Here are attitudes that are just a no – no to men;
1.COMPULSIVE DECORATING
Ladies,
you can call it nesting or decorating, or whatever you want, but
there’s a point where we just stop caring. At first, it’s exciting to be
picking out fabrics and paint colors as a couple, but eventually you
man will reach his limit.
The
excitement wears off for most men when they realize that while they’re
expected to be part of the home decorating decisions, they aren’t making
any actual decision. Giving a man a choice between a red flower throw
pillow and a green flower throw pillow isn’t much of a choice if we
don’t want flowers all over the place.
We’re
just helping you narrow down the things that you like. It’s not that we
don’t care. I think there just comes a point where we don’t care as
much
.
Of
course, this is where problems typically arise. Men look at the home
objects at their base level. Your partner looks at that same pillow in a
completely different way. To me, it’s just a pillow. To my wife it’s
the pillow that someone will gaze upon when first entering our home. It
ties-in the colors in the matching armchair in the corner of the room to
the rug by the coffee table. She sees it as a validation of her sense
of style, while I see it as just a comfy place to rest my head while
watching Sons of Anarchy.
2.THE ETERNAL CAT FIGHT
Everyone
makes snap judgments, sizes up the competition, or at some point,
straight-up makes fun of someone else. It’s all part of being human. But
there’s sometimes a certain way women do those things, regarding other
women, that’s worth noting. You think her make-up is trashy. You don’t
think she should be wearing open-toed shoes with that dress. You don’t
think she should be with that guy.
I
don’t even think it’s mean spirited, though it certainly is sometimes. I
think there’s a weird dynamic that gets handed down from mothers to
daughters, a rivalry between sisters, or schoolyard taunting that sets
the tone for how women interact with each other throughout life.
Honestly,
I don’t even know how to best explain it, which is why it can be
annoying. Sometimes women will have a strong, startling reaction to
another woman (often one of our female friends or co-workers) that seems
to just come out of some scary, dark place. Believe me, guys do some of
this, but nowhere on the same scale or with the same complexity that
comes with having two X chromosomes.
Please
don’t pull us into this drama because we don’t know where the line is –
or if we’re even allowed to join in and make comments about one of your
strange gal pals. We run the risk of suddenly being in trouble for
making fun of your friend, even though you did it first.
3. TALKING, TALKING, AND MORE TALKING
Have
you ever been shopping at an airport gift shop and seen one the
numerous displays for those special, “sound occluding” headphones?
You’ve probably heard of them. Plug ‘em into your iPod, put them on, and
through the magic of technology, the headphones detect surrounding
noise, filtering it from your range of hearing. My ears do the same
thing, but only with my wife’s voice.
It’s
not that she even talks too much (she doesn’t), or that we have trouble
communicating with each other (we don’t). It’s just “Girl Talk”. Women
tend to express their feelings more openly than men, and sometimes – to
many guys – it takes the form babbling, if that’s even the right word.
Babbling
about the day’s events, which we were there to witness, interesting
Lucky articles, or some place she’s thinking about shopping this weekend
for throw pillows. It’s the stuff that guys will start to mentally
filter out unconsciously. I call it “half-listening”. Married guys, you
know what I’m talking about. The problem with ‘half-listening’” is that
it doesn’t catch the random important information that you’ll throw at
us in the middle of talking about something else. You know, like
mentioning who will pick up the kid from school tomorrow.
That
info is somehow mixed into the conversation about how you think we
should take more reusable canvas bags to the grocery store. Guys –
certainly not me- can overuse their half-listening skills, and
eventually it’ll become ‘one quarter-listening’ and that’s bad news. I
think my best advice to women would be this: If you think he’s not
listening, he probably isn’t. If it’s something really important, try to
gently bring it up again when he’s more engaged and also leave a big
note on the refrigerator.
I
could probably go on with this list, bringing out more ammunition for
the never-ending ‘battle of the sexes’. However, at the end of the day
all I want to do is point out a few examples for women that, if handled
just a little differently, might have a more positive impact on your
relationship. And I definitely know that it’s not a one sided affair. My
wife is already rattling off her own list to me at this very moment.
GALTIME

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