Male-Female Contrasts

Updated 12/11/97

I listened to the audio tape on the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and discovered this about myself.

Honesty and truth. When I try to lie to a woman, I feel so damned bad that I come close to crying. This comes from the training I got from my mother. But that only means that I have learned to avoid talking about the issue, which is a form of honesty. That's a male characteristic. For men, talking isn't the best mode of expression. Doing is. "Here, let me show you how much I love you. Lie down." From a woman's point of view, that short, flaccid thing between a man's legs has no way of telling her how he feels. For women, doing isn't the best mode of expression. Talking is. "Here, Let me tell you how much I love you. Bend an ear." From a man's point of view, that short, flaccid thing wagging in her mouth can be put to much better use. Since this is true for almost all men and almost all women, it would seem prudent that they understand this and learn to accommodate each other's needs instead of fighting it and looking for complete compatibility.

I looked at why I thought it was useful to lie. For a man, especially me, there's an easy answer. As I was growing up, when I did something bad, my mother would not scold me, she would question me. Neither of us understood that the one thing you don't do to a male is question why he does something (unless he's liberated from his ego, which I suspect I am close to). Women think that this is communicating and getting closer. Men think it means he failed, and begins to feel incompetent. Well, I did my part. I began to believe I was incompetent. To this day I have a fairly large tape on being incompetent. I tend to go on the defensive when anyone starts asking me questions. But now that I know what this behavior is all about, I feel much more confident that I can just let the questions be what they are - someone's attempt to get closer, to feel a part of me, to understand.

A friend of mine said to me: Sometimes people don't say what they want to hear, but they usually say what they need to hear. The truth is always the best thing!

As for not saying what others want to hear, that again comes out of a fear that I might say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I always know what I want to say, what to ask for, how I feel, what would please me, how I want to please others. But the fear of rejection of either giving or receiving keeps the lid on. So a man, and I'm no different, will wait for the women to ask and hope it is for something he had in mind to give. Is that crazy or what? Let's take this one step farther. Suppose I were to ask a lady I just met to be with me once for the sole purpose of finding out if we were compatible in bed. That probably wouldn't make her feel comfortable about talking to me ever again. So the cagey thing for me to do, as a male, is woo her into bed. Women like that. It makes them feel nurtured. I did not understand that when I was a young man, yet my style has always been to do just that--earn the woman's affection through carefully exploited nurturing techniques. But nowadays, getting past the first date or the first phone call or even the first letter is terribly onerous. There seems to be a scare that men will rampage a woman given the slightest chance. So any little red flag the man (me) raises is cause for abandonment.

Everyone has red flags. I read the book "When to dump your date". It is full of red flags that prevent two people from enjoying each other. Nothing says that anyone has to get married. If a red flag indicates a marriage problem, don't get married. Should that exclude everything else?

I was told of a man and woman (true story) that live next door to each other. They have been an exclusive couple for years. They will never get married. Each can't stand how the other keeps house. It's like having your own tube of toothpaste, is it not?

I am reminded of one occasion when I came home and found my wife lying nude on the couch. I walked right by her and didn't say much of anything. My head was swimming with excitement, but I was afraid to say what I was thinking or feeling for fear that she might think that all I ever thought about was sex. Well, that's exactly what she wanted me to think right then, and I blew it. So I have learned that a woman will sometimes not say what she wants in hopes that the man will voluntarily fulfill her needs; it's a test to determine if the man really cares for her, or to find out how desirable she is. The man will not say what he wants for fear that it will evoke the trite comments that he has a one track mind.

Where does it end?