I started my annual Romance series leading to Valentine's Day (month's worth of posts on love) and wanted to get your opinion on an idea I posted about. Is it really that hard to understand the opposite gender? Or is the problem more that we know too much, and thus get paralyzed by past experience? And that we are not willing to compromise/change our way of life to meet the girl/guy where they are? Just a thought.
Permalink Reply by L.L. on January 21, 2009 at 5:19pm
People are either simple or complicated - coincidentally, people are either men or women. It's a crap chute. I don't think relationships are hard if you're in the right one. It's very simple.
I don't think it is any more difficult to understand one gender than the other. Individually it can be difficult to understand any one person but rarely is it because of their gender.
To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.:D
When you put yourself first, and aren't willing to compromise your values the right people will gravitate towards you. And the real question isn't about whether or not your significant other is hard to understand but rather- how much do you want to learn about this person in order to gain a better understanding of what you're willing to put up with in life and love.
I have been told many, many times that lovers are "baffled" by me or that I "confuse the hell out of them." That said, I don't think I am that difficult to understand...
Truthfully though, I think men are far simpler creatures than women--perhaps that is sexist of me to say, but I grew up with several brothers and have always found the straightforwardness that most men innately possess really refreshing and nice. On the other hand, I have girlfriends whom I am crazy close with, but I couldn't even begin to explain why they do the things that they do.
I think it's true that you don't really need to "understand" someone to love them, but I certainly think part of loving someone is trying to understand them--where they're coming from, where they are, and where they're going--and to try to understand together what these things mean for both of you. Love is more or less a choice to constantly strive to understand...
Women and men are different biologically, and thus think differently. It's impossible to be able to understand the opposite sex completely, not to mention that everyone is different. I think the problem is that we get to understand one person, and then put these assumptions and beliefs towards the next person, and get frustrated when they don't act the way we expected. Instead, we need to be laid back esp in the beginning and don't expect any certain actions.
Permalink Reply by Nate on January 22, 2009 at 1:34am
Men are easy to understand, if I might quote Louis Ramey
What does man want? Woman
What is better than Woman? Two Woman
What is better than that? Five woman
Woman, well, the guys I know tend to overestimate the complexity of woman. I think there is a good quote for this one as well, as Jack Nicholson said in "As Good as It Gets," to understand a woman, just imagine a man and remove reason and responsibility.
Many I think will find this sexist, demeaning or over simplistic, well, I'm awesome.
I don't think that people are that hard to understand period. I think the problem lies in how self-centered many of us have become. When someone is really tuned into a person by the verbal and non-verbal cues they're throwing out, if you're paying attention, they're super easy to understand. The communication breakdown starts when people stop paying attention to others and only listen to themselves.
As a whole, any difficulty in understanding either gender seems to be on individual quirks than the gender divide. I often surprise my guy friends when I say that I don't really have problems understanding most women. When they ask about this, I explain that I was raised almost entirely around women and that the vast majority of my close friends are women. Tiffany all ready said it when she explained that it was mainly an issue of listening to others beside ourselves.
I think it's always harder to understand something you don't know, whether it's gender or simply how to bake a pie. Seemingly, it's just more difficult to grasp the unfamiliar, and thus, it could be the same for gender relations. Men don't understand women for no reason other than they aren't women, and vice versa.