What Men Make of What You Do
We are thinking differently.
Sometimes I stumble across a Tuesday night type of sitcom or comic and am reminded of the unending stupidity in the depiction of male sexuality – “Man wants sex.”
It’s a shame that this idiot’s guide to a man’s mind has become a norm in pop culture because it isn’t so. Do I want to have sex with a woman that I’m dating? Yeah, or I’ll stop dating her. Is that all I’m thinking about the entire time that we are together? No (or she’ll stop dating me.)
Men do have an active interiority during a date; we are thinking!
Of course, we’re not thinking in the same way that you are. I’ve lived enough now to know that men are in fact, thinking in a fundamentally different way than women. While this is hardly the place to discuss gendered modalities of cognition at length, here are two tips in how to communicate with men:
- Say Anything, Mean Something: Men don’t read into what a woman says as much as they read into the way that she says it. This is not to say that you can mock his mother ad nauseam as long as you’re smiling, but it does mean that you don’t have to worry about insulting them as easily as you may worry about insulting a girlfriend… at least not with your words. Men factor body language and attitude as much (or more) as we do words into a statement.
- Big Questions Big No-No: Men do not catalogue their favorites in the same way women do. Women tend to have a series of favorites at any given moment in their lives: a favorite artist, a favorite song, a favorite place to get coffee – women have favorites. Men are more just going and what comes up along the way, comes up along the way. So if things are going well on your date, and you’ve got this big concern about them (usually as a result of having lost a relationship due to something related to whatever you are going ask) the last thing you want to do is ask a man point blank: “Do you respect your mother?” These questions put men on alert: rather than give you a straight, unbiased answer, men are likely to either tell you want you to hear (because we are very attuned to attitude and we’ll pick up what you want us to say) or take it as a challenge.
So there are two simple tips in how to communicate with men. We are not constantly thinking about sex (although it does come through the old thinker from time to time) nor are we stupid.
But we are thinking differently.
|
Write a Review