After spending a considerable amount of my life at cocktail conferences, emotional emergency phone calls with my girlfriends, careful observations of, and conversations with, my guy friends; and the left, right, top, bottom, and centre dissection of my own relationship, I have come to a reasonably valid conclusion of my own: [envoke_twitter_link]men and women are just not the same[/envoke_twitter_link].
It’s in the movies, it’s in the books, it’s in the songs, and it is a fact that can’t be denied.
I think I have acquired enough proof now to confidently say that men and women are so different from one another that it might as well be established that these two species of the human race have truly descended from different planets, as rumoured, Mars and Venus, respectively.
In fact, I have come to realize that the two parties have evolved under such rigid gender-specific conditioning that what the woman might want may not even exist in the man’s conscious world, and vice-versa. It’s not their fault. Well, not exactly theirs anyway.
In my opinion, the two even feel things differently. I think this is where many relationship issues find their roots. So the big question is: What do we do about it? An even bigger question is: Who is to be blamed?
When I was little, I was introduced to fairy tales. In most of these tales, beautiful (mandatorily) princesses would be in need to get out of a sucky situation. This would either be the way to a handsome (mandatorily) “knight in shining armour’s” heart, or it would be required of this “knight” to help her get out of the mess she’s in.
And, without fail, he would.
This damsel-in-distress situation, disguised under pretty illustrations and cute cursive writing, is forced upon little impressionable girls from early girlhood.
On the other hand, little boys are taught to be rough and tough, and not to cry “like a girl” from a time when it should be natural for any child, regardless of the gender, to do absolutely anything without having to follow these unnecessary rules. Later in life, you can see these notions from fables and fairy tales translate into disastrous relationship behaviour and decision-making.
We walk on by, wearing our hearts on our sleeves, making deductions based on the princess and knight scenarios, secretly expecting to be scooped up on a white horse to our happily-ever-after land, or expecting to find a girl who smiles pearly-whites and doesn’t utter unparliamentary words.
(Well, that ain’t gonna happen. A girl’s gotta cuss every now and then, ya know.)
Slightly more complexed – we let these story book ideas of love, romance, and the “perfect relationship” (whatever that is) get in the way of probably the best thing that has ever happened or is about to happen to us; seeing it as “not enough”, or worse, failing to see it at all.
What we often fail to realize is that [envoke_twitter_link]these stories came without sequels[/envoke_twitter_link].
We’ve been duped!
Nobody told us [envoke_twitter_link]what happens to Cinderella[/envoke_twitter_link] few months down the line. Nobody told us if these princesses are still happy in their relationships, or are they secretly wanting out? They definitely didn’t tell us that after the show got over, the handsome knight got off the white horse and got back to his real life.
I guess what I am saying is that it seems to me, largely speaking, that our collective conscience has got it all wrong in telling Martians from Venusians. I would like to add here that love and “successful” relationships, you may agree, seem to be the most sought-after paraphernalia in the world. At least to me, they do.
Everywhere I turn, I notice that it’s all about love. The movies, the books, the songs, the lives… Isn’t it? Even though all this isn’t exactly an epiphany, nobody does anything about it. I mean, even when we know that the deed has been done by our own hands, can’t it be fixed by us too?
It would be so much easier if we didn’t have to be a certain way just out of conditioning. Then maybe, just maybe, the big ol’ boys v/s girls would finally be over. Well, here’s hoping.
I’ll leave you at that, just something to think about.
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