Love and Logic: a bloke's guide to commitment

There is only one place you can safely say the M-word and that is silently, in your head, to yourself. If you say the M-word out loud to anyone, it will get back to her and she will think: He said it! He's thinking about it. He wants to marry me. It's all going to work out. I have to call Mum!

Utter the word just once and it is, indeed, a slippery slope. Engagement ring, savings blown, a wedding with a hundred guests you either won't know or won't like, a mortgage, kids everywhere: the end of life as you know it.

No, by whatever means necessary you must avoid the M-word and, better still, you must build defences around the entire topic (to keep at bay those who are tirelessly plotting to slip it into any conversation). You must never let your guard drop. You must be vigilant day and night and especially when in the presence of your girlfriend's mother.

And this is what you want your relationship to be like but it isn't so you figure, this isn't the one, I should wait till it's like it is in the movies.

I'm going to try to be gentle about this.

Without realising it, I think us blokes tend to think of happily-ever-after movies as training videos for ideal relationships. We certainly all know the drill: the girls are always drop-dead gorgeous and they never have periods; the arguments are only ever silly misunderstandings; there's always a whole heap of lust and sex and heroism; money's certainly never a problem; and the guy always gets to keep on playing baseball or whatever it is that floats his boat.

These movies are not training videos. They are movies. They last two hours. So do the relationships.

Rule #1 — Happily-ever-after movies have no relevance to real lifetime relationships

They also have no relevance to your commitment dilemma. Get over it.

Next doubt.

Let's dig a little deeper.

Why do you argue with people? I argue because:

• I believe in what I'm saying.
• I want to teach the other person about something they either don't know or don't understand.
• I want the other person to learn something and to expand their views to take in the new information that I have provided them with.

Rule #4 — Not all arguments are created equal

But beware, not all arguments are created equal. There appear to be two common garden varieties of arguments, the you-stuffed-up argument and the you're-wrong argument. A good you-stuffed-up argument requires at least one of you to acknowledge that you stuffed up and then to apologise for doing so. Played correctly, these kinds of arguments will almost always lead to a kiss and a cuddle, and I certainly wouldn't rule out the tactic of acknowledging you stuffed up even when you didn't, for obvious reasons.

A good you're-wrong argument requires at least one of you to learn something and then to acknowledge this to the other — not any easy task. Good you're-wrong arguments seldom result in a kiss and a cuddle but at least they always have an end (thank God).

Conversely, crap arguments of any variety simply go round in circles and simmer away ad infinitum. No one ever learns a thing and you never get to canoodle afterwards. Often in these arguments whatever's being argued about isn't actually the real issue (like arguing about the financial merits of buying a house when, really, she wants to buy the house because of the commitment it implies and you don't, for exactly the same reason).

Now, you might be thinking: I'm sure we never used to argue but we do now, so something must have gone wrong. Let's be realistic - no one argues when they first meet someone they fancy. In fact, it seems to me that it isn't until sometime after you've slept with your partner that the arguments begin. In my relationship I reckon it was about six months before the meaningless crap arguments began (not a bad effort, really). However, we didn't waste any time graduating to full-on shouting matches and, on occasion, these could last all day (not so good).

Since then our arguments have gradually shortened to the point where today, although we certainly still argue, we seldom raise voices for more than a minute or two before one of us bursts out laughing. As irrational as this may seem, there is a certain logic to it.

I've heard many a wise soul say that you should never take an argument to bed and this sage advice must have stuck because it's a rule we've never broken. And always thrashing things out until they're resolved (even if we both agree that something just isn't worth arguing about) means you get to know how the other person argues pretty darn well. So well, in fact, that once we get past our opening salvos, we usually both know how the argument's going to turn out so we just jump straight to the making up.