Dishes by the Sink

Another post relating to Venus and Mars.
Herself speaks, on behalf of women ("we") and to men ("you"). Once more, generalizations abound. 

One of my FaceBook lady friends posted an article the other day, titled: "She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By The Sink." Clearly the title is a bit of 'clickbait'. Nevertheless, it worked. I clicked. And found, a bit to my surprise, a very thoughtfully written article about relationships between men and women. I recommend that everyone read it, young or old, male or female, gay, straight, or other.

It explained why, for women, a man's attitude of "If you just tell me what you want me to do, I'll gladly do it" isn't always enough. We don't always want to tell you what to do.

She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.

Yes. That. Sometimes, we're tired of being in charge. We're in charge of children, of pets, of work, of bills, of so many things. If you can determine what needs to be done and just DO it, without our having to request, it is practically magical for us. 

There is more in the article that gets to the heart of what I see as causing the most conflict between men and women:

What we are not good at is... accurately predicting how our wives might feel about any given thing because male and female emotional responses tend to differ pretty dramatically.

I tend to dismiss statements about "women as so complicated" with an eyeroll.  We're not complicated! It's obvious to us! Why can't you see? Truth be told, you cannot see, because your emotional response to things is so very different from ours.That's hard for both sides to understand.  (And I will freely admit that in the end, I have no idea what Man Feelings are all about. They are an incomprehensible language to me -- I only speak woman. Alas.)

The crux of the mater is, though: understanding is not necessarily necessary.

I don't have to understand WHY she cares so much about that stupid [whatever it is]. I just have to understand and respect that she DOES.

That is it in a nutshell: we do not need to know WHY something is so important to someone else. We just have to know that it IS important, and that should be enough. 

Imagine how it would be if we all -- men and women alike -- stopped trying to convince the opposite gender that our personal point of view is the right one, or that theirs is the wrong one, and instead focused on what is important to one another. 

That would be interesting, indeed.