I don’t think anyone, apart from me, will have read The Rules in their entirety. But you have almost certainly heard of them. They have sold 35 million copies, and, if you believe the spiel, are all you will ever need to know about male/ female interaction. The perma-groomed Manhattanite authors of The Rules, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, have divided the world into two groups – women, who are needy harpies on a marriage rampage, and men, who are capricious bastards that can be trained and/or tricked into love, much like teaching a flighty monkey to play the accordion. So far, so eerily accurate. But what are these Rules I hear our female readership screech, ovaries a-trembling. They aren’t difficult to summarize, so pay attention and you won’t ever have to fork out ten dollars for this odious volume or any of its cashing-in sequels. Never talk to a boy first, never call him, always end calls first, dump him if he doesn’t buy you something shiny for your birthday, and so on and so on, with many more conditions and restrictions that basically all add up to Make Him Love You, Then Make Him Afraid.

I first encountered The Rules in Year 8, when my best friend’s parents got divorced and her mum went on a Self-Actualization binge. First of all she bought up the I Don’t Need No Man library, stuff like The Feminine Mystique, The Second Sex and similar, the kind of books with a Barbie in a noose on the front cover. Then came the Remarriage or Death phase, when she ordered in a crate with every dating book ever written i.e. Why Men Love Bitches, Your Happiness is Secondary to Your Wish Not to Die Unloved and, of course, The Rules. Eventually she tired of these too, and when she moved on to sublimating her urges in BBC period dramas and fiercely intense feelings for Andrew Marr, our still forming adolescent minds were allowed to feast upon the most exploitative dating mythology dross the twentieth century could vomit up. I will never, ever, forget the principles I learned from The Rules aged 13. Even if/when I have been married for several years, a close relative is gravely ill and it is absolutely imperative that I call my hypothetical husband, I will no doubt pause before the phone and think “you needy fool! Remember rule five!”

I’m not saying there aren’t shreds of truthiness in the The Rules – you probably will appear more intriguing if you don’t call a boy all the time. But that’s just common sense. The part of the book that’s really offensive is the idea that you should spend the entirety of a relationship, even past marriage, even through old age and up to death, trying to hide most of yourself from your other half. The idea (and these are all suggested in The Rules) that you should try not to let your husband see you without make-up, that you should never be too honest about your thoughts/ feelings/ past, and that you must basically spend your life in a constant state of first date alertness, is sickening. My exposure to the book at an early age has meant I’ve developed an attitude where I either adhere so obediently to The Rules that whoever I’m involved with is left puzzled at my chilly distance, or I rebel scornfully but excessively against them and completely lose decorum. At these times I’ll pause a civil chat with a likely-seeming boy to say ‘Okay, kiss me now.’ My friend on the floor below says it makes me like a shy but predatory spider. My advice to myself (and to you, if you need it) is to break free from The Rules. Don’t be an ice queen, or trap boys in your web – try having a normal, non-calculating conversation for once and see what happens.