Jenny has made an astounding observation in a prior journal comment. It went something like this: “I would theorize that women are about as inexplicable to men as men are to women.”
This got me thinking, and as we all know, that’s what usually gets me into trouble…
For men, at least, the issue isn’t so much as being inexplicable as it is unpredictable.
Take basic communication for instance. Men don’t talk at the same time other men are, they seem to be prone to interrupt less, and they seem to have a high content to noise ratio.
Allow me to elaborate — the next time you go out to eat, look for two (or more) women sitting at a table, sans males. Amazingly, all parties are usually talking at the same time. It’s like the StarTrek Binar aliens that thrive at concurrency. The catch is, they don’t seem to mind missing significant pieces of the conversation; these details are merely to be made up later by the listener. In fact, I have questioned my own female friends after witnessing this behavior. Each person, when asked what the conversation was about, tends to have a significantly different slant. “We were talking about my boyfriend making moves on me.” “No we weren’t, we were talking about my car breaking down on me.” There’s some overlap, but there’s a lot of cross conversation going on at the same time.
Now look at two men. They barely speak, but when they do, it’s for an exchange of information. They take turns, and rarely the the middle of one person’s sentence overrun the beginning of another’s.
True, I don’t “get” the desire to embrace the communication experience and walk away without content, but if that’s your thing, enjoy away. What gets me is the frustration that builds up when I’m trying to have a conversation, and the rules of common protocol are recklessly abandoned, especially when I least expect it.
I often notice that my own mother will wait until I have made eye-contact with someone else, have found a significant pause and silence, and just as I begin addressing them and am in mid-sentence, she views that the window of communication has begun, and she immediately calls out their name and starts talking, overstepping me in volume, even if I’m significantly closer.
Admittedly, I don’t understand. But, I pause, back off, and wait for the conversational thread to end. When it does, I look at her for visual clues that it’s appropriate for me to begin as it’s now my turn, since she’s released the floor, and I resume from the beginning, only to have the process begin again.
Last night I patiently tried to answer a direct question from Tamara, and it took me roughly two hours to be able to get three sentences out unhindered.
I’ve also noticed that men prefer to use logic when linking thoughts together. Quite often the women I’ve tried to lead down a sensible path of facts refer to this as fighting dirty.
Again, it’s not so much that women prefer worm-hole technology to get from one point in the conversation to the other, but that I don’t know where re-entry is supposed to occur.
I don’t understand the choice making process either. Here’s another example that I haven’t arrived to any conclusion on. Guys tend to say, “what’s the outcome I want, what’s are the paths that lead to that outcome, which path has the highest yield of success, and then follow.” Gals tend to look at the choice at the moment and then ponder how they got there. Living for the moment impacts your ability to *live* for the *duration*.
More details. In college, I dated someone who said that her long-term plan was to settle down with “the guy next door” (stable, well off, faithful, etc.) and I thought I was just that guy. She, however, stated that dating wasn’t going to work for us because she was interested in going out and dating the guys who were “dangerous.”
Obviously that didn’t work out for us. And not too surprisingly, it didn’t work out for her. The short-term thrill rides usually ended in tears, not the kind from relationships ending, but from the guys physically abusing her, leaving her stranded on some off campus, or stealing from her.
The flaw, as I saw it, was that there were certain things she saw “exciting” about “dangerous guys”. Rather than sharing what those experiences were with “boy-next-door” guy, who would happily provide the sense of adventure without the downsides of being punched in the face for not putting out or left broke on the side of the road. Instead, “risk” was equated for “adventure” and the assumption was “find the fun and change the boy.” We know that doesn’t work.
Here’s the catch, the decision making process and often the unspoken consequences of such dating activities ends up making the person unattractive to the “boy-next-door” they are eventually trying to seek. Men, how many times have you seen a knock-out driving a car, and on second take you see a cigarette pop out the window — no longer do you see the sexy person there, but a chimney of nasty expensive habits, cancer, and wrinkled skin in years to come.
Men just don’t get it. We’d like to. We’re even willing… but no one has been able to explain with any precision the thought process.
Women, on the other hand just don’t seem to get it. And so I’ll explain it for you.
Men -are- just that simple minded and transparent. We have to say what we mean or we wouldn’t be able to talk with other men.
If you’re going to look for hidden meanings and such, you will get frustrated. We’re just stupid enough that if you ask us something point blank we’ll give you the real answer, up front, the first time, and without obscurity.