A quick preface: I am writing this article for educational and entertainment value. If it seems a bit one-sided, it should. This article was written as a guide for men and doesn’t address what girls can/should do. If you want the feminine companion, check out: 7 Things Guys Wished Girls Understood…
With that said, I hope you enjoy my musings.
Alright, I’m adapting a concept I read about in the book “Men are like Waffles, Women are Like Spaghetti” by Bill and Pam Farrel. A woman’s brain is kind of like spaghetti – each element of life is intertwined. Their thought process is similar to trying to follow a single noodle in a plate full of spaghetti; one thought leads to twelve more, all inter-connecting!
So, if you have ever thought that it might be confusing to follow “woman-thought,” be comforted in the fact that you aren’t supposed to be able to! You’re not that way! This way of thinking allows women to consider many thoughts simultaneously in their head, making multi-tasking easier. In addition, it allows women to take in many subtle clues or comments and piece them together much faster than we can. And lastly, because all these thoughts are intertwined, she will take a lot into consideration when she is making a decision.
Amidst this thought-storm, it can be a bit difficult for a lady to explain exactly why she’s feeling a certain way or how she came to a decision. It’s a fairly complicated and involved process! Don’t be surprised by this; be understanding and considerate. Nothing says “insensitive” like a guy who doesn’t appreciate this difference between men and women!
To build on the spaghetti-model, let’s juxtapose the above concept with our syrup on waffle analogy (of a guy’s brain). Envision a major problem, concern, or feeling (sauce) being tossed on top of a female spaghetti-brain. Unlike a guy’s brain who can escape into syrup-free cell, all the noodles in the plate overlap and touch spaghetti. What this means is that a woman’s brain is wired to not forget about anything important because it is constantly entering her thought-process.
Let’s use another analogy. Imagine yourself using the computer (thinking) and you get bombarded by a pop-up (something important) every minute. Annoying, huh? Well, now envision you’re working on six different windows at once (many thoughts) and a pop-up (something emotionally overwhelming) appears every five seconds and also changes the windows you had open. It would drive you nuts! You would likely concentrate solely on the source of the pop-up until it was finally resolved and then you would control your thoughts again.
Welcome to the female brain, it still baffles me. But hopefully this analogy helps you understand a bit more of the “why” behind it and helps you become more considerate.
This is a very sensitive topic, so I will do my best to address it. Gentlemen, ladies are extremely sensitive to what you say about them, especially about how they look. In fact, you will never, ever know the full extent to which you’ve caused an emotional roller-coaster due to a single comment, expression, or lack of either. I say this not to scare you (because you will mess this up, often), but to inform you.
Why is this? Just look around you; women are unceasingly compared to photo-shopped models with hours of pricy make-up work. How many products out there for women focus on “smoother, sexier, smaller, thinner…” Regardless of what they do, women will never be able to meet such impossible, unreal standards.
You can change this. To make my point, I’ll share with you one of my favorite quotes:
“You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her that she is beautiful, she’ll think you’re sweet, but she won’t believe you. She knows that her beauty lies in your beholding, and sometimes that is enough.
But there is a better way. You show her that she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. To convince her is hard, very hard, but when she finally believes you… suddenly the story she tells herself in her head changes. She transforms.
She isn’t seen as beautiful.
She is beautiful, seen.”
-Patrick Rothfuss, Name of the Wind
Gentlemen, you have a tremendous responsibility; don’t ignore it or misuse it!
- Pursue me, but don’t use me!
This point should be short and sweet. Ladies want to be pursued, so pursue them!
If only things were that simple…
Many, many men misuse this truth, in both extremes. On one-hand, you have the player, who’s just in it for the chase. On the other-hand, you have those men too frightened to ask a lady out. Both sides make excuses for their actions, complaining of this or that. Both are cop-outs.
Be a man! Step out of your comfort zone and pursue a lady if you’re interested! Do so confidently, but considerately. Remember you are holding two hearts in your hand, both yours and hers. Your actions have consequences beyond yourself.
Gentlemen, this may come as a surprise to you, but women often just want you to listen to their problems and not fix them. Yes, it seems completely counter-intuitive to the male mind that someone would share a problem with you and not want to do anything about it. However, this often is the case with the opposite sex.
I’ll give an example from a cheesy movie White Men Can’t Jump:
Woman: “Honey? My mouth is dry. Honey. I’m thirsty.”
Guy: “Umm” [ Water Runs ] “There you go. honey.”
Woman: “When I said I was thirsty, it didn’t mean I wanted a glass of water.”
Guy: “It didn’t?”
Woman: “You’re missing the whole point of me saying I’m thirsty. If I have a problem, you’re not supposed to solve it. … See, if I’m thirsty, I don’t want a glass of water. I want you to sympathize. I want you to say. ‘Gloria, I too know what it feels like to be thirsty. I too have had a dry mouth. I want you to connect with me through sharing and understanding the concept of dry mouthedness…”
This is a light-hearted example, but yes guys, it’s true, every word. However, let me put it in perspective for you. Deep in a woman’s heart is the desire to share her entire life with someone. To use another analogy, she’s sitting on the bus of life and desires for someone to sit right next to her, so both of you can experience every moment in life together. She desires this deep connectedness in a relationship and may try to communicate her every-day life-experiences with you, so you can have shared in her experiences.
So next time she tells you about her frustrating co-worker or another problem in her life, use context clues to figure out if you are supposed to listen or fix, or ask her if you can’t figure it out. Ladies (yes, I know you’re reading this too), it’s extremely helpful if you preface a conversation by letting us know if you want us to just listen or fix your problem.
Like the “light-switch” analogy I gave explaining how a guy tends to react when attracted, I offer the female-companion: the dimmer switch. Unlike guys, who tend to have two distinct boxes, “friend” and “romantically interested,” ladies don’t necessarily have distinct boxes. Or, we (guys) can sort of fit into both boxes at the same time!
Sound confusing? Let’s go back to the analogy. We guys tend to have a light-switch moment where we know if we’re interested or not. It’s generally more of a gradual and variable process for the ladies. Every interaction they have with a guy can move him along the spectrum closer or further away from the two ends of friend and romantically interest.
This isn’t to say that a lady won’t ever know what she wants or if she’s interested, but that she will likely not have the same clarity that you do as quickly as you do. She is probably confused about her own feelings and this constant flux in where you fit in her life. This is why ladies generally appreciate it when we take a lead in a relationship; your consistency allows them the freedom to sort out things.
The choice is yours. You can send her into a storm of confusion by mirroring her internal fluctuations or make things easier for her to work through by being supportive and consistent.
- A Mystery Unto Themselves
I include this item to finalize my musings because it allows me to encompass femininity without really doing so. Why? In the end, women are a mystery, not just to us, but unto themselves as well.
We can try to understand women, but ultimately, despite our best efforts, they will continue to befuddle us. It’s probably not all a bad thing, as it keeps us on our toes. Also, you can’t expect women to necessarily understand their own actions, as there is some much going on internally that they might not be able to identify precisely what motivates them. However, don’t make the mistake of shrugging it off as nothing important. Not only will it land you in the dog-house, but it ignores the gift of the female brain.
Interesting tidbit for you, the connector between the right and left side of the brain (the corpus callosum, for you science types) is considerably larger in women than in men, generally. This is partially what causes the spaghetti-brain effect, but also means that women often feel their answers before they know the logical steps toward them. This connection allows ladies to skip those logical steps men usually take to get to an answer, but women can’t necessarily explain why their position is correct.
I’m not advocating that women are always right (though it happens more often than we’d like to admit…), but that there is usually a reason behind their feelings. Yes, occasionally ladies might over-react due to this emotional sensitivity in their brain or the craziness of all those pop-ups, but don’t make the mistake of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Rather, respect this difference between the sexes and celebrate it!
by JP Rudolph (and many ladies’ input!)
