Old Friends in Oxford

On Sunday I went up to Oxford for the day to catch up with one of my best male friends, who now lives in Australia but was back in Oxford to do some research. Good times catching up, and reminded me of why he's one of my favourite people, as we talked about how our genes influence our behaviour, whether or not Ghandi was gay, and of course my romantic life. Had a big debate about whether I'm really doing the right things to meet the kind of guys I'm interested in, as the one thing all of my favourite people have in common is that they're well-read. Which I think he had a fair point, not all of the guys I meet in Clubland really are also library rats. So where to find those types?

We also ended up talking about romantic dilemmas and the question so many men have been asking me recently, "How to ask out a girl you're already friends with?", and he reminded me of the two ladders theory: Namely, that men have only one ladder when it comes to how they see the women in their lives, whereas women have two ladders: A "friends" ladder and a "romantic potential" ladder. And a guy can be at the very top of the "friends" ladder, but can't make the leap over to the "romantic potential" ladder, because women just see it totally differently. A guy will potentially sleep with all of his female friends, but a girl can genuinely be friends with guys she will never sleep with. So the mistake these guys are making (trying to ask out their friends), is to assume that girls are on the "one ladder" theory like they are, without realising that they need to jump ladders. So the key is that you've got to get back DOWN the friendship ladder to start climbing the "romantic potential" ladder. This requires a seminal event, like one party breaking up with someone, or losing touch for a while, so when you reconnect it's like you're starting from zero again. Overall, this seems to make sense...

Mostly, a great afternoon with STELLAR food at this pub we went to, and the sort of endless conversation that you can only have with one of your absolute best friends, where you talk for hours and never run out of things to talk about. How I wish I had those more often...