I’m Christine, the female voice in this dialog. One day when I was already physically and emotionally spent, and completely overwhelmed with everything that was happening in my life, a man who’s very dear to me added the final straw to my pile and became the focal point of my anger. I e-mailed Kevin, one of my dearest friends and most trusted confidants of many years, telling him how close I was to "losing it" due to the final straw incident and asked him to pray for me. The next day I e-mailed him again, telling him I was feeling better and not to worry about me. I explained that I had been able to do some venting with one of my girlfriends and then some male bashing with another one. I told him that girlfriends are a Godsend for women and added, "Of course, if the men in our lives treated us right, we wouldn’t have so much agony and anger to vent!" He responded with, "That’s funny because men have those same talks with other guys and feel the same way about women."
That was the beginning of our lengthy ongoing dialog, with its views from both sides of the Gender Gap. It continued until we had exchanged viewpoints on every aspect of male/female relationships that either of us introduced into the conversation.
The body of this book contains the balance of our dialog, which has been recorded verbatim, all the way. . .
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. . .while she was there in the bed with him. She said, as if expressing her thought for the moment, "Hey, I'm right here!" She seemed very puzzled that he would rather lie there and pleasure himself than to wake her for sex. It sounds like women just want it both ways. They want their man to be attentive to their every need, but yet know when to back off. Well you know what, where it plays out so easily in your heads, it's not nearly as clear cut when you put it out on the table. Women are never clear and to the point. You want something, don't hint at it, I'm bad with hints ... come out and say it. I find I get what I want a whole lot easier if I just come out and say what I mean. Women seem to think that a man doesn't care or take the time to know his woman if he can't guess what's going on in her head. Man, a little help here please?
I think women are missing some key things. Women are the ones that push for a relationship. I guess the word "relationship" brings on different meanings. For a man it means to be engaged with a woman who's easy to spend time with, who doesn't turn into his Mother after an extended period of time and who basically excepts his short comings as a human being (which might I add, are pointed out to him by his woman) realizing he's not perfect and neither is she.
Women's ideas of relationships are not quite this simple. Women seem to want to be apart of every facet of her mate’s life. She wants to mother him (now maybe this is inadvertently or subconsciously done, but it's done). Where being a piece of meat to you is the biggest turn off, being in a relationship with your mother is ours. No offense to moms, I’m sure they’d understand.
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consequences of his own refusal to be kind and considerate enough of her, to respect her requests to regain the joy they use to share with each other.
You said that men want clear statements and referred to a woman's way of hinting at the things she wants. This is generally true, and I think women should know that men want them to ask for things point blank.
However, there is a twist to this that lies within your following statements:
"For a man it means being engaged with a woman who's easy to spend time with, who doesn't turn into his mother after an extended period of time, and who basically excepts his shortcomings--(which I might add, are pointed out to him by his woman)...She wants to mother him (now maybe this is inadvertently or subconsciously done, but it's done)."
I sincerely want to know this: how does a woman ask for something from her man that he used to give her in the beginning, but has now stopped, if he's going to automatically process it as his mother telling him he's a bad boy now for not doing his chores?
When I literally hated my ex (to the point that I secretly wished he'd die in a car accident so that I could be free because I couldn't get out of my wedding vows), I ran across a set of relationship tapes for women called Light His Fire, by Ellen Kreidman. I listened to the whole set over and over again until they've now become a part of my way of dealing with all men.