A Short Women’s Pocket Guide To Men (Actually, Women Of Any Height Can Use This)

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1. Men don’t get it. We are not good at reading between the lines, or your mind for that matter. NEVER say to a man, “You should have known what I wanted [or needed, or meant or was thinking] We DON’T know. We DON’T get it. You NEED to tell us. For instance, if you say to a man, “No, I really shouldn’t have that burrito”, we think you mean, “No, I really shouldn’t have that burrito”, not “Please talk me into having that burrito, I would kill a nun for it”.

Here’s why we don’t get it. Until meeting you, we had lead a simple life of hunting and gathering. Up until that point, our only real relationships with women while growing up were with our mothers or sisters, who were about as subtle as great white sharks. The advantage there however, was that we never had to read between the lines. As a boy, when you get slapped in the face with a frozen fish, you instantly know that your most recent behavior was probably not going to work as a viable business model around your household. What our mothers lacked in subtlety, they more than made for in clarity, so it was an easy roadmap to follow for a male because he knew exactly where he stood. There wasn’t anything ambiguous about a kitchen utensil rapidly applied to your head and shoulder area.

Our only other social contacts outside of our families, was with other boys. Again, there was no ambiguity in these circles. Social order was quickly defined by your size and strength. If your behavior was approved off, you received high fives, if not, you usually found yourself wearing your undershorts around your neck the hard way. Uncomfortable, but yet again, clear and easy to read.

We were versed in full head-on battle, not the subtle psychological warfare that the young girls engage in so well. Consequently early on in our romantic relations, we are tone-deaf to the messages we should be picking up between the lines. Messages like: “Beware, incoming shrapnell” or, “I will get you for that. Maybe not now, or tomorrow, but when you least expect it, in a completely unrelated context, leaving you baffled and confused.”

2. Men are dogs. Horn dogs that is. The dishonest ones will say to you, “I would need to get to know a woman before sleeping with her”. The honest ones will say to you, “I would need to feel a pulse before sleeping with a woman.” Sometimes not even that. A recent government study has shown that men think about sex approximately 32 times a second, whether waking or sleeping. Apparently the only ways to interrupt this cycle are to either knock him unconsious or, more humanely, bring him shopping to a fabric store, where, if he is a true heterosexual, he will fall into a coma so deep that there will be no measurable brain activity.

My point here is that, for a woman’s sake, it will be much less wear and tear on her psyche [and his] if she just accepted that men are dogs, and didn’t try to change their basic structure. He’s gonna at least look, whether straight on, or out of the side of his eye, so just accept it. It’s really hard to fight mother nature. The good news is that, just because they lust, doesn’t mean they love. He can lust many, but may love only you. So this situation is not a threat to a good relationship. Furthermore, if a man is accepted for who he is, that can only serve to strengthen the relationship.

3. We do have a nothing zone. If you ask a man what he is thinking at any given moment, sometimes he will say “Nothing”. At that moment, if you could hook him up to an electroencephalogram to measure his brain activity, you would probably find that he could be declared legally dead in several states. So you can believe him when he says that he was was not thinking about the problems in your relationship, or what his old girlfriend might be doing at that particular moment, or how big your butt is. He probably WAS thinking about nothing or something equally useless such as: how many pixels an actual-size human nose would take up on his computer screen. So if he is sitting there staring at the walls, don’t take it as a threat, look at it like one of those signs in a shop window that says, “Gone to lunch, be back at 12:30”.

4. Ego is everything. Those women who know how to stroke it will have the world as their oyster. I am talking about the male ego here. To simplify the concept of the modern male, think of Alexander the Great, then strip away the ruggedness, ambition, cunning, and bravery, and you have modern man. On average, he is approximately 90% primitive ego and 10% meat by-products. Make him feel like he is the boss and the brains behind the organization. Plant the ideas for him to brilliantly come up with later. Give in on the little things every now and then to make him feel in control and he will give you the big things. Practice on a three year old boy, the behavior doesn’t change much after that. I know this is old fashioned and un-PC, but I am afraid, biologically, we haven’t advanced much from tribal days when men needed to feel manly. Sorry strong women, but this does put you at a disadvantage unless you are clever about it. Think of the male ego as a Faberge Egg: All fancy show on the outside, but delicate and brittle on the inside.

5. Don’t expect us to change. Hope for it, try for it, but don’t expect it. Of course men need to be dressed decently and civilized. Go ahead and do that, but don’t expect wholesale change from the product that you originally bought, it will just be frustrating for both of you. The best relationships are the ones in which the woman has accepted the man’s limitations and quirks. As Albert Einstein said, “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”

Think about how you treat your dog. You accept him and love him for the animal that he is. Consider doing that for your significant other.