Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, asks the lass out and she is mesmerised and consents. The rest as they say is history. This is a presentation of the good, or bad, old fashioned and conventional steps to a normal courtship.
In this era men and women alike tell all sorts of lies to get into each other’s pants and here lies the rub. The following piece is how Lerato, (not her real name) narrates her story.
“It was a relatively cool evening and I was minding my own business in a noisy VIP section at a pre-Independence gig, sipping on my libations and enjoying watching people enjoy themselves, some flaunting their wares. I was shaken out of my reverie by a stroke on my arm causing me to turn and face an inebriated man who could barely construct a comprehensible sentence.
We screamed greetings at each other above the loud music as and the man quickly proceeded to tell me that he was interested in me. Luckily I had my business cards with me so I handed him one and told him to call me the next day. He went on to try and further explain his intentions but I was rescued by the friends I had come to the concert with who indicated that it was time to leave as we were all heading out on a holiday trip early the next day.
True to his word, the self-styled Casanova called the very next day and went on every hour thereafter talking about everything and nothing ÔÇô all waffle! He called so often it was like he had accompanied me to my parents’ house. At first it was cute and charming but then it became creepy. Waking up to 15 missed calls after a nap bordered on ‘phone stalking’. I made him aware of my reservations and he toned down on the frequency.
Upon my return to Gaborone, I figured there would be no harm in meeting him to see what his story was so I invited him over for lunch. To get the conversation rolling I asked him to tell me about himself, and in a short period of time I knew everything from his ex-girlfriends to what he earned per month.
And then there was the endless name dropping, this man never seized an opportunity to share about his rendezvous with local celebrities and high profile politicians.
If there was ever a Viagra antidote for women the name dropping syndrome will be up there with body odour and low self esteem.
Through the conversation my sixth sense picked up one or two things about the man who claimed to have United Kingdom university education, the excessive use of clich├®s, poor sentence construction and basic etiquette that he needed to have considering the line of work he claimed to be in.
When it was time to leave, he begged and pleaded to spend the night as he was in love with me and had intentions to marry me to which I politely declined as that line no longer worked. If he were telling the truth this was not the kind of man I wanted to bring home to meet my Mother and Father. He ultimately gave up and made his exit.
The next day I did a bit of snooping around about where he had claimed to be working, earning a six-figure salary and no one had heard of him. I then confronted him with this information and after an avalanche of insults, curses and threats it is safe to say he will not be blowing up my phone anytime soon.
That was how I was almost hoodwinked. Had I not trusted my instincts and been the kind of girl who gets easily lured under the sheets by material things; this tale would be ending a lot differently.”
It has been argued that men do not necessarily lie but rather nurture fantasies created by women about the ideal man’ hence the incessant need for the man to blow their success, popularity and even the sizes of their manhood when trying to impress women.
“Deception is believed to be an adaptive behaviour to natural. Other scholars believe that deceiving is a common strategy frequently employed in interpersonal communication for purposes such as acquiring goods and services, developing and managing satisfying relationships, or creating and managing a desired self-image.” (Sex Differences in Deception Detection- 2011)
A few white lies will be told in relationships all kinds of relationships.
