CLICK HERE FOR FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES, LINK BUTTONS AND MORE! »

Saturday 25 August 2012

High maintenance

I was aimlessly wandering through the depths of my computer's history and came across my constantly neglected blog. I have no excuse apart from being terribly lazy when it comes to writing, seriously lacking ideas that might sound interesting to someone who has nothing better to do but reading this so for that dear reader I have to do my best and not cause and involuntary head banging against the desk.

In the last two weeks or so I have had the privilege of eavesdropping on guys' conversations... Well, when you live with 3 or 4 it's not so much the case of me hiding behind the doors and straining my ears to catch oh so vital information but more like two words "shared kitchen". I know it doesn't sound half as interesting as me doing Veronica Mars-meets-Belle Boyd, but it's so much easier despite me still managing to miss out on half of whatever is said because my ears and brain are predisposed to droning out about 50% of any men talk. I guess it's female self-preservation which is great on one hand, but on the other it causes us so much grief and long phone calls or text messages to our girlfriends analysing what a non-suspecting male might have thought when he said this and that. We have to dissect the words merely because we missed out on most of the sentence anyway. 

But back to me being given a glimpse into the male mind (I wish). The story begins with three men discussing a fellow Venusian and me wandering into the previously mentioned shared kitchen. By the time I realised that the conversation was not about computers, movies I have no clue about or where to get the best pint it was already too late to catch any relevant and to my brain interesting pieces of information apart from the words high maintenance. Typically my brain started churning and humming and using most of my body's energy to make some sense of what my ears had just processed. And I couldn't. What is high maintenance supposed to be? As far as I am concerned and I am fully backed by most of my female friends a high maintenance girlfriend would be someone incredibly clingy,  phoning you 10 times a day, expecting expensive gifts and treats, wrinkling her perfectly cute button nose over a night spent in a local pub as it has no Michelin stars, etc. But what does it take to be portrayed as a HM crazy person to his friends?

A short answer was lots of phone calls and being annoyed at not getting back to her asap. And even though I am not the type to call my man 5 times a day, I don't find getting annoyed at him for lack of communication a bad thing. If he is busy, why can't he just text saying "Busy. Will call you as soon as possible." When you're freshly in love (and also after the honeymoon period is over) you want to talk to that oh so important person, you want to share how mundane or exciting your day has been and it is disappointing when he just isn't interested. After all he is the most important person in your life at this point and sharing every little detail is our way of showing that we care. In my experience lack of communication and reluctance to talk is one of the main relationship failure mechanisms.
So, talk and listen. And if you don't like what we do, tell us. We can't read your mind, we don't get the sub-text from your facial expressions and your advice to us "What a man says, is exactly what a man thinks" will never be understood as we are predisposed to try to get more meaning out of "Sure, I'll see you."

Here's a piece of history: Belle Boyd was a famous female spy during American Civil war and she was on the side of the Confederacy. She shot a Union soldier at the age of 17 because he cursed her mother. As a result Union soldiers were supposed to keep tabs on her, which worked fine for her as she got plenty of secrets out of them.

What I learnt: a "person" from Venus is Venusian.
Photo courtesy of www.cartoonstock.com