Jealous

as in

"I’m not the jealous type."

Variations: "I know what men are like ... I trust you.... You don’t have to worry about me coming after you with a hammer because I see you talking with some pretty girl."

Wouldn’t it be fine if this were true? And wouldn’t it be fine if your team always won? And money grew on trees? And pigs could fly?

Alas, we have to live in the real world and in the real world she is as likely to be immune to jealousy as she is to have wings or laugh at your jokes all the time.

In her mind, jealousy is a good quality. It is the best practical evidence of her deep affection for you. The fact that it also means no woman is allowed to come within several hundred yards of you for fear of her life is not her intention, just a convenient by-product.

If you are still naive enough to believe her in this domain, at least try the waters by artificially contriving a test before finding yourself in a real life situation.

Arrange for her to see you having coffee in some private intimate cafe with some old girlfriend who you have grown a little tired of anyway. That way, if your current squeeze does go berserk and pour a bottle of water over your “ex’s” head, definitively ruining the relationship forever, nothing much will be lost.

The tragedy is that even if your lovely passes this test, you mustn’t assume too much. It may mean nothing! For all their failings, women are actually often uncannily astute when it comes to figuring out which women are a threat and which aren’t.

What she really means when she says she is “not the jealous type” is that she is not ... until there is the slightest reason to be.