The Flip is driven by marriage and does not necessarily occur with all women; some females are blessed with a joyful contempt for traditional expectations so they don't fall prey to the gale of conformity raging around them.
Married women and females in relationships don't seem to experience The Flip as profoundly as single women either. Divorcees, well, The Flip hits them harder than anyone.
As I have observed it, this phenomenon has three main phases:
The Early Years: Run from about age 28 to 31, whereupon women who may not have given a certain man the time of day when he was 25, suddenly scream his name across crowded rooms - perhaps so they'll be heard above the jungle beat issuing from their ovaries - though more likely because they too are experiencing tinnitus after a decade going to deafening gigs/niteclubs/pubs in search of love.
The Early Years are also marked by a subtly more inviting feminine posture, a greater willingness on her part to laugh at men's lame jokes and questions like "so what have you been up to for the last six years?"
The shining hallmark of women entering The Flip is the stainless steel ice-bucket bearing a freshly shucked bottle of house white and three upturned wine glasses. This will be nursed through crowds like newborn Jesus by 'The Flipper', who until this point in life had enjoyed similar ice buckets hand-delivered by over-zealous schmucks who thought they were half a chance.
The Middle Years: Extend from about age 32 to 36 and are marked by a single-minded focus rarely seen outside of Test cricket and open heart surgery.
Women, many of whom have yet to accept the game is rigged, will continue to utilise charms better suited to females a decade younger such as extravagant hair flicks, high-waisted jeans, girlish voices and Hello Kitty keychains.
Men who enter into relationships with women in the Middle Years are akin to shoppers buying dairy products cheap because they're approaching their use-by-date; caution should be exercised.
It is around this time that many insecure men exact an unseemly revenge on Flippers, tagging them along in relationships they have no intention of formalising. These guys are known as "dickheads".
The Final Years: Like Shane Warne's most famous delivery, The Flipper in her later years can be very hard to pick coming out of the hand.
This is because the whiff of desperation characteristic of many women during the Middle Years has been replaced by a "quick sure grace", a calmness and, perhaps, an acceptance of the single way of life.
Final Year Flippers can be wonderfully uninhibited and place very few expectations on men save being made to orgasm, which is serendipitous because it is at this age many blokes finally work out what they need to do in the bedroom.
This points to one of the great ironies of The Flip - for while men who still possess hair and abdominals may find themselves in greater demand amongst women of their own age group, many are intent on extending their prolonged adolescence by chasing women in their 20s.
Instead of enjoying the fruits of mature women who are entering their sexual prime - a veritable buyer's market for blokes - 30-something men are still haggling with younger women in the seller's market of the mid-20s.
So I guess, while you couldn't deem these male 'Flippers', you most certainly could call them 'Flips'. I oughta know.
Posted by Sam de Brito
