Speed Dating Events

Western women tend to be more unrealistic about marriage than their sisters around the world. Films and television have made them feel that romantic excitement is not only a birthright, but it is elevated to the most important aspect of marriage. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you skipped this bit, it is worth repeating here. Jealousy within a relationship is not only allowed, it is healthy and even mandatory. The Tenth Commandment prohibits coveting another man’s wife. But it allows you to covet your own wife. Read the rest of this entry »

Rabbi Yonah says that even if you are honest and open about coveting something, this will still have destructive consequences. For example if you desire to buy an object that belongs to your friend, and you know that once you ask him for it he will find it difficult to say no, it is forbidden to make the request. Your covetousness has become coercive and therefore very unfair. Read the rest of this entry »

Now boys, three cheers for Venus, hip hip hip hooray. Oh how I enjoy sex and oh how I enjoy it. There have been many funny things about sex in my life that have made me laugh and so now I will tell you

`Will you be mine?’ This question which enshrines the classic marriage proposal can and does carry another meaning. Not all love encounters are fated to end in marriage. Ardent suitors frequently have something more immediate in view. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, only some marriages are made in heaven. The others need a fair bit of terrestrial stage management to get them off the ground. This is the story of Maggie and Willie in an evergreen drama, Hobson’s Choice. Maggie, at thirty, is the unmarried daughter of the bootmaker Henry Hobson. She has been working like a dog for her father all her life, and her prospects are getting dimmer rather than brighter.

Maggie develops a fellow-feeling for Willie, her father’s downtrodden labourer, who is nevertheless ‘a genius at making boots’. She forms a plan in her mind — but then she has to break it to Willie: Read the rest of this entry »

This South-West version of the Hound of the Baskervilles barks and sniffs round him all night. The Major hangs there in mortal dread that any second he will feel a vicious set of canines sink into the seat of his pants. But this is not the only trial. If ever a man suffered . . .

The wind begun to blow bominable cold, and the old bag kep turnip round and swingin so it made me sea-sick as mischief . . . thar I sot with my teeth rattlin like 1 had a ager. I do blieve if I didn’t love Miss Mary so powerful I would of froze to deth; for my hart was the only spot that felt warm, and it didn’t beat more’n two licks a minit, only when I thought how she would be sprised in the mornin, and then it went into a canter. Read the rest of this entry »

Yonder a maid and her wight

Go whispering by,

War’s annals will fade into night

Ere their story die.

It is LOVELY WHEN DUKES FIND their Duchesses. Or any kind of lord or lordling, baron or baronet. But making a magic proposal is not the monopoly of a titled or educated man. The wonders of falling in love and wanting to marry are available to all comers, high and low alike. It’s a real- life drama of dreams come true for every new couple. Read the rest of this entry »

One man who most uncharacteristically takes it at a jump is Mr Knightley, in Jane Austen’s Emma. Knightley is nothing but grave and circumspect when it comes to other people’s affairs, but when it comes to his own moment, it sort of steals up behind him and pushes him over the edge.

This proposal comes as a great surprise to both participants, since the lucky recipient herself does not see it coming. Emma is convinced that Mr Knightley is going to tell her off, as he has been a stern recording angel of her minor follies and vanities. So when she senses that Mr Knightley is on the brink of something, ‘her immediate feeling was to avert the subject if possible.’

But like murder, love will out:

Emma could not bear to give him pain . . . cost her what it would, she would listen . . . Read the rest of this entry »