As we get older, we certainly get more set in our ways. Experience, perhaps, hardens us, and the more we learn about ourselves and our various partners, the less we're willing to bend.

We're all screwed, basically. The more we experience, the longer our list becomes.

So with that cut-and-dry philosophy aside, I realised that the things that concerned me 10 years ago when it comes to the male species, now seriously tick me off.

Perhaps 'tick-me-off' is too strong a phrase, now maybe we're just more aware of what we're really looking at.

For instance, let's take underwear. When I was 18, dudes were allowed to wear 'tighdie-wighdies'. The obligatory y-front jocks his mum bought him, always a Woolies three-pack, replete with shades of paisley, mustard and Russian red, which was worn with much awkward teenageness. This bothered us not then, perhaps because most of the time we weren't wearies undies anyway.

Nowadays, if we catch a man strolling around our kitchen, slugging from the Douglasdale, idly scratching his testicles and wearing a pair of stretched white scants, we're going to recoil.

Only the first signs of disaster

Of course it has to run deeper than bad underwear, for Bridget Jones and her minions are bearers of the granny pants, too. However, men's choice in underwear seems to bother me more and more, acutely so, as the years and first dates roll on.

Underwear aside, what about the deeper stuff? Are there meant to be slightly awkward silences between mouthfuls of wine?

I can only imagine that there must be a few awkward ho-hums between Joost and Amor, but really, is there anything left to say after your husband has publicised his holey mustard jocks to the country, in his socks? (Even with the stripper sitting astride him, I'm sorry china, if you want to be a rock star, you have to scrub up. It's just not a good look.)

Perhaps I am just used to being on my own, but nothing bothers me more than when you're sitting in a perfectly great setting, and something is just off. And then you start to back peddle ever so slightly, whereas 10 years ago, you drank through the awkward silences and then locked the deal with smooching, so that you didn't need to talk anymore?

Nowadays, you'll both sit there, staring at anything except each other, and on realising quickly what's happening, you think, 'How the devil am I going to get out of here?'

Perhaps it's because you also feel you have to be sure. When Brad hooked up with Angelina, he didn't think, "I'm going to get so screwed over". He thought: "This will work, come hell or high water. Aniston is watching me like a hawk." He had to be so sure that the woman who practically invented Adoption.com, who scored her brother, and who owns lips that dreams are made of, was right before making the adultery plunge.

Numbs your instincts

Ego is one thing; repeated heartache is another. Love has a way of gutting your very soul, seeping from your every pore, maddening your mind, numbing your instincts. And it all starts with a smile, or something as innocuous as eye-contact, and suddenly your life isn't yours anymore.

And yet, nobody takes the sensible option — when you fancy someone, foibles such as underwear-from-the-'70s or an awkward silence, fall by the wayside. Something feels off, but sadly your bodily lust, lying dormant until this very moment, closes in and that's it.

So do we learn anything? Amor may be getting her own back by being on the cover of Marie Claire after Joost's little 'Frolic Aux Holey Pants', but that can't be helping the situation. (Nice work sistah.)

Why is it then — when we get all the warning bells, or something pretty traumatic happens like vulgar underwear in your kitchen or a South African rugby hero getting down and dirty with a prostitute, we don't walk away? Surely that is completely counterproductive to all we learn from bad situations?

Maybe we just leave too much up to chance.

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