Women think (and act) with their penis alot more than men actually.

Oh no you're onto something that MEN do need to improve on. For those guys who are gaming rather than doing laundry and grocery shopping while the female partner (gf or wife) is out working is a problem.

But adding to that the girlfriend or wife needs to acknowledge that whatever special quirks and method they want to have in organizing the laundry and how to iron out wrinkles that they prefer when they do laundry might not happen when the guy does it.
If a girl wants a guy to follow specifics, she has to coach him and set the system up, and then just expect him to maintain and follow it. Also girls clothes are just more complex to take care of imho than men's clothes.

But yeah men if they are the "stay at home dad, need to live up to that label".

sidenote: meh to your implied meanings of astrological signs defining the personalities and habits of those around you, romantic or otherwise...it doesn't really tell me anything because horoscopes are so generic in description.


My recommendation to guys is that try to see house chores as a zen experience. And I mean with ipods nowadays, folding clothes or sorting them into piles you'll load into the washer is a LOT less tedious.

 

It`s a tough balance.

I actually have no problem with shy. I am shy myself, and I prefer shy women. But, shy is not the opposite of brave. It`s not the opposite of taking initiative. Even if that initiative is to say, "I`m shy! But, I`d like to get to know you." Even if your voice quivers. Even if you trip over your words, or spill your drink. Or get flustered and your cheeks go red. It`s endearing.

The problem is that what often passes for shyness is the self-entitled, "if a guy wants this, he`s gotta do the work."

It is rare for me to meet women whose shyness is pure, and unmixed with this sort of self-entitlement. Actually, rare is an understatement.

-------

As for being open to exceptions, I try to be. But, it is sometimes tough. I just had a girl skip town after saying she would call before leaving. We had planned to meet two nights in a row, and she cancelled twice. The cancelling was not the problem, but the fact that she didn`t as much as call to say I`m sorry, and good-bye after saying she would. I`m very hurt.

My buddy calls and says he`s met two girls who want to hang out. They called him. It would be a blind double-date.

I would love to follow my own principles and give them the benefit of the doubt, since it`s so rare that women take the initiative. I`d be walking the talk. But, another part of me is deflated and wants to hole up and avoid almost certain disappointment.

 

Cherea, it's possible that one girl who skipped town on you was giving you the run around the whole time with no intention of calling from the get go.

But I agree with your above post, the balance is extremely hard.

 

From what I've seen many of the men who get into these roles do so not by choice, but by necessity and are often embarrassed by it... or feel weak and demeaned...which is unfortunate because I don't think most women feel that way about their men, if they're taking care of the money, they just want him to show some effort and initiative.

Certainly they shouldn't expand things to be perfect and be nit-picking. In my experience(and for some reason I've had lots of friends with the same experience) the men won't even pick up after themselves. Of course, I'm sure they were depressed, but they would then demand and expect that the woman do everything, from working, to householding, to holding up the sexual standard and emotional balance of the relationship. I think men are suffering a lot with their ideas of superiority and their macho personas and not able to be real and just contribute to the relationship without feeling their existence hangs on how much or rather they're making money.

As for the astrological stuff...yeah you're totally right about that...that was my lazy way of trying to explain my personality vs. my ex's personality. Let's just put it like this...I like to save money, adhere to a budget and make lists of things that are actually needed. I'm also satisfied with the simple things in life. Whereas he was acclimated to special privileges and wanted extravagance and derived pleasure from having more stuff and wanted to be able to buy whatever he wanted and expressed extreme disapproval at not having everything he wanted.

Basically, what I'm saying is I think personality factors in more than gender, since although women are technically more intuitive and men more logical, when it comes to working and certain things that are already logical at their core(finances), it just depends on the person.

 

Cherea, I would venture to say this is almost entirely circumstantial. It a woman doesn't know what she wants, she's not going to prioritize being honest about that. She wants to know how she really feels and might not say anything until she's sure. She might not approach anyone unless she's sure of it...

And just like men I'm sure...taking the initiative is deflating and disappointing...a lot of men make the mistake that an assertive woman is slutty or clingy or crazy. It can be difficult to always be assertive with the kinds of responses you get. Personally in my mind I go back and forth on whether I want to be assertive or not...but nine x out of 10...I actually take the initiative and feel like I approach people I'm actually interested in is safer than being approached and not being able to back away because I'm unsure of it. I kinda think there has to be a little give and take on both sides, both being a little assertive and a little passive to allow the other person to assess what's going on.

That's something I'm not totally sure about though. I go back and forth on the idea because I think a lot of men are intimidated by assertive women.

 

Exactly, and I don't mean to be racist here, but in cultures within the USA that are heavy on machismo, generate the kind of male behavior that you described above. And also that same culture affects how women from within the same culture would respond in that situation as well, the woman might blame him and not take things as gracefully as say you would in that situation. Lots of these kinda perceptions and drama-exploding moments, are generated by really strong cultures who have ridged gender roles.

But yeah there is a sense of shame men feel, even though we should be blaming the top bankers of the USA who caused the financial crisis in the first place. And 2+ years is a long time to be jobless, especially when employers are really nitpicky since they know they have the cream of the crop to choose from. Also there's age discrimination too and that affects the marriages of the baby boomer generation.

Mid-life crisis tend to happen once this shame sets into the male mindset too. And then they branch out into 2 main fields:

1. a illogical purchase a man makes (car being sterotypical)
2. starts cheating
3. develops a drug/alcohol problem

Then it just goes all downhill from there.

But again now I'm kinda connecting the sterotypes we know all to well, into the origins of how they start psychologically speaking.

 

I wonder what you consider to be midlife? Also you may be right about ethnic cultures, but I almost think the generational factor may be a lot bigger since in my experience there has been no cultural correlation... I have friends of all ethnic, national and racial heritage who have had relationships with men of all different ethnic, national and racial heritage, many of which were "bi-racial" or "cross-cultural" relationships but some were not...

What I have seen though is almost all of them have been in my age range who've had this particular problem...and I don't exactly hang out with many people my age, in fact.

 

Well it's interesting you bring that up about your friends of all races and cultures because we are in the middle of shift where a generation of people are of mixed race but yet at the same time are also "westernized" so in the immediate home the culture may be there but outside of the home and among friends a mask kind of comes off.

And you also have the first few waves of parents who are mixed race and raising kids also of multiple cultures and are again westernized.

And I guess this is where the pop culture thread I created earlier ties into this thread.

But we agree that personality has a HUGE roll in how relationships turn out.

As for the middle age life crisis, my personal definition is 40's and up. But it is a general term..some people never grow up.

 

Like real men :2thumbsup:

 

Me and my friends do say "it's a man thing" often when talking about men habits. Throwing out these generalizations is tongue in cheek, just as the OP did. I would like to believe I break the mold for women. And in ways, I see that my husband isn't a typical male either. Our marriage is in shambles though, so clearly, being uniquely non-gender is not the solution.

And being into my 50s I have a perspective about how each decade of life, as well as personality, will play a huge part in the success and failures of relationships. Bottom line, relationships are highly sought after despite the fact that they cause anguish and pain.

 

So anything to add, or commentary per decade that you've noticed? You kinda dangle a carrot there in terms of saying you have insight on each decade, but you don't elaborate to make us younger folks wiser. More detail please.

(Generalizations, are like best fit trends, the origin of why the sterotype generalization was made is probably a valid observation, but are they statistically a majority is the question people have to ask and quantify in order for it to be valid and ok to say in public)

 

It might be that my experiences can make you young people wiser, but here it is in a nutshell about love in the decades. Oh, and remember these are generalities, which is perfect for this thread.

20s - about fun
30s - about family
40s - about future
50s - about fun

 

Huh, you REALLY dont want to know. The way calgirl talks she is different from most of them anyway (in a good way) , so probably wont help, with the stuff she doesnt see anyway

 

Well, guys should stop being assholes...

 

and this would work because girls would have no choice but to settle for a decent guy? that works, girls should stop being physically attractive too.

 

It also begs the question on what as*hole behavior is, because sometimes the behavior is considered neutral among guys, and while among women there's a trend for it to be communicated as as*hole behavior.

Also sometimes during a breakup, you call someone an bitc* or an as*hole, not necessarily because they are, but because your just hurt, fair enough.

So yeah we mislabel things sometimes as we vent, it's human but we should be aware of it.

 

Just to throw this in here...this is a chick who`s hip to MRA, and is an almost lone voice among women in compassionately looking at male problems such as male disposability, male shaming, legal bias against men, and eat-the-cake-and-have-it-too feminism.

I paraphrase: an OKCupid recent research stated that "women on their site deemed 80% of men less than average attractiveness."

Which, is of course, mathematically impossible, just like so much gendered crap women throw at men, including cheating.

But, says everything about women`s overvaluing themselves and the devaluing of men.

I recommend her videos and related ones on youtube. Edit: There is also some stuff about N.W.A.L.T.!!!1!!!1 (as shown in this thread) in related videos if you look for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlvMAS_20K4&feature=channel&list=UL"]Men not marrying? How deep does "the problem" go? - YouTube

And, this is more of her general theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA&feature=relmfu"]Feminism and the Disposable Male - YouTube

 

^Those sources are interesting Cherea.

But was OKCupid's article only asking what women thought about physical attractiveness or the overall package including personality and how he interacted with others?

 

Some Bill Maher stuff on shaming men into monogamy, trophy marriage, and PDA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX9GXPtRkFA"]Bill Maher on Feminism - YouTube

 

Physical attractiveness based on a picture, which isn't exactly fair for either sex. For one, OKcupid isn't a legit sample of the population. And if someone showed me a picture of my boyfriend I would probably rate him unattractive because he always looks weird in pictures. The same with a few different guys I know. They don't look good in two dimensional images but throw in their body language, charisma, intelligence and they make one hell of a package in person.

A picture doesn't even tell a fraction of the story, especially on a dating site.