Because men think the most important things of all don't matter or are too threatening

If you want to discuss football, cars or horror movies your man will be a part of it.

If you want to discuss porn, funniest home videos or Borat the man is the first to comment.

But if you want to talk about current affairs, science or literature – he’ll ask you to fit it into a commercial break.

If you want to talk about your children, your sex life or god forbid your day, then he has no time, or he is ‘suddenly distracted’ by something else.

The truth is, most women have trouble getting their man to openly and properly discuss any subject including politics, science or technology. Each of these discussions will soon deteriorate into a battle of wills, governed by the male desire to defeat rather than a pure clean rational discussion or debate about ideas. Any slightly deviating opinion from his will be seen as a challenge to his masculinity and any major deviation categorised as straightforward madness.

The best a woman can hope for is that he may decide to ‘take you on’ a la Henry Higgins, and work on you, help change you, help you grow in your realisation, till you see the error of your ways and end up thinking the exact same way as him.

In romance novels men adore deep intellectual conversation. They do not see alternate opinion as a threat to their very manhood and they don’t think your ideas automatically mean you think his are crap. He’s excited by your independence, confident in your love, and keen to stick by your side and watch you grow.

Because women are too nice

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” Mark Twain

Even when women are being mean and sarcastic they’re too nice.

When women get together nothing gets done because they’re too busy making sure everyone likes them. Where men will happily compete and use each other to get places, a woman will passively aggressively hold back and use subtleties like gentle sarcasm and behind the back gossip to get themselves ahead.

Women are too afraid of not being thought of as nice to openly communicate. They aren’t very nice of course – they’re as mean and vicious as any man – but they mask it (unsuccessfully) behind gentle hostility in order to never seem mean.

If someone (male or female) actually calls them on their hostility, they can say they never meant it. They were trying to be nice. They can’t help it if you took it that way. Their wide eyed appeal is almost always convincing. (Its loss of power will be directly proportional to the amount of times it is used)

In other words, you’ve misinterpreted.

By the time all this is on the table the opportunity for action is long past and no one wants to do anything anymore; or there is just no time.

In romance novels the women are – regularly – not very nice at all. They’re spirited, alive, wild and busy – but rarely nice. And that’s why intelligent women like them so much

Because male desire is manufactured

Men can’t actually decide what to like on their own, so they need to be told.

We now know from eminent evolutionists that the primary point of attraction between males and females is the mind. People couple over the intellect more than any other method of attraction; you’re more likely to choose and intellectually compatible mate over any other. 

This relatively new information is not consistent with the traditional masculine ideal, which states that all men prefer young women (who look like Barbie) to any other.

So in step the men’s soft porn mags to make sure we don’t forget what a real man is – and we don’t lose the opportunity to market to him so that he spends lots of his money being a ‘real man’. We need to sell him the mags, of course, fancy cars, t shirts and those scented football jerseys one hangs in the car from the rear view mirror.

His grip on the traditional male is already weak, so if you play to the hetero dude inside, puffing him up, telling him that he really does exist and he really does deserve to be nurtured, you are more likely to sell more merchandise.

Because men are not yet ready to admit that a thinking woman is ten times sexier than a D cup, they are happier to turn in fantasy to women in soft porn. Of course, it is important that these women don’t actually LOOK like women – they have to look like the dolls men’s sisters played with when they were kids that the little boys wished belonged to them.

In romance novels men are not attracted to images of women that have been made up to look like dolls. They prefer real women. They prefer to be making love to real women, and they always prefer to be intellectually turned on by their women.

Because women always go to the toilet in pairs

Two wrongs don’t make a right

Why do women always go to the toilet in pairs?

This question has been answered in many different ways, by men and by women.

Women will tell you they go to feel safe, to be in company and to be less conspicuous.

Men will tell you they go to talk about men, make themselves more beautiful for men, to compare notes they’ve taken on the men at the table and analyse what each other thinks and to borrow lipstick  from each other to improve how they look to the men.

One reason women go to the bathroom together is solidarity.

They need to check in with each other. Women are so obsessed with their own opinions images and general presentation that they need to run everything by their friend in the privacy of the ladies room.

However, even bigger than that, the primary reason women go to the ladies room together is for fear of looking stupid if they go alone. If they get lost, if they are unsure, they want to do this in partnership – they don’t want to look silly.

In romance novels the women only ever look silly when they are being silly, and not simply for making simple mistakes. They have the confidence to go to the bathroom alone, not worrying at all about losing their way.

Because men hate that they need women so much

It infuriates men that they need women.

Ultimately, the main reason they need women, is to make babies. A woman can make a baby with sperm in a cup, but a man really needs a flesh and blood woman for nine full months to make a baby.

This poses many problems. The main one of which is, men are dependent on women, and women are not dependant on men.

This inequity has seen men, for as long as we’ve been walking without dragging our knuckles on the ground, trying to rectify the balance.

The best way to explain this and retain self esteem for men has been to claim they want women to have constant sex with. By claiming this is why they REALLY want the women around, men will get to look like super studs as well as diminishing the real desperate need they have to keep women on their side.

At the end of the day, however, men don’t just need women to make babies. They need them to build up their flagging self esteem, they need them to look after their most basic needs, they need them to do all the jobs their mother refuses to do anymore, and these days they need them for all of the above, with bringing in the money added to the list.

In romance novels it is no secret to anyone that men need women desperately. Women in real life know that men need them (mainly because it’s so damned obvious) and so when they read about sexy warrior style men who openly claim they need their woman (note they always want THEIR woman) for companionship, solidarity and endless rounds of hot long lasting sex – they find it difficult to forget this world exists. No matter how questionable the writing may be.

Because women invent new names for their errors to get out of them

'Tis divine to err against humans

One of the advantages to making a mistake is that it is only likely to be picked up by another human.  This means when another human finds out you’ve made an error, you can simply say ‘no I didn’t.’

Women have become quite adept at getting through this. Individually, their mistakes are usually noticed by their own children so it is easy to explain them away to kids. If they make them in front of their husband, they can claim that he doesn’t really love her, that he loves to point out her mistakes or that she has an alternate perspective.

This last one is how woman, on the universal level, is letting everyone know that she isn’t really making mistakes at all. The standard by which we judge anything, you see, is taken from the male perspective, which ultimately means, no standard set up can judge a woman.

While this may be true, it does get used by women (and some men) to allow for inactivity or general cruelty. When a woman is cruel, she is oppressed and lashing out, and when a woman is inactive, she is bored and been pushed hard into a life she had no control in setting up.

Women and some men (they used to be called sensitive new age guys) will use women’s tricks to get away with a multitude of ‘sins’ by ‘explaining’ things in these ways. Tables are turned, ideas are read backward and in the end an accomplishment turns out to be simply getting through the day.

In romance novels the women have lived up to great accomplishments – even by traditional male standards. While they are women, they are still able to achieve at a level that anyone can tell is a success and at the same time retain their femininity. No wonder so many women love them so much.

Because men are so needy

You know what’s really going on when men hit on women the way they do don’t you?

Because women are foolishly easily flattered, they fail to see exactly why men hit on them so easily and so often. Men say – because it helps the scenario work better- that they hit on women because of sex. We’ve seen in earlier posts that this myth is not the reason at the heart of the matter.

The truth is, men are afraid every minute of every day of their life, and they hit on any woman in a ten mile radius to tell them they are safe and that if worst comes to worst, the girl in the cafe that flirted with them likes them and he can always run away and start again with her.

That is what is really at the basis of all the times the men flirt with women around them. After a time, men will flirt with any woman in their company. They’ll flirt with women they would never have looked at in their life under normal circumstances, if she is the only woman in the office and if she has been there long enough.

One of the problems in the interaction between men and women is that women are looking to run away from themselves as well, so when a man flirts with them, they immediately form an attachment, thinking he’s going to get them off the hook as well.

Men end up feeling utter disdain for the woman they’ve formed a mild attachment to, as soon as she displays any kind of weakness, need, or dependence on him. In fact, this is the most terrifying thing for a man of all; that he may have to be responsible for the woman he’s creating something with.

If you think about it, this makes sense. He’s out to escape and he needs this brief interlude to be about freeing him from whatever it is that has made him afraid. If she tries to solidify it in any way, unless he is looking for marriage, he will run a mile and flirt with the next girl who won’t try to pin him down. Especially if he’s already married to someone else.

In romance novels the men are needy, but they are not dependant. They can look after themselves perfectly and they know this. When they run from their own fears into the arms of a woman it is only so she can heal with the soul of who she is, not so she can fix any problems and free him from having to do it. Women love to be the muse for his healing – and that’s why intelligent women read romance novels.

Because women ask men if they're too fat

A mean end is justified

If you are going to ask your man this question, you are not going to hear what you want to hear.

That is simply how it is.

Think about it for a moment. What is it you REALLY want to hear when you have asked this question?  If he says no, you’re not too fat; it’s not really satisfying is it? And if he says yes, you really need to lose a little weight; you’re probably going to break up.

What you are really looking for is relief from the moment you are having which is anxiety about how much weight you’re carrying. Unless your boyfriend is a doctor and you are sitting in his office as a patient, the very fact that you are thinking this means you are in an inauthentic moment of low self esteem. You’re probably thinking about the latest model on the cover of vogue, or how you don’t quite fit into your favourite pair of jeans at the moment.

The point is, what you need right now is beyond the abilities of a mere male to provide. If you really really MUST discuss this, ring a girlfriend. But you’re much better to not talk about it at all but to make a mental note to actually see a doctor to discuss your weight in a professional capacity. 

By placing this sort of pressure on a man, a woman is specifically looking for the arguement that she is hoping will divert her from how bad she feels at the moment about her weight. If her boyfriend is not completely convincing in his adoration of whatever size she is, she will cause an argument that almost allows her to blame him for the fact that she may be (or may not be) overweight.

In romance novels men are aggressive in their compliments and they always find full figured women sexy. Men drool over a woman as she eats a healthy full sized meal, they lust after the woman whose plus sized jean clad backside rounds further as she bends over, and they choose the size 16 and up woman over the size 6 woman.  Women never have to ask their men if they are attractive or if they are carrying too much weight, because their man has told them many times that day to not lose any weight – he couldn’t bear to part with 1 centimetre of her.

Because men don't shower enough

Don’t throw the bathwater out, baby

Although this is another of those posts where things do seem to be changing, men still need to have a better understanding of the smells their body omits, and stop seeing them as fabulous opportunities for a joke.

Men are enamoured by their own bodies odor. They tend to see sweat patches at the gym as a sign they’ve worked out very hard, they see their farts as a brilliant joke and they all on mass simply seem to have no idea that their feet smell at all.

They do claim on mass to love the smells that come from women as well, but that changes drastically when women get older. They do think young women bordering on the brink of just being over puberty smell wonderful, while they think older women – grandmothers particularly – do not smell wonderful naturally.

Their bodies, however, smell good all the time.

It’s not a huge request – just a little one. Please make sure that your arm pits don’t stink so much. Its really easy to check and its really easy to fix. Just please do it.

In romance novels men shower as often and as thoroughly as the women do unless they are heinous villains. End of story.

Becaue women think they have to act like porn stars to get attention

The harder they are the bigger they fill

Even though porn is made for men, marketed to men, directed at men and purchased predominantly by men, women have gotten it into their heads that porn is what men really like.

I’m not sure where this came from. Just because every blonde with huge three quarters exposed cleavage gets more attention than even the most devoted faithful girlfriend, it doesn’t mean its what men really want.

At least this is what women are told.

But women aren’t stupid. They get into a relationship, they give the man everything they know he wants, then he ogles the chick he claims he doesn’t want, and no surprise – the woman is confused.

So how does she cope with this?

Instead of thinking – ‘he’s not worth it, he’s incapable of showing the same restraint i do when I walk past building sites or fire stations – she thinks; if I dress like that, he will want me in the same way.

Of course, SHE is part of what makes the other woman attractive. She wouldn’t appeal to him half as much if his girlfriend wasn’t there to get offended. But for a woman, this is difficult to understand. She loses all perspective – which of course makes the whole trick work much better.

If women took the courage to say to a partner with a wandering eye – you know what, I don’t want it – the men would stop doing it immediately! (Remember marriage is his idea not hers) They don’t want to do anything that actually jeopardises their own relationship.

However they do want to treat them mean to keep them keen.

So women fall for the line and act like porn stars; dressing in revealing clothing, wearing deeply uncomfortable shoes, in order to keep their man interested. It won’t work of course, because he’s not interested in the look, he is playing games he thinks will keep her interested.

In romance novels, some women do dress like porn stars  - but it is only in the bedroom, with their guy, and after a special agreement that they will play a certain game for a while.

Because men won't talk

You don’t need a thousand words to get the picture

Men don’t like to talk. This is an issue that drives women mad. Not because they are desperate to know what genius lies behind those silent soulful eyes, but more because men will usually be withholding conversation as a way of dominating their women.

It’s no secret that keeping quiet makes you look a lot smarter than speaking out incorrectly. In the case of men, 9 times out of 10 this is masking an inner void. An expanse so empty it rivals the annals of space for it length and breadth. Silence in this case is golden. It prevents any woman finding out for sure what all women suspect. (Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt)

That there was nothing there to begin with.

Another reason men don’t talk is that they can’t. They have very little capacity for forming sentences – remember they weren’t very good in English at school – and can hardly put their ideas into proper coherent sentences. When their woman wants to talk about love, poetry, art, or even his or her day, he will be running the football scores through his head (a la homer Simpson).

Women do suspect that there is nothing going on in that cute head of his, which is why they have convinced men that the worst thing in the world to do to a woman is not talk to her. You see, if she convinces her man that she hates it when he is silent, she is almost guaranteed to receive the silent treatment.  Life is just not that interesting, or he can’t think of anything interesting to say about it.

Of course, given the right circumstances, you can’t get a man to stop talking. Ask him about the women he slept with before he met you and there is an endless stream of animated conversation coming your way. Ask him how the car works and he’ll take you through it, including instruction. Ask him how to ski or play tennis and you will grow old and die sitting through the answer. In short, ask a man a question where he gets to show off in the answer and you’ll have him talking all night.

In romance novels, men always take to their women, but they just for as long as it takes to give an honest and succinct answer, embrace your day and his, or talk overt a new idea. Then he will happily wrap his arms around you, and cuddle up for a quiet night in front of the television.

If that’s what you want.

Because even though women know how to change a tyre - they won't

What you get is not always what you see.

There are many things women won’t do; because they know it will get them nowhere. There are games they know they have to play, and tricks they know they have to adhere to, in order to advance themselves socially, or at work.

Women will work these little social nuances to their advantage choosing to follow along with the crowd over making a stand and making a difference.

Of course, as we have already seen, sometimes it has to do with pure laziness. If he changes the tyre because he gets to pat you on the head and calls you the little woman, most women would have happy to accept the insult, just so they don’t have to change the tyre.

Although it is bad for her long term position a woman will often take advantage of a situation for her personal gain.

Here are ten things women will do that get her off the hook instead of have her be honest about what’s really going on:

 

1.  She will squeak in fear at a mouse or a spider. Put that same woman alone in a room with the mouse or spider and her baby, and see how ‘macho’ she can be.

2.  She will ask for help to change a light bulb or reach something high. What does she do when you’re not there? Get a ladder.

3.  Fake being dumb in trivia. Women will do this out of fear of being exposed as dumb and not knowing the answers – usually they don’t.

4.  Use a flirting technique at work. This is a really ugly one, but women will use it to get ahead.

5.  Fake an orgasm.

6.  Fake a headache.

7.  Complain about being so fat when they are really skinny.

8.  Say they’re comfortable in high heels.

9.  Refuse to change a tyre.

10.  Say they can’t help it, they are just bad with money, when they’ve been shopping all day and spent the rent money.

 (Do you have any to add to the list?)

It has been said that men take advantage of women, but if the sign of dominance is doing the least amount of work (according to the biological determinists) then women must be at the top of the food chain.

In romance novels, women are always self sufficient. The dependant sluggish female is very unattractive to the predominantly female readers, despite the fact that women will sometimes take advantage of stereotypes. I guess women ultimately would rather read about them than actually be them.

Because men think they can speak for women

Men think they can speak for women. They think their music speaks for women, their literature, their scientific observations, their paintings and their religions.

However, if you were to say that men and women are the same, the largest outcry will come from men. Men and women are intrinsically different they will cry - and the mental difference is physical (even though we haven’t been able to scientifically prove that yet – an irrelevant point.)

Somehow, through some superhuman ability, men can’t work out what women think, and yet are able to speak for them politically and artistically. If you take the local guy in the pub complaining about his woman, he will shrug his shoulders and say “don’t ask me how they think”. If you took the same man, and told him 52% of the parliament should be allocated to women because they need to represent 52% of the population and the male politicians don’t understand the needs of that portion of the population, he would argue that this makes no logical sense.

Of course it is completely logical. Either men do know how it is for women, because men and women are the same, or they don’t know how it is for women because men and women are different. If they are different, then you need their voice, because the men can’t reproduce it.

This rational logic is completely lost on men, because as we have seen before they are very emotional creatures with almost no capacity for logic.  To further anecdotally prove how similar men and women are, women usually miss this simple point as well.

In romance novels, it is an already always assumption that you need the female perspective.  It is assumed that if your man is ‘all man’ that he doesn’t know how it is for women, and that man and woman need to work it out. Of course the woman’s perspective is not deemed more valuable than the mans, but of equal value. Each would never tell the other what they are thinking or what they should be thinking.

Because women think they need plastic surgery

It ain’t over till the fat lady.... loses weight.

Women get plastic surgery. This is an ugly fact of life that has moved in and forced us all to make distinctions between things called Botox, liposuction, chemical peels and surgery. In this day and age we know about things like this because it has become so commonplace.

While I would never do this myself, I do have sympathy for those in the public eye who do have to do it. I haven’t turned 40 yet, but I am told it can be brutal for a woman who has been recognised as beautiful in her life to confront old age about time. It seems to be when women start considering cosmetic surgery in the world of the rich and famous.

What I do not understand is women under 40 getting corrective surgery done on their appearance.

But the thing above all the others that prevents me from understanding is that it doesn’t look good!

Plastic surgery. Especially to the face, makes an older woman look ridiculous. It is obvious that they have had the surgery done – and really this wouldn’t be an issue, if it was worth the time and the money. But when it makes a woman look so frighteningly cat like, it’s just a sad and scary commentary on where the world is at right now.

Ok, so in the past women were just put on the shelf at 40 – now they can look like cat woman and at least still be cast in movies (look at Meg Ryan or Sarah Jessica Parker). It is definitely better than disappearing.

Breast augmentations almost never look good. An attempt to make breasts look ‘perky’ usually results in them looking like upturned urns that have been stuck onto the scrawny chest of a sad looking junkie, and (this bit kills me) they are rarely in the right spot, matching or a proper pair. This I really don’t understand. Why get them done if you are going to look worse?

As a woman who likes to ‘bat for both teams’ I infinitely prefer the natural look – every time, no matter how old the woman is – to an augmented, adjusted, look that says nothing to me but denial.

In romance novels there is no plastic surgery because every woman is desirable and beautiful and gets better and better as she gets older.

Because men think footballers are talented, clever people

The way I see it, football is the male equivalent of beauty pageants. And just like beauty pageants, when a footballer plays the game, he needs to sign a contract that controls his off field behaviours.

There is a lot of controversy around footballers being allowed to do what4ever they want when they are not playing the game.  A plumber can get dunk in the pub with his mates they argue. A bricklayer can lay a few girls with his mates they argue. Why do footballers have to control their off field behaviour?

What this argument tells you is how stupid football players are.

Football (and I am talking all codes here) is exactly the same as the miss universe contest for men. It rewards outdated, old fashioned behaviours that reinforced obsolete stereotypes using a little skill and a little talent; Identical to beauty contests.

Of course, to be attracted to a beauty pageant, you have to be very dumb. The same with football. To be attracted to playing it, to want to work as hard as you have to work to get up in the game, you have to be very dumb.

One day, we will be over football and we will be over beauty pageants. They were useful when we needed to reinforce certain stereotypes in order to cope with the difficulties of getting through the day. We’re evolving past all this now and the time has come to let these old-fashioned ideas go.

Football being one of them,.

In romance novels men often like football. However, it is never an excuse for rowdy or inappropriate behaviour. Footballers themselves are sexy built men who pander to and deeply care for their women. Men who watch football are sexy built men who pander to and deeply care for their women. No footballer or footballer watcher is ever, a Neanderthal or an abuser of women.

Because men pretend not to understand women

May years ago, Simone de Beauvoir argued that men deliberately don’t understand women, call them ‘mysterious’ so that they don’t actually have to do anything about them, and they can relegate them to the position of ‘other’.

On this particular issue, I would argue, nothing has changed.

Men will still say, woman is a mystery; they will equate her moods with her period and the moons cycles, they will say no one can understand her, and they will pretend that it is her lack of rationality that prevents them from ‘interpreting’ her ways.

These claims mask the laziness of taking the time to find out, and the fundamental belief that men are ‘accurate’ when in fact they are ‘opinionated’. (As we have previously seen)

In the past, when a woman did crazy things, like demand the right to work, or get upset when her husband took a mistress, these bouts of madness were dealt with simply, by putting her in an asylum. The disease was blamed on genetics (much as it is today) and the woman’s illness was pared down to a misfortune in marriage. It was, of course, one of the few circumstances in which a man could remarry easily and with the previous wife’s families blessing.

These days it’s a little more complicated than that. If a woman is ‘moody’ or ‘erratic’ she is isolated, her friends are turned against her (a remarkably easy feat for a flirtatious male) and she is secretly publicly ridiculed. Despite all the advances women have made in the last 100 years, there is a remarkably affable desire to brand the difficult ones as mad, and an astonishing readiness to accept them as so.

In romance novels, madness is prized by the alpha male. He finds, a thinking, challenging woman exciting and relishes the opportunity to engage with a fierce, not easily domesticated female.

Because women won't talk about money

Women don’t like to talk about money. In our society - less so now than it used to be, but still true none the less – money talk is not considered genteel. It’s sort of ugly, crass, and considered an affront to those who have little.

Today money talk is a little more acceptable, but it is still considered bad manners to talk about it out loud, and mostly because of the fear of offending someone who has less than everyone else.

Women will go to great lengths to hide the money conversation. They don’t like to highlight it, preferring to show sympathy and empathy for those in the group or their clique who don’t have money.

This belief that money should not be discussed is at odds with women’s innate desire to look as though they have a lot more money than they actually do. Of course you can’t be seen to have a lot of money if people can’t tell that you have a lot of money. So women have to go to great lengths to ensure people ‘accidently’ find out that they have a lot of money. They will wear clothes they can’t afford, carry accessories they can’t afford, name drop celebrities they don’t know, make accidental comments about their husbands expensive job and suggest meeting in expensive restaurants for dinner.

In this way, they get to look like they ‘don’t care about money’ to the poorer people around them ‘even though they obviously have a lot of it’.

In romance novels the heroes and heroines often have money, and they often don’t. However, if they don’t have money, they are usually very fulfilled. Everyone acts as though they don’t really care about their money regardless of how much they have; in fact they really don’t care about how much money they actually have. For women, who love money very much but tend to feel quite guilty about that, this is real integrity.

Because women expect too much from men

There is a fundamental disconnect in the way men and women relate to each other and to the way the myths about men and women play themselves out, and fundamentally this has always hurt women more than it has hurt men, although  it is catching up with men these days as well.

It used to go like this:

Men said they were one thing. That is provider, protector, obsessively faithful, chivalrous, and generous and they always put themselves after their family.  Women would fall for it, fall for them, and fall in love; ultimately get married and then after a lot of soul searching and self blame and a lot of not doing much, women find out the man will never behave the way she thought he was meant to.

The women are supposed to be just a few simple things – faithful, look after the man and look after the children. If they can do these simple things, they are successful in his eyes and everything else is a bonus. However soon the woman finds that she is expected to provide so much more; She is also meant to build his flagging self esteem, she is also supposed to be able to manage the finances and she is also supposed to be able to stand up for the family when it comes to crunch time she is meant to be beautiful and young looking into her seventies and she is expected to keep a superhuman grace and charm always under all circumstances.

Women find out, All too soon, that the expectation s they had of men are impossible to realise and the expectations placed on her are only half of the story.

The most foolish thing of all, is at the point a woman finds she has been duped she will go through her mid life crises – leave her man and her children – and run off with another man. As if HE is going to be any different. And herein lies women’s fundamental basic problem.

IN romance novels the men live up to all expectations. Somehow they manage to be completely alpha, a little bit obsessive (about their woman of course) and powerfully driven by whatever is important to them. Hence the intelligent womans’ deep love.

Because men are enamoured with their own ability to think

We’ve seen in previous posts that men secretly think they are geniuses. We have also seen that they all think they’re alpha males.

They also have a problem with confusing opinion with fact.

Men think their ideas are facts. Perspective is something that is lost on men. Women are creatures who try to get you to change your mind and have no concept of reality – not humans with an alternate view point.

Unfortunately for the world, men have (in the past) been the ones deciding the direction of the human race in every endeavour. That is, they decide what direction science takes, philosophy, medicine, literature, religion, mathematics, and any other great thought structure. This means, still today, male perspective is mistaken for fact.

There are people looking into this and working out what to do about it, but it remains that men have an under developed capacity for recognising their ideas as ideas. They still think when something occurs to them, that they have resolved and issue or worked something out – not that something has occurred to them.

It is getting better. Men are starting to learn that others have view points as well. However, it is still a very rare man indeed that is able to recognise his thought process as a thought process and not a series of rational and logical progression that have led him undeniably (through the power of lucid deduction) to a fact.

In romance novels, men are often in love with their own ideas, but what is usually written into the story is their progress to humanity as they work out that other ideas or opposing ideas are not illogical, irrational or wrong, they are simply different. For intelligent women, to follow a male character in a book as he works this out is a very exciting dip into the world of fantasy.

Because women think laziness is introspection

Half a loaf is better than...  getting something done.

We’ve seen in this blog before some of the great lengths women will go to in their quest to avoid actually having to do something. But nothing beats confusing laziness, for introspection.

A woman will sit for hours, sometimes days, and look at her to do list, lamenting how involved and long it is. It took hours just writing it. They will stare at it, agree that the job is half complete, go and grab lunch with friends, come back and when the list is still there with no ticks against it, they will ‘self examine’ for hours.

This will include phone calls to friends about the ‘emergency’ of not getting anything done, and ‘going into overwhelm’, a visit to a therapist, or a massive chocolate binge. A woman will nurse a to do list for days, not even getting a third of it done, while her friends will tell her this is happening to her because she is so busy.

Anything to avoid actually getting something done.

But worse than all of this, is the introspection and analysis required to justify it all. There will be hours spent going over the variety of feelings that a bored inactive woman will go through. In fact all she has is her feelings, so she will work out where they came from, what their triggers are, buy four self help books, watch a couple of Oprah shows and get on the net and ‘study’ procrastination or overwhelm, all so that she can avoid actually having to do something.

In romance novels women don’t have time for excessive introspection. They are so busy getting away from demons or devils or bad men in general that they don’t need to entertain ideas of massive self analysis. In fact, often, the woman obsessed with study of her thoughtless mind, will often turn to romance novels. Unfortunately, she doesn’t always find the inspiration found there will lead her to action.

Because all men secretly think they're alpha males

Ask any man what an alpha male is, and you get an aggrandised version of himself.

The sports jock will tell you that it is an a league football player, the small business man will tell you it’s Rupert Murdoch, the funny guy will tell you it’s the latest hottest comedian, the good looking guy will tell you it’s the male model dating the female models and the musician will tell you it’s Oasis.

In other words, an alpha male is the man you’re talking to plus some. The ultimate alpha male is anywhere he sees himself   a) in the future   or   b) where he would be if he could be bothered really trying.

Sometimes, some of the more thinking men will tell you who the world thinks the alpha male is, but who they really KNOWS it is.

The guy who reads books all the time will tell you that most people think it’s the football jock, but it’s really the Nobel laureates.

The activist will tell you that most people think it s the business man but it’s really Ghandi or Nelson Mandela.

There are two things that all men agree the alpha male must have; Money and a lot of women. By this logic, even someone whose sexuality is as suspect as Hugh Heffner is seen as an alpha male by most men. (Hey - the guy turns every woman into Barbie. This is NOT the behaviour of a straight man)

In romance novels the men are usually alpha males. What defines them as such is independence, strength over themselves, the ability to make things happen and get what they want, and a slight obsession with the woman of their dreams that never goes and never dies. Now THAT’s a true alpha male.

Because women prefer material gifts to emotional gifts

On the surface women appreciate love and romance. They crave it. They’ve been conditioned for a long time to believe that emotional security from a man is the best way to succeed and to be seen as a success.

However, when it comes down to it, the thing that REALLY makes her feel special, is how much you spent o n her, and if she can show that thing off to her friends.

If you give her a poem, she can’t really show that off. Well, she can, but her friends are not guaranteed to be envious. If the man that wrote you the poem is very faithful and openly so, it goes a long way to increasing the woman’s status, but nothing really does it like a gift.

And expensive gift.

There is a reason women have been stereotyped as money hungry when it comes to men. That is because for the most part, they are. You see many women expect that they will be very unhappy in love. You’re better to be unhappy with a rich guy than with a poor one, so they lose the discerning streak that asks them to be fussy. It’s a catch 22 type situation.

Of course nothing is as potent as the ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. If this is big and expensive, there is very little you can give a woman as exciting as this gift. Just a warning, it is bad taste to give it to her for Christmas or birthday – that’s a sign of being cheap that negates the cost of the ring. You’re better to keep all the presents plentiful and separate. That shows her how much you love her.

In romance novels the women don’t need material gifts as much as real women do. They are more secure and far more able to buy their own wonderful things for themselves. One thing that does tend to be consistent, however, is the wealth of the men in romance novels. Even forward thinking, progressive women still enjoy the fantasy of the ultra rich man falling in love with them.

Because men attack their women socially

Men will often blame women for responding to abuse that the very same men have inflicted upon them. This is a means of control of course, but these days, when women (in our culture) are given more opportunity, it is less and less a measure of deliberate control as it is an unconscious habitual behaviour.

It will go something like this:

A man out with this wife / girlfriend will check out other women and/ or flirt with another woman when they are out together. This is an attack on the woman’s status as the man’s partner. Because it is important that women are seen to retain ‘their’ man socially, it is an attack on your partner to show an outward interest in other women, and it gives them a measure of power over your girlfriend. (Note – if a taken man flirts with a woman in front of his partner, the power goes to the woman he flirts with, not the woman he goes home with – every woman knows this, from the partner through to the woman you are flirting with.)

The equivalent for this social attack is if you were out with friends and your girlfriend told everyone at the table she thinks you may be gay because you can’t make love to her properly. The insult is that deep, that rude, and that clear to everyone else around you.

Then, when your partner complains that you are hitting on other women in front of her, he either tells her it isn’t happening or he tells her it means nothing and she is petty and nasty.

Then, the woman will buy a new dress, or do something to try to make herself more attractive to her partner. When she parades it in front of him, he will say, “I don’t know anything about clothes, it looks ok to me.” Or he will pause and then say “Is that what you’re wearing?”

Anything other than, “You look gorgeous.”

Then, in despair when she says “Do you still find me attractive?” he will throw his hands up in the air and say “I’m with you aren’t I?”

In romance novels men have no need to reduce women to childlike behaviours and they have no desire to socially attack their partners. In every novel, without exception, his eyes are only for her – he knows how to make a choice in his life and stick by it. His partner never needs to be embarrassed or humiliated by her man because a hero in a romance novel would never think of doing any of the above to their partner.

Note: The man who is outwardly committed, deeply and perfectly so, to his partner, is ALAWYS deeply attractive to all women, and is usually heavily pursued by them. There is nothing sexier to a woman that a man who is 100% devoted to his partner, and can resist temptation.

Because women think their problems are unique

The most wonderful thing about all the new electronic modes of communication is that women have found new and wonderful ways to tell everyone about the difficulties they are having emotionally.

It may be a quirky irritation with the guy who sells cupcakes at the shop down the road, it may be the latest analysis of the ex boyfriend, currently boyfriend, soon to be boyfriend or husband. No matter what it is that women are going through emotionally two things are certain:

1)      She thinks it’s never happened quite this way to anyone else

2)      It’s a cliché

Women constantly have ‘breakthroughs’ in this own self discovery. If men avoid honest self analysis by working hard and playing hard, women avoid honest self analysis by a faux self analysis that is really an opportunity to create excuses for all the things she won’t or can’t do.

A woman will have one of these breakthroughs in the shower, car, lying in bed, cooking dinner or especially at work, when she is supposed to be working. Breakthroughs are especially common when a woman is at work. This is when face book or msn come in so handy. Twitter is not quite as handy as there is not enough room to provide a detailed analysis of the breakthrough she’s had that day about herself and her own behaviours.

IN romance novels women don’t tend to be complainers or into overanalysing their situation. Usually if they have a problem that needs solving, they solve it. Men help, or they don’t. Intelligent women read romance novels because the women in them are the women we all wish we were.

Because men like to 'fund' women's emancipation

Men have been paying for women - at least in our culture – for centuries. In the past it has been the wife or the whore, both being women who traded themselves for money.

Now days it still happens, but it has been disguised as ‘investment’.

Take a good hard look around, and you will find men ‘investing’ in women’s ‘freedom’.

For men, it is very difficult to control women these days. You have to be far more creative than you used to be. Women have their own money now and are creating their own opportunities. So if you can’t get her to sleep with you, there are very few options left.

One is investment.

Women are accepting financial assistance from men, who have nothing creative to contribute to the project, but by injkecti9ng a lot of funds, they get to retain their place as an advisor to whatever the woman is doing.

Often men who can’t get the woman to fall in love with them – or can’t be with the woman they want to control (usually because they’re married or too proud to be seen with her) will invest in her business, her creative project, or ‘hook her up with’ a major connection in her life that will take her far. In fact, it would be very difficult for a woman to get far with no favours from a man at all. Yet it would still be very easy for a man to get ahead without ever seeing a woman, let alone needing her favours.

Like all financial exchanges between men and women, this favour requires a great deal of back payment, and is usually binding way past the actual repayment of the investment. Interest alone is not what he wants. Men have always thought their money bought them a great deal when it comes to women.

In romance novels men often invest in women’s projects, but they do so to support her, not to secretly hold power over her. The hero wants to see her fly, because he knows that a happy partner is a secure long term partner and we all know that is what all men want.