Because women love Self Help books

When talking to any woman about something going on in your life, you risk being given advice that has been distilled through her own filter. This filter is made up of her day, her beliefs, her opinions, her fears, but most of all it is constructed out of a superficial understanding of whatever self help book she is reading at the moment.

Every time a woman reads another self help book, the world reveals itself to her as it 'really is' and her life is transformed forever.

Every self help book will affect her like this, so it is not unusual for a woman to go through six profound life alterations in a year. Three of them will be around her spiritual 'progress' and three of them will be around health and well being (diet).

The one thing they all have in common is that she will never be the same again after reading them.

Second hand book shops are filled with these books because when a woman is done with her transformation and on to the next one, she will toss the original book into the second hand bins in the same way a snake sheds its skin, never to be read again. Her transformation is complete and she is ready for the next one.

As mentioned previously, Oprah is the best source for the next book that must be read. Women gather around her as if she were the spiritual / weight loss guru searching for the next rung up the ladder, ready to embrace whatever thrilling transformation comes next.

Of course, that these massive changes never actually manifest in their lives is irrelevant to the endless searching for the next 'tools'. This is because what the woman really wants from them is to 'coach' others - Oprah like - on their 'journey' and be the guru for a while. After all, she's learnt these lessons; it took her a long time and a lot of 'study.'

In romance novels a woman reading these endless books is seen to be restless, unhappy or most of all she needs to do a little more with her brain. She'd be better building a business, creating art, or curing cancer than reading these books. These issues are addressed, in partnership with a loving supportive man, and the last book is read and popped in the rubbish for safe keeping.

Because men are such emotional creatures

Men are very irrational creatures. I know the mythology about the male psyche claims the opposite, but the cold hard facts have never been of any use to male centred mythology, and nowhere is that more accurate than in the argument over male rationality.

The most motivating force in human history is the male ego. The male ego is also the least rational, most emotional force that ever existed. Bridges don’t get built because people need to get from point a to point b, they get built so a man can beat the architect he fought against in university, or to show off to a girl he’s trying to impress.

Everything that men do or achieve has at its core, some kind of ego drive. It’s to teach their mate a lesson, save face over a drunken argument the night before or prove to everyone from his childhood he’s not a loser.

Even the moon landing happened because the Americans wanted to beat the Russians.

If a man gets jealous of his mate, he will lock in her in the house, make her wear a black shapeless sack over her whole body, cover her face, hands and feet also, refuse to let her speak to any men without his approval, and then build an entire religion to justify his paranoia and fear of losing his woman.

This is not rational behaviour.

In romance novels men don’t pretend they are rational creatures. The men are masculine, gorgeous and powerful – they just aren’t very rational; Same as in life, only theyr're happy to admit it.

Because women think it's reassuring to tell everyone else your problem

Not their problems mind you – yours.

Women seem to have no trouble at all telling their husbands, children’s and best friends most private secrets to every woman they will run into in their day.

You see, when you tell a woman something (and the more private it is the better) she immediately counts up the people she knows who will be impressed that she received this news from you first. For a woman, to be taken into the confidence of someone is a very precious thing. So precious, she will want everyone to know how much you trust her.

She also thinks that with such intimate and personal problems, you need a lot of input. She will find her way to all the people in the office, her friends she is able to grab hold of and pretty much all the people in between to ask them advice about how you are going to handle your situation.

How many times you asked her not to tell anyone is irrelevant. In fact if you did ask her not to tell anyone, she will simply tell that to all the folk she tells as well, making sure it never gets back to you, because after all – you told her not to tell anyone.

In romance novels, if a woman blurts out a private secret to all around her, the subject of the secret understands that she is only trying to help, and will respect her for her efforts. Also, in romance novels unlike in life, the people she tells will not lose respect for the subject or feel superior because they don’t have the same problem.

Because men think winning the battle is more important than winning the war

A man will argue that black is white; day is night and hot is cold in order to win an argument; Even if he doesn’t believe those things.

It is more important for a man to win the current argument than it is for him to establish himself as intelligent or talented in the long term. All that matters to him is that when interacting with other human beings (although this battle winning also applies to broken appliances) he leaves as the ‘victor’; Even if there is no war.

This means two things. Men will look for ways to determine themselves as victor. And men will set a series of rules that they will not share with their opponent, establishing a greater opportunity for them to come out the winner.

Everything is weighed up in a series of competitive cheques and balances in a man’s’ mind. This is why he won’t ask for directions. It means to the person he asks – he’s lost. That person knows something he does not know, and they knew it first. They win. He can’t let that happen. Even if it means not showing up at the destination, he’ll be the winner in the end because he didn’t ask for directions.

If you are arguing with a man and his witty come back to your point is “so?” and you throw your hands up in the air and walk away – he’s won. It is simply irrelevant what you think of him later. It never occurs to him. All he cares about is that he won that battle.

If a man successfully avoids the best advice at the most crucial moment – but it was not a moment chosen by him – he will reject it and in his mind this means he’s won. Everything is a challenge to be met, a gauntlet to be run and a chance for him to showcase his abilities. His abilities in what skill in particular are not important.

In romance novels men never act so irrationally. They ask for directions, they aggressively seek advice from professionals, and they focus in a strategic fashion on the long term objective.

Because women 'Mother' their way to the top

One of the busiest  people in the workplace, who actually does nothing is the social organiser.

The social organiser is usually a woman and usually too busy to get a lot done during the day because she is örganising the Christmas party, getting the birthday card signed or planning the monthly social BBQ.  However, people feel too mean to complain that they aren't supported because she also brought fresh muffins into work that morning that she baked herself.

Not only that, she gives generous gifts at Christmas, little eggs at Easter and knits booties when anyone or their wife has a baby.

This manipulation is a way to get out of doing the daily drudgery that no one wants to do, but someone has to because that is actually why you are there getting paid. As women have always been the masters of being acknowledged for pointless tasks, they have naturally brought it to the workplace, claiming it is good for morale.

In romance novels the women are too busy getting on with their exciting lives to be bothered with currying favour through these kinds of gifts.  Their generosity is shown naturally, through the day; not as the result of painstakingly thinking what they can do to make everyone like them.

Because men can fix plumbing - even when they can't

 

There are three things men effectively can do regardless of the results of their efforts. Repair all plumbing problems, fix the car and do their own extension.

The law of the land argues that all three of these tasks require extensive education. There is not just theory required, but practical components, recognising that you can’t simply learn these tasks from a book. You need to do them in a prescribed amount of time, to a specific standard and be able to do this over and over, day after day before you qualify to perform these repairs.

The primary reason for this is they can cause death if not done correctly.

None of this matters to men. From the dripping tap to the clogged sewer, a man will resist calling the professional for as long as he can get away with it, either ‘getting in there’ on the weekend, or thinking ‘he must get to that’ and never actually getting around to it.

Every mechanic who works on the car to the man is the enemy. Every mechanic is trying to rip him off, or at least assert a superior style of masculinity over him. Men will do all sorts of things to ‘prepare’ to confront the mechanic from leaving small indicators around the engine to show someone actually did the work, to getting in and fixing it himself first – the result inevitably being it will need more expensive work than it would have before.

Men will think nothing of having their family live in a house littered with nails, sheets of glass, cut and broken tiles exposed pipes and dripping roofs as they take the prescribed five years to complete the extension on the house they don’t have council approval for.

In romance novels, a man does not see it as a challenge to his masculinity if you have to call in a plumber to do a plumbers job. He never even makes the connection. Because he’s just slayed four soldiers, a vampire and a dragon, he’s happy to let the professional do their job.

Because every woman, no matter what she says, follows astrology

Make no mistake about this. Women think astrology is a science.

If any women ever looks you in the eye, and tells you that she has no interest in astrology, that it isn’t her thing and she can’t understand the attraction – she’s lying.

You must understand, this is a bit of a sore point for women. They’ve tried, really they’ve tried since emancipation to give this one up, but they just can’t shake the habit.

They will go months, years even, and then one day they will casually glance at the newspaper and ‘accidently’ read what the stars have in store for them that month, and bingo – they’re hooked again. Before they know it, they’re checking in on their boyfriends stars, looking up a blog for a ‘deeper understanding’ and then doing their charts.

Then without seeing the warning signs, she is consulting the stars every day to plan her day, working on the shadow side of her personality and using astrology to help her climb her ladder to a deeper spiritual awareness. In fact, you know you’re in trouble if she brings home the candles and the herbs and sits mysteriously in the corner carving things into the wax, and reading a little book she picked up for $65 at the local Saturn Return book shop.

This is an addiction for women and only a high level intervention on mass with all women will help them get over it. If step one is admitting you have a problem, then we have trouble because even the most rational minded woman will not admit that, alone in the bathroom with the daily paper, she hasn’t just peeked  - for a laugh – at what the stars say today.

In romance novels astrology is completely legitimised. Sorcerers, magicians and all kinds of star gazers take the place of so called rational people, and the woman can feed her little addiction in peace, knowing if anyone catches her at it, she can claim she didn’t know it was in the book.

Because men think the relationship "high" is supposed to last forever

Ask any man if you think it is a good investment to buy a new car, and usually they will tell you that it isn’t because the cars value will drop as soon as you drive it out of the showroom; you’re better to buy a one-year-old-car, gain your benefits  and not lose your money.  

Ask most men who have been on many overseas trips if they still feel the initial buzz when they wander around the city streets of an unfamiliar town, and they will tell you with no small amount of pride about how clever they are at finding their way around and how wonderful it is to have the benefits of being a seasoned traveller.

Ask a man how he feels about his socks with holes, the faded jeans that still fit like a glove, the old track suit pants he’s had for ten years, or his high school football jersey and he will tell you nothing on the planet will make him part with them.

However, men do irrationally insist that their wife or girlfriend stay fresh, flawless and above all young, forever.

Here is the bitter, ugly truth. Sex is just a normal bodily function. It is not the big dramatic height of romance, stimulation and thrill that men insist it is. If sex requires constant external stimulation in order for it to exist, then your problem is not outside of yourself.

If you grow tired of a certain restaurant, you don’t say “It’s my wife. I will leave her and go to that same restaurant with a younger woman, and that will fix the restaurant.” If you are sick of the same old music, you don’t say “It’s my wife. I will throw her away and get a new younger woman and listen to the music with her and I am sure the music will be much better.”

The new is just a temporary distraction from the old problem.

A man can trick himself into believing this lie (more on this later) in order to avoid actually having to do any work on his own psychic self, but eventually he will leave the new woman when she is too ‘old’ and shrug his shoulders and say “I’m just  man.”

In romance novels, if a couple are not enjoying their sex life, they do something about their sex life, in the same way they would switch apartments if their home had gotten too small for them. They don’t expect sex to remain the same as it was when they were teenagers, and they are grateful for it and embrace the exciting new frontiers sex together will bring – Or they will introduce new people as a couple to their bed if they want.  The point is, they don't throw out the relationship, they just fix the sex.

 

Because women believe you develop spiritually up a ladder

Women consider themselves to be deeply spiritual beings.

Even a woman who is an atheist, or one who has masculine intelligence issues, still in their core know that they have a spiritual understanding.

The way women see it, is that we are all on a "journey" of sorts, and that the ultimate goal of this journey is to learn your "life lessons". These life lessons are always based on the core issues of what it means to be human; money, relationships and self esteem. The underlying message is always the same. You, and everything in your day, are desperately important.

However, what may not be obvious at first, is that women grade each person that they come into contact with, by how spiritual they are. No matter what type of spiritual "discipline" a woman adheres to, she has been told at some point it is wrong to judge people, so she has transformed herself into accepting the "different places we are all at on our journey."

The best image for this, is a ladder.

Women see themselves as progressing up a ladder, each life lesson taking them one step closer to.... whatever is at the top of the ladder; and each life lesson taking them one step higher and further away from... everyone else.

Everything is a life lesson that gives a woman an opportunity to progress up her ladder. How she handles losing her job, her husband, or her child are all opportunities for "growth". Also, how you deal with deadlines, traffic and annoying waiters is an opportunity for growth. Even, paper cuts, blisters, burnt coffee and newspaper ink staining the hand are opportunities for growth for a woman. There is no event in her day deemed too insignificant to be connecting her in a meaningful and personal way to the spiritual realms. And the more she reads into these events, the better she is than everyone else.

In romance novels, everything has a spiritual depth to it. People openly talk about where they are "at" on their journey, and how their current circumstance contribute to their ascendancy on the "ladder."

Because when men want to be wild, they think it's their woman holding them back.

Men like to think that if they were free they would be wild boys. Every man allowed to live the life he wants, would be out sleeping with thousands of women, eating cold pizza for breakfast, drinking beer like water, and smoking before going on bungee jumps and learning how to fly glider planes.

For men, it’s the woman’s fault that he can’t live like a rock star.

Not his lack of talent, ability, drive, ambition, courage finesse looks or charisma. No, it’s the woman holding him back from living like Jim Morrison.

One of the reasons men are so desperate to get married, is it finally relieves the pressure of having to hold up the ‘image’ of being male. Now, he can sit back comfortably each night, his healthy meal prepared, his home clean, his work done at the end of the day, money in the account, and say to himself “If it wasn’t for her, I would be wild and free.”

For a man, everything missing from his life, that he always wanted, but didn’t have the courage to create for himself, is the woman’s fault. It’s her fault he’s not out sleeping with super models every night. It’s her fault he can’t go every weekend on adventure holidays with his hoards of wild mates (who are also in their safe homes counting their pennies). It’s her fault he’s ‘tapped’ in his high paying job, and it’s her fault too much beer makes his belly swell.

Of course, along with this irrationality goes the idea that she never feels restless. Every man imagines his wife / girlfriend / partner got the better end of the deal. She gets the life SHE wanted – it’s never realised that she feels trapped too – she gets him healthier, stronger, fitter and richer than he would be alone. So these are all benefits to her. Not to him. In a man’s topsy-turvy world he imagines he’s staying home for his cooked dinners and clean laundry every night as a favour to HER.

In romance novels, the heroes sow their wild oats. They take responsibility for their own wild times, and make them happen when they are young, or they leave an unpleasant situation to make them happen when they are older. They never blame their woman for what is their own responsibility and they never think of their home with her as a trap.

Because women act like strippers but don't want to be treated like strippers

It is assumed by women that because men like them, strippers have a lot of power. Because It’s useful for men that women think this, very few of them do anything to dispel this myth.

Because of this perceived access to power women will dress like strippers, prostitutes, escorts, cigarette girls and pole dancers.

And it’s not just young women who fall for this. Older women will expose a pound of flesh given half an excuse (night out with the girls, fancy dress parties) because they assume it gives them instant access to power over men.

Women overestimate the power of their flesh consistently and enormously. If a man looks at a large cleavage he may be thinking “what a large pair”, or he may be thinking, “She’s hot” or he may even be thinking “I’d like to have a go at that.” What he is not thinking, at any point, under any circumstances when a woman has a low cut top on, is “what an excellent pair of breasts, she’s the perfect mother to my children. I’d love to get into her soul and find out what makes her tick.” Or “I must give her half my income forever”

Women don’t know this. They know it intellectually, but they have been so duped into thinking that male sexual attention equals power, that they fantasise as soon as a man ogles them that they can do whatever they want with him. And that rarely means lose him as soon as I am done with him, because like all power hungry creatures as soon as a woman gets a taste of perceived power, she wants more of it.

In romance novels a woman can don the sexiest outfit in the world and the hero not only becomes aroused, but has more respect for her for the efforts she’s gone to. If any other man dared to look at her, he’ll rip out his eyes. He never accuses his woman.

Because men want to be a hero without having to act like a hero

Men want to be heroes without acting like a hero or doing anything that could be mistaken for heroic.

Men love super heroes. They compare themselves to them all the time. When a man looks a superhero he thinks "yeah - me and Batman - alone against the world" or "Superman has to save the whole world - I know exactly how he feels."

Men think they deserve superhero status because they bring home money, unclog the sink, and haven't cheated on their partners today. In fact, men don't need to have done the first two acts of heroism. They think they are hero enough because they haven't slept with any hot babe on the way home from work.

Of course the fact that no woman was available, or that he'd be lost without his partner are side issues. Small facts like this can't get in the way of this kind of day dreaming that shapes reality. He's been faithful all day and somehow, in his mind this means he's performed a heroic act and deserves to sit on the couch watching TV all night.  Just him and Batman.

In romance novels the men don't get to be a hero until they actually DO something heroic. And the heroic act actually has to be difficult, morally challenging or dangerous. Then, and this is the most important thing of all, they are a hero if, they come out the other side the victor.

Because women believe in listening... to them.

Women don’t need to listen, because they know all about the inner psyche and what is going on inside you.

You see, women have done so much more ‘work’ than men in this area. She’s read the books, she’s done the therapy, and she’s been watching Oprah for years. So as soon as a man decides he’ll give talking to her a go – she will be able to tell him what’s wrong with him, before he even completes the first sentence.

You see, all women have been waiting for years, decades, centuries for men to finally admit what is going on inside, and to speak this truth. When a man decides that now is the time to trust the woman with his honesty, in her excitement she will jump in and tell him what to do before he realises what he’s talking about.

Women think it is a waste of time to go too deep into these problems, unless you are willing to do it HONESTLY; in which case the reverse is true, and they will happily devote hours to any problem you have. However, honest is defined and determined by the woman and has nothing to do with what the man may have discovered about himself.

If a man dares open his mouth about an emotional problem, he will find immediately that the woman knows more about it can tell him where it comes from and has three friends whose husbands all went through the same thing. And she thinks this is reassuring.

In romance novels the hero will hesitate to reveal his deeper emotional issues, however when he does finally confess them to his woman, she will listen enthralled, reply with the immediate answer and instil relief in his exhausted psyche.

Because men hate womens bodies

Men hate women's bodies.

I know what you’re going to say. Men love women’s bodies.

But take a closer look.

Men need women’s bodies to be completely distorted before they find it attractive. The natural hair has to be virtually gone, the breasts need to be pushed out of shape by bras, the stomach needs to disappear completely and there must be almost no natural fat build up at all.

But don’t imagine any of this has to do with health and fitness. The average female athlete is unattractive to men as well. After all she has virtually no breasts.

The only ‘woman’ attractive to men is Barbie; and if the female resembles Barbie, she is rewarded with a wolf whistle, a bum pinch, or a come on line.

She’s never, ever under any circumstances rewarded with respect. After all, she’s gone to all this trouble to look like something he wants; he can’t respect her for that. It’s pathetic really. So he can ogle her free of any moral or intellectual constraints because by the very fact that she’s pandering to his desires, she’s proving herself unworthy of his respect.

In fact, men will take this opportunity to be stupid to the absolute extreme. It is assumed a woman who has gone to this kind of trouble (it is usually young women because they aren’t smart enough to have worked it all out yet, although some older women do it proving some women never work it out) is asking for the disrespect. They don’t think she hasn’t worked out the rules, or that the rules are stupid, but that she knows his brain and is penis are in heavy conflict and that winning one over means you lose the other.

In romance novels the Barbie type is ugly, because she doesn’t look like a woman. The hero is sexually repulsed by anything so distant in shape and concept from a woman, because the hero is a real hetro man.

 

Because women have no sense of fashion

For people who spend so much time in front of the mirror, examining for flaws, seeing them when they aren’t there, and pulling out the smallest hairs on their face to exact a perfect look very few women are capable of actually looking good.

Any woman reading this will instantly assume they are in the category of looking good.

However, women will constantly over pluck their eyebrows, colour their hair the wrong colour, get strange looking fake tans, turn their nails into bird of prey talons and wear sizes too small for them.

Formal attire is the best example of this phenomenon. The woman in her swimming costume on the beach, or in her jeans and tee at a picnic looks best. It’s the woman at the wedding, the ball, the charity do and heaven forbid, in the audience of a televised awards ceremony who look the worst.

When a woman dresses to go out, she poses. She stands in front of the mirror for hours practising how to stand, how to move her face, how to laugh and put all her make up efforts to good use. Then of course, when she goes out, she can’t strike those poses all the time, she has to pull her undies out of her bum and she has to exhale.

This is when all the small hidden disasters start to show. Disasters that would prove unnecessary if she simply wore a dress the correct size, got her underwear fitted properly and stopped trying to dress like a stripper. If you can’t wear stilettos and walk in them, don’t wear them. You will have to walk at some point during the evening.

In romance novels the women don’t have to be perfect because their man loves them anyway and she has respect from all her friends. In other words she has power. However, like Pretty Woman, she gets help from a fairy princess, a makeover artist or a generous shop keeper, who is happy to ‘give her a few pointers.’

Because every man secretly thinks he's a genius

Men think they are geniuses. They think if only they were seen, if only they had a chance to really showcase their talents, the world would understand how special they are.

There are different types of genius males.

There are the ones who quietly go about their day silently knowing more and better than everyone around them and being polite out of a conviction of their own unshakable belief in their own self esteem.

There are the loud mouth geniuses who jump in to tell everyone first what the answer to a certain question is, a new fact about anything a group of friends of colleagues are discussing or just start their day with their latest anecdote that is intended to stun the office.

There are the geniuses who think that there may be a few men smarter than they in the world, but they are smarter than all women.

Then there are the educated geniuses who think that their degree or other qualification is enough to make them an authority on all subjects.

Men have little tricks, or quirks that they use to tell themselves and the world that they are geniuses.

They pace when on the phone, or they can’t sit still for a minute or they automatically take a contrary position on any argument in order to show their brilliance. The secret geniuses love it when small crowd of likeminded folk are discussing a topic (any topic) because he will take a verbose opposing view and smile smugly at attempts to defend the original position knowing he won’t be convinced by any argument no matter how rational; because he’s a genius and actually wants to cause a stir, not think rationally about anything.

He will then relate the conversation ad nauseam to his long suffering wife all the way home, pointing out the little nuances in the argument that all but he had missed.

In romance novels even the genius males don’t know that they are geniuses. A woman does not have to suffer the eternal machinations of the ordinary mans attempts to establish his brilliance because heroes in romance novels have no desire to be seen in that way. To a romance novel hero, genius is as genius does. That’s it.

Because every woman thinks she is Carrie Bradshaw

You have to understand. Sex and the city is not just a show. It’s a validation. And no one wants a validation more than women.

Even if a woman is overweight, poor, tired, married to her overweight childhood sweetheart, living in the smallest most insignificant town that ever graced the face of the earth, attending a meaningless job every day, or never owned a pair of shoes in her life, she is Carrie Bradshaw.

It’s because Carrie Bradshaw exemplifies all that women want to be.

She’s not perfectly beautiful but she has a “certain something” that sets her apart from all other women; her up to the minute designer labels were found for fifty cents in a vintage clothing store; her job is talking about relationships with her friends; her friends are all archetypes and fit neatly into categories that she is consistently superior to; and spending all day in deep introspection is the height of intellectual activity.

Carrie Bradshaw is the ideal woman - To women. She represents the way women wish the world was.

She is rescued by men financially all the time, but she “deserves” it because she’s spun herself into an emotional web that took expensive therapy to extricate herself from – none of which is her fault and which corresponds to the work it takes to set up a successful business or work hard at a job and become good enough to rise through the ranks. She’s earn’t the money she received, no question about it.

Women read romance novels in search of Carrie Bradshaw, to escape Carrie Bradshaw but most of all because they are Carrie Bradshaw and they deserve the time out.

Because men do badly in school

Whenever you talk about the condition for women in the current day, or what has occurred for them in the last sixty years the conversation inevitably turns to men.

One of the modern laments is how men are handling all of this. The minute we want girls to have an education we have to check how this is affecting the boys. The minute a woman wants a job we have to check how this is affecting male workers. The minute a woman wants to enter a university, we have to check how many places went to men that year. Male privilege has become so rife that the following statement looks like rationality:

“If little Cindy is able to get into a selective school, we’d better check how this will affect little Jimmy and take steps to ensure he is taken care of.”

Never, in the history of the world, has a man’s education been held back because his success may adversely affect his sister, wife, aunt, mother, daughter or any female existing on the planet. No! That wouldn’t be rational.

The truth is men have never, on mass, done well in school. This was one of the primary purposes for keeping women stupid, so that even the dumbest man, could still be smarter than his wife. It is an irrationality based on the emotional argument that we must preserve the male ego at all costs.

In romance novels the men are usually of equal intelligence to their women, however they are never threatened when she wants to get an education; mostly because he has learnt not to fear his own immanent exposure, relishing instead, the opportunity for fine intellectual competition.

Because women are so competitive

Pop Culture will tell you that a woman is not competitive. Competition is the man’s world. However, as usual, when you look into it, the reverse is the truth.

Competition runs deepest in women, and it is far more ruthless than in men. Men have physical tousles to mental jousts to energise themselves and come out stronger (more on this later). However, women are merciless. They will easily commit almost any deed to get the thing that they want more than anything else.

That thing is power. Power over others that they feel they need, or power over themselves.

When you are needed or loved by a woman, you are at your most vulnerable. Women will go to great lengths to reduce the self esteem of someone they love, in order to keep control of them. They will do this with their children and their friends. A woman will happily cripple the self esteem of their own child, or their capacity to take on the world in a robust fashion, simply so she gets to feel needed for the rest of her life.

A woman will look her friend up and down in their dress, scrutinise them, and then break out in a smile and Says “You look lovely” which means “Phew! You’re no competition.”

And the friend knows this.

The reason women love the gossip magazines are because stars are revealed to be ordinary, have pimples, cellulite and wrinkles. Instead of thinking, “she’s just like me”, the woman will be thinking “good, when I finally get rid of all those things I will be better than her too.” She wants to see Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Paris Hilton, Princess Mary, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan looking ugly, with no makeup, stressed, exhausted and above all else, fat.

In romance novels no woman is disappointed with her life and therefore no woman needs to be envious and competitive with another woman. If any woman is, she is instantly exposed as evil and will be destroyed in some way or another. So the reader gets to feel that she is special without fear of having her ordinariness exposed by accuracy.

Because men have disproportionately large egos

The size of the average male ego is beyond rationality, accomplishment or limits. It has nothing to do with his achievements, status or physical appearance.

When men and women are in a relationship, any newsworthy fact he picked up before her will be imparted in such a condescending manner that the woman soon learns to dread the moment when something comes up that he knows that she doesn’t. The reverse is not the case, of course. Anything a woman knows will be offered in good faith, though usually rejected no matter how accurate.

In the relationship, the woman bucks up the man’s self esteem because she can see the frightened little boy behind the bragging. However, men are generally too stupid to see this, and instead start to believe her encouraging words to such an extent that he starts to wonder what he is doing with her.

He is so marvellous. How on earth did he settle for her?

Instead of realising she is being generous, a man will assume her compliments are based in impartial observation and are obvious to everyone else. He will start to look around at what other kind of girl he can get. If another girl smiles at him (as they inevitably will, because another woman’s partner has been seduced by her special certain something) he will draw the conclusion that he is wasting away in the foolish relationship that is stifling him and preventing his potent sperm from even distribution.

If a man does achieve something, like repair a broken car, win a high level sports meet, or get a promotion at work, he will immediately assume his partner is holding him back from greatness, and that he needs to lose the shackles so he can fly. He never, ever sees that her support is the reason for, or at least partner to his success.

In romance novels, if any hero has a disproportionate ego, he is headed for a fall from grace that will have him recognise once and for all the humbling might of being fortunate enough to enjoy the support of his woman. And he always learns his lesson in humility and he never forgets it.

Because women have cleanliness OCD

Women are cleanliness freaks.

And it can’t just be clean. It has to be clean beyond the capacity for dirt to ever soil it again. It has to be so clean no mere mortal even possesses the ability to get it that clean. There is no vacuum cleaner strong enough, no broom sturdy enough, no dust filter powerful enough to satisfy a woman’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder around the cleanliness of her house.

Even Howard Hughes can’t rival the average woman with his OCD. If we saw him with his remote controls for his television and stereo in a clear plastic bag to keep it safe, we would recognise a mad person. If a woman does it, we accept it as part of the natural cycle of keeping her house clean.

Every feeling for any other creature in the world must be sublimated for the desire a woman has for a clean house. Her most beloved husband is a bastard for putting the towels in the middle of the rack when he’s used them; her own children are thoughtless and selfish for taking their shoes off in their room and leaving them in the middle of the floor.

Weekends are worse, because this is usually the time the woman will choose to act out her OCD. She’ll begin at about five am on a Saturday when everyone else is selfishly sleeping in, and she will start with one room at the top of the house and work her way through. She will put the golden oldies on the stereo – the ones she used to listen to when she was young and free - and work like the devil to get rid of every piece of dust, every worn once piece of clothing, every leaf daring to grow in the wrong direction from a plant and every errant drip in the water areas spoiling the perfect silver sheen of a freshly cleaned tap spout.

Her loved ones are not to be banished from the house; they must act as witness, hiding in the shadows, clinging to the spaces she has not yet cleaned as if these are the only places they still have permission to dwell. As the day creeps on, they are moved further and further into a corner where the only way out is appreciation for her martyr like efforts and to be coerced into keeping the germ free space flawless. Eventually they will be relegated to the yard which they will be expected to tidy - to the standard she's established with the house.

It is, of course, her loved ones she is trying to erase by getting rid of all trace of them from her line of vision, but this is rarely understood. Her phobia for dirt is justified by a grime weary population, even though the average woman’s house far exceeds the demands placed upon cafes, restaurants or hotel bathrooms.

Interestingly, in romance novels the women almost never have OCD, and rarely care how their house looks. However, the woman who reads them, can sit back, place her feet on the cloth over the foot stool, rest her cup of tea on the small cup sized coaster that sits over the doily that sits over the table cloth that sits over the side table, sit back on the covers at the head rest on the couch, and enjoy her book knowing it won’t make any mess at all, and realise how much better she is than the woman in the novel.

 

Because of men's endless, flawless, virility.

Women can have babies.

According to certain theories, this is the ultimate accomplishment of all creatures. There is no greater goal for the progressive gene, than to duplicate itself.

Men can’t have babies.

For women, this is no problem. They don’t understand the intense desperate pathological insecurity that men feel because they can’t make babies. Women just have babies and then get on with their lives.

To counter act the fact that men are almost useless when it comes to making babies, they have bloated out of all proportion the one small part they do play in making a baby.

Their sperm.

Men have changed the story so that gestation is nothing compared to ejaculation. Men have done everything in their power to control making a baby and to desperately try to convince us that the most essential aspect of this process is the distribution of sperm.

A man will tell you that he has millions of sperm, because, logically, he must inseminate millions of women. This ignores the facts of the matter, such as the fragile nature of sperm (only one will eventually be strong enough to make it to the egg) or the physical impossibility of taking his millions of sperm and placing them in millions of women. All this is ignored in favour of his obsessive desire to have us believe that his sperm should be creating millions of lives.

Of course, if each man is meant to impregnate millions of women, you would only need several thousand men to exist on the planet. This small fact eludes this intensely emotional argument. Many of the facts elude this argument.

Men will tell you women grow old and unable to produce healthy babies (usually around their mid thirties), despite their bodies obvious abilities to do so; however their own old age does not impinge at all on the health of their sperm. Indeed it is ‘natural’ that eighty year old men want to sleep with eighteen year old girls, because it never occurs to men that their own health may have deteriorated. It never occurs to the old man that his ‘natural’ desire for an eighteen year old girl may actually be a problem while her distaste and outright revulsion at the idea is branded a denial of her instincts. (More on this later)

In romance novels, the men are always flawed by the woman’s ability to have a baby and simply want to ‘help’ her as she does it. He wants to take part in the nurturing of the born child, rather than carry on about how he’s stuck at home while his deeply valuable sperm remain undistributed.

Because women want running a household to carry the same status as running a company.

As we have already seen, it is very important to women to feel appreciated. This is especially true if they have done very little with their day. In fact it is directly proportionate to how little they have done with their day.

For women, running the household is seen as the same as running a large corporation. If the man in their life gets home from work, he must, without fail, listen to the endless succession of anecdotes about her day, from what the greengrocer said when he checked out her behind, to how she feels about the woman that opened the door onto her car in the parking lot of the shopping centre.

Even if the man started his day with an exclusive interview with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, moved on to a massive corporate takeover of Apple Computers, out sprinted Lance Armstrong on his bike in his lunch break and then spent the afternoon in a lab with scientists who are about to cure cancer, he is not to mention any of these events until he has heard about the look in the dogs eye when she put its food into the bowl.

If he makes the error of bringing any kind of attention to his day before she has had a chance to talk about hers, he will be inundated with cries of “you don’t think my day is valuable” which will inevitably lead to “you don’t think I’m valuable.”

Of course, the man does not think her day is valuable, and neither does she. However, each must pretend that running the house is the same as running a large company, because the pain that telling the truth in a moment like that will simply not be endurable.

In Romance novels The hero will open the door and stagger in, covered in blood, his partially severed arm being held on by the torn remnants of his shirt, his bulging muscles glazed in sweat from the battle with vanquished enemies and the first thing he will say is “My god! You’ve cleaned the house. You’re a saint! I don’t deserve you.”

Because men always think women are hitting on them

If a woman walks into a grocery store to buy an item – any item it doesn’t matter what it is – she must be very careful. If she stands within a metre radius of any man, he will think she is trying to get him into bed.

The situation is made worse if he is searching for the object she is searching for as well. If he stands in front of the milk, and a woman comes up and stands next to him, looking at her milk choices, he will assume she has engineered her need for milk in order to create an opportunity to sleep with him.

Men say they think about sex all the time, but their behaviour implies it is the woman who is thinking about it all the time. He thinks about it because he lives with an assumption that every woman wants to sleep with him. Very few women out class a man in his mind; He thinks he can go for whatever he wants.

This phenomenon is exacerbated if the woman is buying alcohol. When she stands in front of a wine rack, or a fridge containing mixed drinks, a man standing there first will assume, not that she wants to make a purchase irrespective of who is standing there, but that she is looking for sex and wants it with him.

This also goes for sitting in traffic, if she accidently makes eye contact with a man he will assume the woman is trying to have sex with him, if she is wearing nice clothes he will assume she did it specifically for him or if she takes an empty seat next to him on a crowded train. Also, every man thinks if a woman has large breasts that she did it deliberately to try to seduce him.

In romance novels, the hero never assumes the woman wants him automatically, unless he has a lesson in arrogance coming his way. Women are allowed to wake up, get dressed, go to work, buy milk and wine on the way home and the hero assumes she is just going about her day without thinking of him at all. Which is, of course, the truth.

 

Because women hit on each others boyfriends / husbands

Men and women both want power.

 

They don’t want it all the time, it doesn’t define them always, but everyone in our culture succumbs to the temptation to be powerful.

 

To be powerful means to conform to superficial sources of power. For man this is money and status, for women this is beauty.  Every woman has felt the exhilaration of being the most beautiful woman in the room, and every woman has felt the sting of being the ugliest woman in the room.

 

When a woman looks beautiful, the taxi driver treats her differently. In fact everyone, from the waitress, the work colleagues and the boss right through to your kids, your husband and your neighbor treat you differently. You gain a kind of power you didn’t know existed.

 

It is tempting to want this power all the time; Particularly when you feel self conscious, down in the dumps about yourself or worst of all, unattractive.

 

This is when a woman will become ruthless in her search for the power of beauty. No where is that affirmed with more supremacy than in stealing your best friends boyfriend or husband.

 

Not to sleep with them... not even to kiss them. No your best friend would NEVER do that (unless she’s got a major self esteem problem). No she wants to borrow him for awhile. She wants to flirt, touch feet under the table when she's been invited over to dinner, and take a ridiculously deep interest in his football jersey collection.

 

The self esteem boost gained from your best friends husband's head being tuned, is akin to the cover of vogue. You may not be the worlds most beautiful woman, but at lest your more beautiful than your best friend. You may not be able to get a man, but at least your not with a horrible lecherous man like your best friend, whose husband cant keep his eyes off your breasts every time you wear that low top with the push up bra and shuffle your boobs all night, talking about last night in bed with the guy you picked up in the bar because sometimes you just need meaningless sex.

 

When it comes to a self esteem boost, almost no woman on the face of the earth can resist the eye of her best friends’ man; because that is the ultimate judge, and he's telling her, she’s better than his wife.

 

Which is of course a win for the man too, because in one swoop he can interfere in the relationship he fears most; his wife’s best friend.

 

In romance novels, the best friends never ever take off with the man, unless she is really villain and she is being established as such; which will ultimately result in a scene where the hero rejects her while she is naked in a bed and the heroine is watching without either of them knowing.

 

In romance novels, the hero is like a brother to the best friend, and the best friend is lovely, but like a sister to the hero. He’ll do anything for her, but he couldn’t IMAGINE looking at her in a sexual way.

 

He’s just not like that.

because men gossip too much

 

It is a universal truth that men and women will be attributed characteristics that all their behaviors contradict. A good example of this is compassion in women (women only show compassion if there is a good reason for it – it rarely comes naturally) and bitching in men.

 

Men gossip. It is a fact that language has done its best to hide, but simply can't. Men gossip about everything, from what the latest footballers did on the field on Sunday night, their mates’ renovation, to who is using the executive washroom and why that allocation is unfair.

 

If you stand them still long enough, you will hear endless exposition on any subject you choose, regardless of their level of expertise, and it will always, without question include a person they know or have heard about who is doing it wrong.

 

Of course this is never called gossip, so we can't always recognize it for what it is. Discussing how the half back should have played is not gossip, but talking about Britney wearing short shorts a few sizes too small is. Going over the bosses plans for the section and why he just doesn’t get it, is not gossip, but talking bout your visit to the doctor last night is.  It is these artificial barriers that make us think men don’t gossip.

 

Because men have avoided gossip, not by refusing to partake in it, but by calling it something else when they do it, they try to maintain this rouse regardless of their behaviors.

 

But the truth of the matter is, men will never ever miss an opportunity to inject themselves into a conversation, or express an opinion on a matter no matter how trivial, or how busy they purport to be.,

 

In romance novels, the fact that men gossip is not hidden. It's understood that talking to one another about stuff, is not detrimental to the human race. Chatting to their mates about the state of the relationship, as they enjoy the football game, or discussing their friends health and his ability to defend himself against his mortal enemy who has just traveled through time to defeat him once and for all is not buried under a mask of shame.

 

Men in romance novels talk to all and everyone about everything, just like men in the real world. The only difference is, in romance novels, the men don’t worry about this behavior skewing their image and they don’t need to create nonsensical convoluted arguments to try to hide it.

Because women need validation

Women need validation for everything they do.

 

When a woman gets up early in the morning, dresses, dresses her children, gets them organized for school, makes breakfasts and then lunches, and drives the kids to school, she needs to then sit for and hour with a cup of tea and 'rest'. Even though she does this every day and no day ever changes; each and every day she needs some sort of validation for the work she has done.

 

This is where her girlfriends come in. Every day, she needs to connect with her friends – usually on the phone but in a cafe is better- to talk about how hard their lives are. And the friends are always, always there for them, because women understand certain laws and one of those laws is 'if you validate her right now, she will do it for you tomorrow.'

 

The biggest complaint that women make, is that they are unappreciated.

 

And yet, amongst the girlfriends, more work goes into appreciating each other than anything else they will do in their day. Even the women who go to work, will have their best friend on facebook, the mobile, email, or some form of constant contact, so they can run to them if their child / spouse / parent / work colleague / waitress in the cafe / guy on the train does t 'get' them or appreciate them.

 

And the girlfriend will always validate them. Even if she argues, she will “delve into the problem” to “find out what's really going on” or to help her “learn her lessons”; And she never gets tired – even when the problem is the same every day.

 

In romance novels, the smallest act is appreciated by her hero warrior. He will go out and slay a hundred daemons in her name, crash through glass, bleed everywhere, break bones and still have time to mediate on her selflessness in making him the perfect omelet for dinner when he didn’t even ask.

Because men hate marriage

This may seem like a very obvious reason for women to read romance novels.

In the romance novel, the men crave marriage. They want the stability of a home life, they want to have children with one woman and hold her close all their life as they raise all their children together. He wants to be a great father to his kids while supporting her as a great mother. And most of all he wants to have lots of fun with her, his chosen mate, as they go through their life together.

But look a little closer.

In the real world, men assert they hate marriage. They make this claim, even though they invented marriage, live longer if married and have a deep fear of any woman who doesn’t want to be married.

Women know men want to be married. This is understood from a very early age. Women appreciate this and enjoy it as an idea, despite the fact that it shortens their life, because marriage largely asks that they do very little with their body (except have babies) or their minds (except manage high level stress). The ‘deal’ women accept very early on, is that they will accept marriage and pretend it’s their idea, if they are looked after while in it.

However, what women don’t work out for a long time, is that the man will continue to claim that he does not want to be married, even in the face of overwhelming contentedness and all the evidence that his life is far better for it.

PRIOR to marriage, his protestations made her look very cool because he was headed down the aisle despite his absolute, resolute, detesting of the institution and his promise all his life to everyone in a ten mile radius that he will never ever get married.

But once married, if he continues to say he hates marriage, it now looks like her charm, her ‘special something’ was not able to convince him of the joy of being married TO HER.

She starts to resent the bargain she made initially.

In romance novels, there is no pretence. The men are dying to get married, and more often than not, have to talk the women into it. This happens because, for women it represents reality and is far more honest. The men admit they want to be married, confess it to their mates over beer in a bar, and have convoluted conversations in their heads about how to best talk her into marriage.

Men in romance novels know that all men want to be married; but even if that weren’t true, and their mates didn’t want marriage, they would tell the world anyway, just because they’re honest.

To get credit for doing nothing.

To a woman, the highest compliment you can pay her is to tell her she is different from any other woman you’ve ever met... and you’re not sure why.

A woman wants to be recognised as special. ‘Special’ is not the same as accomplished, clever, beautiful or talented. Even if she is all those things, when you call her ‘special’ you pay her the highest compliment.

When I say ‘special’ I mean she is unlike any other woman on the face of the earth, and you’re not sure why that is, but it will never be challenged, or questioned and above all beaten by any other woman you know, have met in the past or will meet in the future.

No work colleague will ever have ‘that special something’, no best mates wife will ever have ‘something about her you can’t quite put your finger on’, and certainly no stripper in the nightclubs will ever come close to having that ‘je ne sais quoi’.

No matter how accomplished a woman is, when you compliment the thing about her that she had nothing to do with creating that separates her from all other women, she is at her most satisfied. What you are really saying is, without making any effort at all, you rise above all other women.

This is very important to a woman, because if you compliment her on something she has worked to achieve, she now has to watch her back for the woman coming up behind who can do it better, faster, smarter or harder.

If you love her for something ‘special’ that ‘you can’t quite put your finger on’ no woman will ever be able to challenge her position in your heart.

It is even better if this indefinable something affects you so that you lose intellectual control and fall at her feet despite your best efforts to hold yourself back.

This happens in romance novels.

The woman’s blood will be of a special type that affects the sexiest vampire in the world in a way no other woman’s blood can, to the point where he doesn’t even notice other women.

The heroine will be the hero’s beloved wife in a past life, and they will be drawn together once again, affecting him so deeply that he feels he has his wife back again, as well as this beautiful fresh new woman.

Her name / lineage will be a special combination of words / people that will free him from a curse he’s lived under forever.

In this way, the woman gets to be of the deepest most profound effect on the man, beyond his ability to leave her, and beyond her need to actually do anything to create it.

Because of men

[caption id="attachment_9" align="aligncenter" width="130" caption="Available through Loose Id"][/caption]

The primary reason women read romance novels is men.

A common misconception about romance and erotic romance is that when women read it, they form unrealistic expectations of men and this places them deep into a fairy land which is not connected to any sort of reality. In other words, women read romance novels because they are emotional. (More on that another time)

This is incorrect. In fact, it is the other way around. Women read romance novels because the men in their life do not live up to the existing expectations that are placed on men in our society. So women turn, in disappointment to the romance novels where the men ALL live up to what is expected of men in our society.

This would seem very unfair, until you realise that the original expectations were not created by women, they were created by men.

Men like to think of themselves as rational, emotionally strong creatures. Women believe them, even to the point of calling their own practical sensible nature irrational, just to support the man.

Then disappointment seeps in when men overemphasise their current illness, exact revenge on a colleague for getting a better holiday deal or wander down to the pub to get drunk and win at pool just because they couldn’t repair the sink when it was clogged.

These are, of course, highly irrational behaviours, that women are told represent rationality.

Women will believe this out of a desire to be supportive (their logic being, if I support his little white lie he will support mine later – note this never happens) until they realise that the man thinks he has convinced you it IS rational, just as he has convinced himself.

Rather than question the notion of rationality, women will go to the romance novels, primarily written by other women, to read about men who don’t sulk when they can’t unclog the bathroom sink and who only glass someone when they are daemon, or an evil vampire or some god turned bad threatening their family with imminent death.