Five reasons we can never be together

I never dreamed it would come to this. Even though we’ve never met, have never had that first flush of exciting romance and have even yet to share our very first kiss, I’m already thinking about the end. Yes, my non-existent boyfriend who never happened, I’m afraid that, for you, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the open air – it’s an oncoming train.

It’s not you, it’s… well, it’s everything you do. Even though you are a virtual man and have no corporeal form, I feel it’s important to tell you why we can never be together. It’s because you do one or more of these things. Chances are if you do all five, we shouldn’t be speaking in the first place. If you did exist, this is why I would be dumping you right now.

1. You use fake tan
I get it. It’s never sunny here, and trips away to international sun traps can be expensive and sunbeds potentially fatal. Your skin is so pale it usually has a blueish tinge, so it’s easy to see why you reached for the fake bake and covered yourself in what is little more than a vat of odd-smelling orange paint. Thing is, you’re not a beach hut, it’s unsexy and you look like a tangerine. Also, you’ve not done it right, so you have a white chin but a face like a Jaffa Cake. Oh, and you forgot to do your shins too. I prefer alabaster to a lighter shade of barbecue. Embrace your lily-white epidermis or get the hell out.

2. You watch too many reality TV shows
I know that some people watch The Only Way Is Essex or Jersey Shore to be ironic (apparently, anyway; I’ve only ever seen 30 mins of each) but when your social schedule revolves around the opportunities to catch people with ridiculous names doing nothing in particular with other similarly-monikered dolts. When you start talking about Snooki or Funda, my eyes start to glaze over and your sexiness evaporates before me. I don’t expect you to watch documentaries 24/7 or sneer at TV from behind an open poetry compendium, but until you admit the Kardashians are fucking morons, we have nothing to say to each other.

3. You hassle celebrities for retweets on Twitter
They don’t care about you. They’re not interested in your birthday. You’re scaring them. Sign out of Twitter, for all our sakes. And make me a sandwich.

4. You revel in your stupidity
Not everyone can be clever. There is not enough room for everybody to be a genius, or an intellectual. And that’s fine. But don’t be proud of your ignorance.  Don’t boast that you’ve “never read a book” as if it instantly makes you a cool person. Don’t dumb yourself down and misremember facts in an effort to make you sound more aloof or laidback. It’s OK if you don’t know much, but you at least have to *want* to know more.

5. You’re a contrarian
I like to be challenged. I love to debate. It’s wonderful to meet someone who pushes you, who you can talk to about almost anything. You don’t have to agree with me all the time; I’m not always right. But you disagree with me all the time. I say “day”, you say “night”. I know that making up after arguing is supposed to be ‘sexy’, but if you disagree with me all the time, it gives me a headache, and we know what that means: NO SOUP FOR YOU.

I’m sorry it had to end this way. Perhaps it’s for the best that we never got to start.