The Girlfriend Paradox

The first known precursor of the Girlfriend Paradox occurred circa 250 BC, when Archimedes pondered the question "Does this toga make my feet look large?" The solution proposed by Archimedes was, from a modern viewpoint, laughably simplistic: he answered "You look just fine." Unsurprisingly, he was nagged mercilessly. Eventually, he completely lost it and ran stark naked out of his bathtub and into the streets, screaming "Okay! I get it! I get it!" (or, in Greek, "Eureka! Eureka!") Thankfully, togas and the Greek obsession with feet size are both archaic now.

OK, togas are still awesome.

The next major attempt at solving the Girlfriend Paradox was made by Isaac Newton, who was trying to solve an updated version of Archimedes' problem that involved hat size and nose length. His solution, which he had to create calculus to formulate, was the groundbreaking equation u = e^xy. Sadly, this too would prove incorrect, as all the women found Newton "creepy."

We can't imagine why.

The Girlfriend Paradox was finally formalized into the version we know today by Pierre de Fermat ("Operor illa induviae planto mihi vultus pinguis?" or "Do these clothes make me look fat?") Fermat famously wrote that he "had discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, but there is not enough space left on this page for me to write it out." While this led men for centuries to believe that there was a relatively simple solution to the Girlfriend Paradox, modern mathematicians now believe that Fermat was "just being a dick." This has led to the alternate name for the Paradox: Fermat's Douche Theorem.

Or, to be complete, Fermat's A Complete Douche And Should Go Die Theorem

357 years later, the Paradox was finally cracked by British mathematician Andrew Wiles who, in a proof that was more than a hundred pages long, shockingly showed that the Paradox is irresolvable for all values of n, where n is the response given. He concluded that, should the Girlfriend Paradox be invoked, the invokee was "basically screwed."

The average reaction to Wiles's proof

Recently, a bold new solution was proposed by a team of mathematicians from Stanford University: Never ever have contact with a female, thus circumventing the Paradox altogether. Interestingly enough, the only sure-fire way to accomplish this proof is to be a mathematician at Stanford University.

The "S" stands for "Single."

The Boyfriend Paradox was both postulated and proven to be a zero-sum problem by Pythagoras, who in his famous Love Triangle Theorem stated that "If Amorous girlfriend 'A' (A²) is boning Boyfriend 'B' (B²) who is also boning Co-worker 'C' (C²), then B² better keep A² and C² on opposite sides of the equation." As a side note, a version of this theorem with lower-case letters was later used for something entirely different.

You've probably seen this before.

Curiously, though Pythagoras's explanation has been proven time and time again to be without flaw, many amateurs keep trying to find alternate solutions. Of course, none of these have ever stood up to repeated trial.