Understanding Men

I searched for a “cute couple” in images, and this is what came up.  🙂  Kinda funny.

Kinda not.  Because, isn’t this what the world is pushing as “cute” these days?  I call this (forgive me) the “bitchy” attitude, and it seems to be deemed as the in-style way for a woman to have a relationship but maintain her independent spirit at the same time.  …right…  It’s like the generation of girls who sported “spoiled brat” tee-shirts and “my way or the highway” locker decor when they were 14 just never grew out of their already clueless attitude toward life and men.  Now they’re 24, 34, and they still haven’t grasped how futile their efforts are with regards to securing happiness.

Listen, ladies.  You want to understand men?  You need to understand something about life, first.  YOU GET WHAT YOU GIVE.  If you plan on entering a relationship with a me-take-me-take attitude, you’ll get exactly what you can grasp, steal, or drag out of that situation.  It will be exhausting and dissatisfying, and you’ll wind up in the very predictable state of unhappiness that too many relationships end in.

However, if you’re willing to give to the world and its people your whole heart and soul, your talents, your time, and your resources, then you can be prepared to receive in return more joy and satisfaction than most of the world’s inhabitants could even dream of.

Great.  Now you understand life.  Understanding men will be easy.

Men are people.  YOU are people.  How do you like to be treated?  Translate that into the chrome-tinted life of man and now you know how to treat your man.  The biggest problem with girls and women and the way they behave toward men is that they handle them like a foreign species.  That makes for an amusing movie scene, but in real life, men’s needs and women’s needs are remarkably similar.  Your BEST bet if you’re totally in the dark about how to approach a man is to treat him like the funnest, coolest, most valued friend you have.

There are a couple of things I’ve noticed about men that truly do differ greatly from women. …aside from the obvious… 😉

1- A woman’s life is glorified by feeling loved, loved, LOVED.  This includes affection, romance, and words of adoration.  Her preferred way of receiving these declarations may vary, but most women have a real need to be reminded frequently that they are LOVED.

Men need to feel loved too, but even greater than their need for constant reminders of adoration is a need to feel ADMIRED.  This involves praise, compliments, and genuine respect for his manly efforts in the world.  Most men would be embarrassed by his woman giving gushing, exaggerated accounts of his good deeds at the office Christmas party.  Heck, anyone would!  But to mildly mention to his coworkers how much you appreciate what a great job he did on patching up your roof this summer is almost always a sure-fire way to a man’s heart.  And be sure to let HIM hear good reports on the subject of HIM daily.

2- When a woman begins a conversation about the drama she’s experiencing with Friend X, or Mom, or whatever, she is motivated by the need to talk things out.  And up.  And down.  And all-around.

Man is motivated to solve the problem, wherever it lies, with as little to-do as possible.

If you’re embarking on a long-winded dialogue about the evils of Friend X and you do NOT want your man to tune out once he’s rapidly analyzed the quickest exit sign of your situation, TELL HIM in perfectly clear, polite language that this is a talk-it-out.  A man does appreciate knowing what to expect from an emotionally-loaded conversation, and he’ll be more likely to listen with sympathetic ears.

What kind of qualities do YOU think are important to understand about a man for relationship bliss?