It ain't that complicated, people!

[sarahmichigan]

In a debate about how different or similar men and women are in another venue I frequent, they brought up the whole Mars/Venus "I don't understand women/men thing." I, personally, don't think it's that hard to figure out. This is what I posted:

Premise 1: Men like to fuck, and generally aren't ashamed of liking to fuck. They have deep emotional lives, but are leery about showing it.

Premise 2: Women have deep emotional lives and aren't ashamed of it. They like to fuck just as much as men, but think they need to be coy about it or deny it because of social mores.

Premise 3: If someone says one thing but does another (i.e. "I love you baby," but isn't there for you during a crisis, or "I want to work things out" but keeps doing heroin or stealing from you or cheating on you), pay attention to their actions, not what they say.

Premise 4: How someone has behaved in past relationships usually creates a pattern. From looking at this pattern, you can get a pretty good idea of how they'll treat you.

Keeping those four premises in mind, you can figure out almost 90 percent of any sexual or intimate interaction between men and women, or between gay couples.

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Link to the discussion please?

I wouldn't say differences between men and women are too complicated to understand. They are just as incredibly simple, and just as difficult to reconcile, as a cheetah and an antelope. People are only confused because they accept the Zeroth Premise: men and women are made for each other by God and/or Nature and therefore our needs should be compatible. Accept that, and one will be a starry-eyed romantic until reality repeatedly kicks one's ass; after which, if one still accepts the Zeroth Premise, one will start calling down moral judgement on the entirety of the opposite sex.

After you learn to reject the Zeroth Premise, relationships are still complicated, but this time by differences not of gender/sex, but between all individuals. Here we're plagued by another assumption: that one relationship model will meet everyone's needs.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

The discussion was semi-private, so it'd be rude of me to link to it.

relationships are still complicated, but this time by differences not of gender/sex, but between all individuals

That pretty much sums up what I think.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

OK. But I'm not sure I get what's being figured out. Can you invent a fictional case study that your premises help with?

By the way, do you believe instinctive differences which statistically tend to apply between men and women include wanderlust vs. nesting, and different emphasis on visual attractiveness?

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

One person said: Women and men are more alike than they are different.

A second person said: If we're so alike, why do men have such a hard time figuring out what women are thinking?

A third person said: Because men are stupid.

A fourth person said: Wrong. Let's ask a different question, why don't LESBIANS understand what women are thinking.

This is when I chimed in. Basically, I was saying that the whole cultural idea that mean and women don't or can't understand one another is silly and overblown. If you know a few things about human nature, it's not that hard to figure out people's motivations or why they do what they do. I said I have a hard time, in general, understanding the motivations of people who are unlike me, but it has little to do with gender.

I do believe that some of our male/female differences are attributable to biology, evolution, pheremones, hormones, etc. I think that they're sometimes either misapplied or overblown, though. And I circle back to the idea that the differences (nesting, wandering, visual attractiveness, etc.) are much more influenced by individual differences than by gender.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

"men and women" not "mean and women"

Dang typo.

[dare2grok.livejournal.com]

I enjoy most of your posts. Some, I think, rise to brilliance. Your four premises are GREAT!!! Getting it down to witty and factual brass tacks, rather than Mars/Venus analogies, is so much better. Genius!

Admirably,
Dan

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

I totally agree a big old DITTO

[an-average-guy.livejournal.com]

I love your points, but I think that your set of axioms may neet some fine tuning...

Premise 3 has a flaw - you contrast "I love you" with "room in a crisis" without acknowledging that some definitions of love require that there BE room for another in a crisis, and that some require that the speaker, out of his love, protect and shield the other person from harm by not letting them be drawn in.

This difference is, to me, an important telling point about the conflict between men & women, in that men are TAUGHT to protect and shield their loved ones, and women expect us to let them in and therefore expose them to harm (at least as we understand it).

I'd also add a corollary to Premise 4, allowing for the possibility of change, but requiring some kind of proof that the change has occurred before accepting the verbal statement. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," i.e. you can say you won't hit me again but show me in your actions that you're not a hair-trigger temper before I get within 1,000 yards of you again...

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

If your partner truly understands and loves you, then they will know (or will ask and find out) whether "being there for you in a crisis" means actively intervening or leaving them alone.

Yes, people can change, but the past is a great indicator of the future. For any "bad" behavior, I'd want to see at least a year of model behavior before making a decision about whether the person had changed. They tell recovering drunks not to seek out romantic relationships in the first year of recovery for a reason. I'd be really unlikely to date a man with a history of physical abuse against women unless it was a good 3, 4, or 5 years in the past, at least, and he'd gone through some kind of therapy for his anger issues.

I don't believe that "once a cheater, always a cheater," but it's true enough of the time to make me wary. I always wonder why women who were "the other woman" want the guy to leave his wife and marry her, the mistress. Because if I were a betting woman, I'd bet he'll cheat on the woman who used to be the mistress, too.

[tacit.livejournal.com]

Premise 5; Men are from earth, women are from earth. We're far more similar than we are different.

[stacycat69.livejournal.com]

I like these premises :-) can I post them in my lj as a reference? :-D

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Sure, as long as you give me credit. :)