Let me introduce you to the concept of freemales. Now before you lose the run of yourselves, especially you females, this is not some sugar daddy on whom you can freeload for the next 40 years. Nor is it some shorthand for a young man who is available and will be wearing a neon sign to advertise this freedom. Nor is it the amount you will have to pay to have a relationship with said young man.
According to The Observer, the freemale is a new breed of young women who are infesting large cities in even larger numbers and are determined to overthrow the Bridget Jones image of the lonely, desperate, wine guzzling loser singled out from her social set because she hasn't yet managed to trap a suitable man, marry him and divorce him before she is 30. The last thing on the mind of these young women is finding Mr Right. They are more interested in having a good time, getting on in their chosen careers and living at home for as long as possible before having to take on adult responsibility.
I find it interesting that The Observer sees this as something new. This has been going on for centuries under another name. That name was man. Men have been doing this since they wer e old enough and sensible enough to know that living at home and having a good time is as good as it gets. Chose any other arrangement for your life and, unless you are extremely fortunate, it will never compare.
It is very worrying that females have at last found this out. Thankfully it took them a long time to do so and they have up until now been prepared to buy all this 'moon in June' tosh and 'diamonds are a girl's best friend' type lying which invariably led to them getting married and becoming a surrogate mother for a male who couldn't look after himself.
The best example of this was a story told to me by a relative who shall remain nameless who went across the street to where his mother was visiting a friend to inform her that she had forgotten to put sugar in his tea. And sadly she came back over and put it in for him!
What we need to know as panicking males, however, is whether or not this is a long-term development. What I mean is, will these freemales simply have a good time for a few years – say until their mid-30s – and then get back on the conservative wagon and see about getting married like the good little women they should be? Because if that is the case then men can stop panicking and set about taking advantage of a new loophole in the morality stakes. If you are caught in a situation where it looks as though you are merely having a good time without paying your dues so to speak you can simply say that she made you do it now that she has liberated herself from convention. And if you are really clever you can say that you have pleaded with her to marry you but she is having none of it. And then in a few years time you can find one of these freemales who has stashed away a few pounds from her career, get her married and turn her into your mother. Job done.
The second advantage of this scenario is that as men we will miss all the scary parts in the female career cycle. In my experience (limited though it is) females are at their scariest when they are deeply involved in their work, healthy, fit and aggressively confident. This is the period when men take up golf or motorcycling so that they can be married but never actually in the house. And now women are demanding that they be left alone to live on their own, or with other similarly driven freemales until they tire of it and decide to settle down with a boring man.
I suppose it is no coincidence that statistics released this week from the National Office of Statistics (I'll bet that is a groovy place to work) show that the number of women living alone has doubled in the past two decades. Of course let us be clear that this has nothing to do with the fact that men are lazy, disinterested, unhelpful, selfish and generally unthinking partners. Give them time. These women will not be long in coming looking for us men, useless or not! And if they don't that is fine as well because Ireland is full of mothers who will be more than happy to have us stay at home until we become an embarrassment, a laughing stock or just plain sad. Who's laughing now?
