The dynamic changes in our 40s
In my younger days, chasing women was an absolute circus. It was a business of pure agony, spent babbling total rubbish in noisy pubs and cooking disastrous dinners, all in the desperate hope of not spending the night alone with a pot noodle. It was exhausting, completely undignified, and usually ended in total humiliation.
Then you hit your forties, and the whole game goes completely through the looking glass.
Suddenly, you find yourself transformed from the desperate hunter into the slightly baffled target.
Having packed my bags and moved out to Vietnam - a place of brilliant chaos and mind-boggling moped traffic - this shift has smacked me right in the face. Back in Britain, hitting middle age makes you feel a bit like an old motor car being quietly pushed into the garage to rust. Out here, it feels like you've been dropped into the middle of a rather aggressive recruitment drive.
It's a bizarre sensation for a bloke of my vintage. For decades, we were brought up to do all the heavy lifting. We had to come up with the chat-up lines, endure the freezing cold rejections, and foot the bill. Now, the tables have turned so fast it gives you whiplash. The women are running the show, sorting out the logistics, and making their moves with a directness that would give an old schoolmaster a heart attack.
There's no subtle dropping of handkerchiefs here. If a woman decides you'll do, she launches a proper tactical assault. You get asked for your number, dragged off for coffee, and interrogated about your entire life history before you've even worked out the exchange rate on your beer.
For a middle-aged Scotsman raised on a proper diet of emotional repression and the firm belief that he looks a bit rubbish, this reversal is totally disorienting. The old anxiety about making a fool of yourself is completely dead. Instead, you're left with the sheer comedy of being pursued while trying to cope with a expanding waistline and the sweating heat of the tropics. You can only sit back, marvel at the madness of it all, and make sure you know where the nearest exit is.