Disorder. This is a disorder of the brain. And we all know from our lessons in evolution that the bigger the brain the better the evolutionary development. And for all men, because their brains are in their dicks, you can see the spatial relationship. This is why, again contrary to popular belief, women prefer men with big dicks.

25. You may lament that you love your man and he loves you but he does not satisfy you sexually and you are wrestling with the question of whether or not this is important to a long-term relationship. Sara’s response to this question is: why. Why are you wrestling with this question? This should be a smack down. But Auntie Sara will assume that you are either dim-witted or young, neither of which is necessarily your fault, and walk you through these moves. Step one, make a list that includes Companionship, Security and Good Nookie. Next, list these in importance from 1-3. If Good Nookie is number 1 then end this relationship immediately and look for a seducer, see paragraph 5. If Companionship is number 1, and what you have is indeed a loving relationship, then become adept in the practice of self-love and the dramatic art of climax simulation and shut the fuck up. And if Security is number 1, end this relationship immediately and acquire one extremely large, ferociously loyal pet. You see, satisfaction in a relationship is predicated on your needs. So, in this way, you determine the rules of the game. If your primary need is satisfied, you’re winning. If your primary need is not satisfied, you’re losing. But you must play the game with some honor and integrity. You can not, mid-game, change the rules once your primary need is satisfied. This is cheating. It’s immature. And this is, in fact, what gives women a bad reputation; not the blowjobs you gave indiscriminately in high school.


26. Quick, answer this question. What do you want right now? No, don’t think about it. Don’t deliberate the pros and cons. Your life’s goal, your ultimate need should be a constant, primary thought and motivation. If you can not answer it, you are suffering from the “Bell Jar” disease. Sylvia Plath wrote that goals are like figs on a tree. You sit starving in the fig tree surrounded by figs but afraid to pick one because in doing so, all the rest fall away and your options are eliminated. Sylvia was clinically depressed and ultimately committed suicide, so do not make her your hero just because she was able to articulate this particular dilemma. Women are biologically and socially disposed to serve the needs of others. It’s difficult to separate your needs from the needs of your spouse, your child, your community. This is not your fault. Laboratory tests have proven that little girls take responsibility for improving the overall welfare of those around them. While little boys don’t see the connection between others and themselves. Does this make the male morally inferior to the female? Yes! Without question. The first thing the male does in a relationship is arrogate the woman to be the soul of the relationship. While you are busy being the heart and soul, he gets to have hobbies or affairs or a career. He’s not burdened with that pesky moral obligation to have a soul, a center. That’s your job. That, and always knowing where the remote is. If you didn’t keep track of everyone’s birthday, handle the finances, clean up the dog vomit, know when his favorite TV show came on, bear the children, read a book, cultivate friendships, these things would simply not get done. If you are in a relationship and you don’t think this is true, go look at the basement. The basement or the garage or the “utility room” or where ever your man calls his special place, is the physical representation of your man’s soul. If it weren’t for you, he would go to hell. And since he has made you the keeper of his soul, if he treats you badly it’s because he has no respect for himself. And if
that’s true then you need to tell him to go to hell.

Thus spake Sara Thustra.

27. I will now dispel the myth of the “amicable separation”. There is no such thing. If you were so damn amicable you would have amicably worked out your differences. Face it, you are separated because you can’t freaking stand each other. “Amicable separation” means that you both walked away with enough money or stuff to feel better off than you were before and satisfied that you can fund and enjoy your new single status. “Amicable Separation” means that if the opportunity arose you would still have sex but you have no intention of living with him for one more minute.

28. Another myth is called “The Flying Wallenda Catch”. If you think you have separated amicably after reaching a mutual decision, determining that your union is not productive and you will now each spend some time alone to think, sort out events, reach closure and forge a better, more satisfying future for yourselves, Sara Thustra says, what a load of crap. No man will ever leave a woman without having another woman waiting in the wings. Refer to the “soul” theory and rest assured that a man needs to have a handy receptacle for his soul in the interim. And this is what I call the “Flying Wallenda Catch”. This man will let go of the trapeze only long enough to twist deftly in the air and fall into the strong hands of the next woman, hands out, swinging by her knees. In this way, he defies the fact that he is swinging forty feet in the air without a net.

29. If you are currently flogging yourself because you were the one to end the relationship, I adjure you to stop. No matter what you think, you did not cause the break up. If you kicked your man out of the house, it is more likely that in the months or weeks before, he had made life so excruciatingly unbearable for you that you told him to get his things and get out. He more than likely exaggerated every unacceptable behavior known to him. He pushed so many of the right buttons that you would wish he knew as much about getting you off as pissing you off. Maybe then, you wouldn’t have kicked his sorry ass out. But after the deed was done, there he sits, like a car-jacker with his head out the window, wheel in hand, two toddlers screaming in their car seats, saying to the cop, “Whad-I-do? Whad-I-do?” You are the unwitting victim of who Nietzsche called The Pale Criminal, “Adequate was he for his deed when he did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done.” This spake Sara Thustra.

30. I have not yet spoken of the relationship betwixt the older woman and younger man. I do not recommend it. There are some situations that rail against nature. This union is one of them. It is perfectly acceptable for a woman to seek a father figure in her husband by uniting with an older man, but completely unnatural for a man to seek a mother figure in his wife. Especially if you’ve ever seen his mother. There is nothing more insulting to a woman than being a pseudo mother figure to a man. And no matter how you’d like to distract yourself with his virility, his energy, his innocence, his admiration or adoration you will never escape the Freudian fact that he is, in his twisted psyche, fucking his mother. This age separation has no vanishing point; it is only exacerbated with time. The older you get the younger he seems to get. And at some point, your allure for this mother-fucker will eventually wear off as he reaches psychic adolescence. Everything you say will be nagging, every piece of advise, haranguing, every suggestion an attempt to squash his identity and volition. Areas where you were once simpatico are now unbearably confining for him. You are not only old, but old fashioned.

31. To continue with this theme, I must once again refer you to an earlier lesson in paragraph 27 that illustrates one of the fundamental differences between men and women. Women are by nature and nurture the caretakers. Women expect to care for their partners in old age. Aging, to women, however sad and diminishing is unfortunate but natural. Men, conversely, think aging is something that happens to a woman who is inattentive. They think that if you had somehow applied some effort you would not be getting old. They think that if you had been vigilant age would not have crept up on you unawares. Age is a foe, stealthy, powerful, mysterious and frightening. And for men, age makes it even more apparent that you are turning into his mother. Since men have very little connection to nature and feel very little responsibility for nurturing, they naturally shy away from the responsibility of caring for you in old age. It’s your job to care for him. That, and always knowing where the remote is.

32. And to continue even further with this theme, while men find age abhorrent, they find death attractive. This is a fact that subliminal advertisers have known for years. Look at any men’s magazine and turn to an ad for liquor. There is undoubtedly a picture of a cool, inviting cocktail. Look closely at the ice and liquid in the glass and like a surrealistic painting you will be able to trace images of naked women and skulls. And realize that these images of die liebestod, the love/death, are appealing to him subliminally and will make him spend his money. I don’t know what you can do with that piece of information but knowledge is power.

33. Realize that a man’s goal in any argument is to make you think you are incomprehensible at best and at worst, crazy. Go to your local video store and pick up the classic move, “Gaslight”. Watch it and take notes. In it, her thieving husband systematically drives the beautiful Ingrid Bergman insane. He does it simply by treating her as if she were. Realize that his goal in any argument is to make you wrong. To him, an argument is not sport where one must play fair but rather war where all is fair and he is avoiding death. When, after you have reasoned expertly and proven your point, you find yourself at the bottom of a tiger-trap pit riddled with feces dipped pungee sticks don’t say I didn’t warn you. Heads up.

34. Suppose one fair day in spring, without warning you discover that your man has had an affair. Ask yourself honestly, do you really truly care? Or is it more like a plot twist in a movie that had too little exposition. Do you feel cheated? Or do you feel cheated of the satisfaction of having suspected and been proven right. I advise women to accuse their men of having an affair, even when he hasn’t, just to preempt that feeling of surprise. More than likely, he has, or has wanted to or will eventually and your accusations will simply be proactive.

35. Conversely, if you are having an affair, I suggest it is not out of sexual attraction but rather boredom, weariness or loneliness. The mooring on your little sloop is loose and you are bobbing with the waves, drifting further and further from the dock. Alternatively, I would suggest you find a nice hobby. I suggest rug hooking.

36. Finally, if you are having an affair with a married man, I can offer you no advice. You are in no-man’s land. You are either too stupid or too vain to avoid heartache. You either have no knowledge of Karma or think it somehow doesn’t apply to you. In the event that you are too stupid let me walk you through the steps. If he is cheating on his wife with you, he is, by necessity, cheating on you with his wife. And a cheater is a cheater is a cheater and a liar and a cad.

37. Are you surprised by the type of woman your man prefers to you? Don’t be. A man will always want what he can’t or doesn’t have. When you consider the woman your man is with now realize that she is you the way he always wished you would be. Gain some small solace in the fact that, to him, she is not a real person, she is only the antithesis of you. Everything is about you.

38. If you agree with the last statement then stop making everything about you.