Calling all girls!

What do men really want? How to please your man? How to look your best for your man? 5 secrets for snagging Mr Right. These are the sorts of headlines that scream at us from our so-called women's magazines on a daily,weekly and monthly basis. Its not like getting advice on how to get the best value-for-money mortgage or how to take care of your car to get the best mileage out of it. Men are not toys, pets or aliens. They are human beings, every girl has at least one in her life be it her father, brother or friend. They grew up on the same planet as us, were fed the same food as us, taught by the same teachers in school and slept on the same sorts of mattresses as we girls did. Why are the two sexes so different then and why do we need a virtual manual to ensure the best relationship with our men?

Even with all the manuals that we pore over trying to understand why men think and behave a certain way, we girls are still pushed to our wits end trying to crack the matrix which is the mind of a man.

Now here is the thing- women grow up wanting attention and affection whilst men are bred to seek reassurance and boosts to their egos. These might sound like two very similar concepts but I assure you they are different. In the case of women, we just need to feel wanted and needed just for the sake of it which is why a girl will happily keep 5 or 6 'toasters' running at the same time even though she isn't interested in any single one of them. Men on the other hand need reassurance that they are the man, that they know everything; they are pleased when we appear not to be able to change a 'simple' flat tyre or a light bulb so that their macho sides can come through to the rescue.

Where am I going with this? I, along with 49.9% of the female population on this planet, have given up trying to understand what goes on in men's heads let alone mould ourselves into what men want us to be. We have given up trying to understand why men are the way they are. The other 50.1% are still teenagers and don't really care.Why do they refuse to understand the importance of affection and attention in the life of a woman whether she be their grandmother, sister or wife?

Men are so quick to point out when a woman is nagging but what they fail to realize is that it would not be nagging if they went ahead and took directions the first time around. Okay, I will narrow down this write up to the specific context of boy-girl relations. A girl would typically call her man just because she wants to have a chat/hear his voice/vent about her day. When she finds that she's the one responsible for most of the outgoing calls between her and her man she will typically request that he try and call her regularly. Maybe, everyday. Hence, this man is forced to call her out of duty, he is merely fulfilling an obligation. Meaning he has no desire to actually speak to her everyday, he is only doing it because she asked him.Why is this always so?

Second case in point is the busy man. Statistics have claimed that women are better at multi-tasking than men. Be it the more general multi-tasking involving holding down a career, raising kids and keeping the home spotless or the more specific multi-tasking involving painting our toenails, talking on the phone and dancing to music. This is what I've read over and over again anyway. Why is it that when men get busy, you suddenly cannot find them anywhere with a torch light, they don't call their women for days on end and when you finally find their brake lights, they say 'I've been so busy, I haven't had the time to call you'. This is one excuse that I will never ever understand. How busy is busy, really?

Thirdly and finally, before this sounds like the post of a crazy blogger with relationship issues, why is it that men find it so hard to say what is on their minds? The most articulate and eloquent men suddenly go all taciturn in the middle of personal drama in their lives. They call you with a rough edge in their tone, sounding like you owe them money. When you ask what the matter is, you must have faulty psychic powers because he is fine and that edge you thought you heard in his voice is just a figment of your imagination. Weeks later when the problem has blown over, they insist that you should have been more patient and gentle in getting the problem out of them.

Sigh.....men are baffling and sometimes I really do think that they are from Mars. perhaps if we women started to act more like men then we would have peace of mind because they don't seem to have the same sorts of heartaches that we have concerning all the petty stuff. Just get busy and don't pick up your phone because it really is impossible to walk and talk at the same time isn't it. And next time something or someone really annoys us at work or at school or even in our father's houses, pick up the phone and call your man and mumble a word or two without telling him the REAL reason why we are angry.