WITH eight days to go before Valentine’s Day, if you want to get out of buying chocolates and giving head you need to get dumped now. Follow these tips:
Fake an affair
Daub your shirt collar with lipstick, spend long evenings watching Avatar 2 with your phone off, scent appropriately then crawl into bed at 2am claiming to have been at the cinema. You’ll soon be confronted. But cover your tracks. If your girlfriend recognises her own perfume or finds Odeon tickets in your wallet, your duplicitious monogamy is blown.
Talk of nothing but Valentine’s Day
Make it clear you’re expecting Valentine’s Day to be a Big. F**king. Deal. The expense alone should scare off any reasonable boyfriend, let alone the weight of amorous expectation. Drop hints about prohibitively exclusive spa days and restaurants with ten-course fixed menus. You’ll find yourself ‘moving in different directions in this relationship’ by Thursday.
Start bigging up your ex
Your phone left open on her Insta, your laptop on her Facebook, her name mumbled in feigned sleep. Arranging to ‘meet her for coffee’ will set the foundations of your relationship shaking, especially when she ‘looked really great actually’ and your girlfriend, who met her ex for coffee last month, was looking for an excuse.
Suggest you move in
An abrupt gearshift in relationship seriousness always unsettles, and insisting you move all your shit into his place, coupled with musings about wallpaper accents or ‘I think we’re ready for a puppy’ will set pulses racing. Make Valentine’s night the night to seal the deal and you’ll be single before sundown.
Hint you’re going to propose
It shouldn’t take much. Stopping at jewellers’ windows, being caught in the kitchen saying ‘I think I’m ready’, introducing her to your parents and their local vicar who shows you round his church. Especially effective in relationships of less than six weeks. Your Valentine Toblerone will forever remain unbought.
Show them the real you
Drop the act. Be the person you truly are deep inside: crass, flatulent, uninterested in anything but your own gratification. Especially effective in relationships of more than two years.
