Is It True a Leopard Can Actually Change Its Spots?

Would you share your bed with a man who changed his ways?

Perhaps you’re thinking no, absolutely not, there’s no way a leopard or a man can change their spots. Everybody knows that, don’t they? Believe it or not, there’s a super-intelligent man that says otherwise. Before you go rushing off to the end of the article to find out more, let’s explore a few areas that might put you off sharing your bed with a man again. Even if he’s changed his ways.

Snoring

How many years have you put up with your partner’s labored breathing and dreamed of the day when he’d stop drinking and smoking and shed a few pounds while he’s at it? No amount of pushing, shoving, poking in the ribs, tickling his nose or blowing in his ear encouraged him to turn over and stop snoring.

Sleeping

How many hours sleep have you lost? Lying in bed in the dark, cursing, muttering, and thinking I must get some of those strips that go across the nose to widen the nostrils and supposedly stop the uvula and the soft palate from vibrating? Maybe the best thing to do is to buy some earplugs.

Sex

How much frustration did you experience when the man you loved the most turned over and went to sleep without a thought to your climax? Not once in six years. Leaving you to do the necessary. You’re still not able to fall asleep because the sounds coming from him are like the vacuum cleaner which got stuck on a shag pile rug and refused to let go. No matter what you did.

Selfishness

How many times have you wished with all your might that he would once, just once, not dump the contents of his pockets all over the coffee table, not leave his dirty clothes all over the house, and not only cook dinner but then say in his sexy voice, “Don’t worry about the dishes, darling, I’ll do them.”

Fast forward to 2019

Imagine the scenario where fifteen years after you sent him a Dear John via email, he buys a copy of the book you wrote. Nobody else bought a copy but you are so delighted you message him on Linked In to express your gratitude. You arrange to meet but it doesn’t happen for various reasons on both sides.

A couple of months later, you check your Linked In messages and you see he left a phone number. You find him on WhatsApp and message him. He immediately calls you. This is a shock because nobody phones these days. But he was always handy with a phone. Once, he called twenty-six times in one afternoon.

After you’ve picked the phone up from across the room where it flew like a half-peeled mango escaping your sticky, slimy hands you fail to slide the stupid slidey thing up the screen to answer the call. You call him back.

Two hours later, you’ve reminisced about your lives in the 1990s and he’s transferred four hundred quid into your bank account. You’ve arranged to visit him at the weekend and he’s paying for your flights from Edinburgh to Gatwick.

You arrive early on Saturday morning. You wait until you see him stop before you run between cars stopping to drop off or pick up passengers to get into his flash car like a giddy school girl on speed. You jump into the passenger seat and he turns to say, “you look exactly the same.”

You go to Waitrose to stock up on food for the weekend. You can’t say it’s like old times because you can’t remember him ever helping with the shopping when you were together. The sun is blazing in the car park and on the drive to his house. It’s going to be the hottest weekend of the year so far.

Lunch is on the sofa in front of his cinema-sized TV. You notice his coffee table is free of pocket contents.

You know you are still wildly attracted to him because you are quivering and blushing all over and you can hear your heart pounding in your ears. Then he surprises you with some afternoon delight. In your favor. For the first time.

Later on, when you’re chatting about the intervening years, he tells you about one of the scores of women who he lived with, for a time, at various times. He said he’d washed up and wiped down all the kitchen surfaces after dinner (I had to support myself on the kitchen counter at this point for fear of losing consciousness due to shock) and then watched as his girlfriend redid everything he’d just done. He asked her if what he’d done was so bad she had to do it again. She said it was.

He cooked dinner for you both in the kitchen that he remodeled after his wife set fire to it and the living room. She survived the fire thanks to a neighbor dragging her out into the garden.

This man married a woman who drank herself to death. He’d been widowed for a year when we briefly reunited.

He couldn’t drink any more than a half a can of Stella. Fifteen years ago six pints weren’t a problem.

He loaded the dishwasher.

You watch another movie.

His bedroom is clean and tidy.

In bed he tries to shag you, saying it would be rude not to. You think he must have loved his wife and doesn’t feel the same way about you. Maybe he never felt that way for you.

He’s snoring within minutes. It’s a breezeless night and you long for sleep but you’re too hot. No frustration, however, as you lie there knowing there’s no point in seeing to yourself. You were pleasantly satisfied earlier in the day. It’s something you’ve not bothered with in the past ten years, so why start now. Leave those desires to slumber until they’re reawakened by the right man.

The next day

He wants to buy you shoes for your birthday. You like a pair of shoes and some summer sandals but decide on the sandals. He picks up both boxes and strides to the till. You let him. Another first. You are delighted by his generous gifts.

Back at his place, he swore blind he didn’t sleep with every woman he took out to dinner. He enjoyed their company. Despite being comfortably off he thought he might like to find another rich woman to keep him in Fred Perry’s and golf clubs. You recall you used to be nick-named Doris and referred to as his rock. The shine of the day dulled.

Another woman changed some of this man’s spots.

You were never inclined to change anyone, so when you couldn’t live with them— the men and their habits — any longer, you’d walk away. Maybe the next one will be more like you and won’t let you do all the heavy lifting.

Perhaps, if you’d tried to change him, you’d still be together.

But is that what you really wanted?

When you think about your life in the last ten years, you realize you adore sleeping alone. The silence and absence of frustration enable high-quality sleep. You awake refreshed and motivated to do whatever the hell you want.

You know you don’t want another man in your bed.

The spots on a leopard kitten morph into rosettes as the cat matures. The article goes on to say that the famous mathematician, Alan Turing, developed an equation in 1952 that explained how simple chemical reactions are responsible for the transformation of not only leopard’s spots but other patterns on other mammals.

But Turing’s model couldn’t account for the evolution of markings from infant to adult. ~Jeanna Bryner

Three scientists got together to solve the puzzle by modifying Turing’s model. They were still working on it in 2006 when the article was published.