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Asking what you are to each other, and other ways to get a man to ditch you

WANT to terminate a relationship abruptly? Say any of the following and you’ll never see him again.

‘I’m looking for something serious’

This sentence has ended more modern romances than OnlyFans. A guy who previously texted ‘Good morning, beautiful’ every single day will suddenly remember he’s ‘actually focusing on himself right now’. Even though he spent the last three weeks focusing exclusively on your minge.

‘What are we?’

A man who has happily spent six months acting like your boyfriend – sleeping in your bed, attending your friends’ birthday drinks, and once even calling your dog ‘our baby’ – will react as though you’ve asked him to enter an arranged marriage naked on live telly. Expect ‘labels complicate things’ and ‘why does everything need a definition?’ before he disappears so completely you start wondering if he’s joined the French Foreign Legion or if alien abductions need to be taken more seriously.

‘I’d like you to meet my parents’

Even the most confident man will hear this and immediately picture himself trapped at a barbecue discussing mortgage rates with your stepdad Gary. Within hours he will begin ‘needing space’ and posting gym selfies captioned ‘protecting my peace’.

‘I don’t believe in sex before marriage’

A useful tactic if you’d like to watch a man look for all the building’s exits faster than the SAS can. He’ll initially pretend to respect your values before quietly evaporating into thin air like steam from a kettle, later resurfacing on Hinge saying he’s ‘not sure what he wants right now’. Could it be sex? Sounds like it’s sex.

‘I love you’

The nuclear option. Men can survive intimacy, shared holidays and even seeing you sobbing in Wagamama over ‘everything lately’, but direct emotional honesty is a step too far. The second you say ‘I love you’, he’ll stare into the middle distance like a soldier remembering the horrors of war before explaining he’s ‘actually in a really tough place mentally right now’. He seemed fine 40 seconds earlier when sending you memes about ducks.

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Past-it old bastard referring to you both as 'people our age'

AN old and decrepit man is under the mistaken impression that you and he are contemporaries.

While talking to friends and acquaintances at social events, Martin Bishop has been insisting they are old fogies well past their prime like him – something that is clearly not true.

Nathan Muir said: “Martin and I were getting on fine in the pub. We agreed on a lot of things, like the state of the roads, how much we hate e-scooters and our dislike of loud teenagers on the bus. 

“I’d started telling him about how I did my back in jogging – jogging, which is what young people do – and he clearly said ‘Well, that’s what happens to people our age’. Where the f**k did that come from?

“Martin’s got grey hair and wears boring M&S shirts, whereas I wear trainers and like to think I am quite fashionable in a sort of ‘ageless’ way. I mean, yes, I have a few flecks of grey but that can happen in your 30s. Although I’m not in my 30s, I’m in my 50s, obviously. 

“So I’m not sure how he got this insane idea we’re in the same over-the-hill age bracket, just because he was in the year above me at school.”

Bishop said: “I distinctly remember Nathan from school, so he’s not much younger than me. Also I saw how big he has the text on his phone. It’s good to know he’s socially and sexually irrelevant too.”

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