It’s no secret that there are vast differences in the ways men and women think. It has been suggested that women are extremely complicated and hard to read.
We overthink things. And then we overthink about overthinking.
Take, for example, a couple trying to decide what they want to do for the evening. The woman asks the man if he wants to go to dinner or a movie or both. He says they can do whatever she wants, and she asks him again if he wants to do those things. He tells her to pick, but then she feels guilty for choosing, thinking that maybe he is just trying to be polite but is actually beginning to resent her and the entire situation.
And if he resents this one thing, he is going to start getting frustrated with all of the little things. When he starts getting frustrated with the little things, he is going to question the entire relationship and wonder why they even got together in the first place. Yes, our minds can get there that quickly.
We tend to take things personally.
One afternoon a woman’s husband walks into the house, notices that some leaves from the backyard have been blown in by the wind onto the floor in the living room, and then simply points it out. Immediately the woman internalizes the comment and thinks, “Oh my gosh, he thinks I am being lazy, that I don’t know how to keep the house clean. I’m not a good wife. Am I disappointing him? Is he mad at me?”
This train of thought can be quickly followed by,
“But why does it have to be my responsibility? If he doesn’t like the way I clean, then he can do it himself.”
We expect men to read our minds.
There is a mountain of dishes piled up in the sink from the last couple of days. A husband and wife both walk by this same mountain multiple times a day, and she is fed up with taking care of it. So she waits. Another day goes by and nothing has changed. That night after dinner, she begins tackling the enormous dish pile, huffing and puffing the entire time.
He asks what’s wrong and either gets A) “Nothing,” (because if you don’t know already, I am certainly not going to tell you), or B) a lengthy explanation of why he should have known to do the dishes or thought to do them simply because they were dirty and because it would have been helpful.
It’s clear that we are rather complicated and that we can probably be a tiny bit frustrating at times.
We are driven by emotion. We are wordy. We are extreme and exaggerated at times. We worry. We are not always great at compartmentalizing – there are too many simultaneous thoughts about all aspects of our lives.
But please bear with us. We have good intentions, and if it’s any consolation, sometimes we don’t even understand ourselves. Being a woman is exhausting.
One more thing, though.
We don’t forget anything. Remember that.
I wonder how long Sonya has been married? The problem with asking men to do something is that they get defensive about being asked and suddenly you are a “nag.” I suppose it could be unfair to generalize men and women, but my husband fits just about every “typical” male category and I fit just about every “typical” female category — so do my friends and their husbands.
This article is strange.
If the woman wanted the man to do something, why didn’t she ask?
If she didn’t ask, then why are women called wordy?
As it turns out, women aren’t really wordier than men: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/women-talk-more-than-men/ .
This article confused me because it generalizes behavior of half the world and thus becomes overly simplistic. It wasn’t complicated – it was too simplistic.
My husband left a can of opened jalapeño slices on the counter. I left them there for FIVE days waiting for him to put them in the trash. I finally threw them away.