Women are from Venus, men are from Mars!

Based on the findings from the book ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ (published in May 1992) by John Gray.  The book is based on the idea that members of the opposite sex  have very different communication styles, emotional needs and personal values to each other.

Yes! I hear you cry we know this is true, but how have we come to this conclusion? Why is there a resounding cheer of agreement worldwide with regards to this theory? And, what my blogger friends can we do to solve this mystery and work what is going on in the opposite sex’s blokey man-brains? Well, if we knew this, I wouldn’t be blogging about my dating adventures and man issues now would I!

How different we are!

As a girl, I like to be honest and upfront about how I feel, I don’t like to play games and if I want to text back I will. Flip-side I genuinely believe that guys play the game, obviously it depends on the types of guys, of course it does (we can’t tar all men with the same brush! Blah, blah, blah!).

 The guys that I tend to come across, they’ll  start off really keen, so I’ll be 100% myself with them. Fast forward two weeks and I’ve been replying to their texts, seeing them if they ask me out… then all of a sudden they go dark on me.

Now don’t get me wrong, yes maybe they’re just not that into me, but why do guys just all of a sudden go off the radar without so much of a courtesy ‘I don’t think it’s working’. They just go MIA without as much as a wave goodbye. I think that even in dating terms, manners don’t cost anything, yes it might not be a lovely conversation or something you particularly want to do, but sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up!

Even the guys that we weren’t really that bothered about, I do tend to find that when they go MIA it seems to bother you more as it comes so left of centre.

Enter the Pedestal Theory:

I know for a fact that I have a dating cycle, we probably all do, it just takes a while to admit it. Here is mine in a nutshell:

• Single for about 2/3 months
• Meet someone (we’ll call him A for the benefit of this nutshell) who really turns my head
• We date for about a month
• They go MIA and break my heart
• I feel sorry for myself and miss the attention
• I meet someone who likes me, we’ll call him C, they’re not my usual type, but they seem lovely and have the potential to treat me the way that I wish A would’ve done (I almost feel like I’m on a pedestal, one that I’ve climbed up on completely of my own accord BTW
• Spend two/ three weeks dating, C shower me with attention, I don’t play games, I even shock horror – text them and call them first
• I start to not hear back from C’s texts straight away and when he gets missed calls from me, I don’t hear back for hours
• I slowly feel myself falling off that pedestal that I’d so confidently climbed up onto, even wearing stiletto heels
• All of a sudden it’s the weekend, I haven’t heard from him, if he does get back to me it’s with one word, non-chatty texts…
• Cue me falling backwards off the pedestal as my stiletto heel breaks, I tumble-down to land in a big pile of sh*t.
• I look up and there’s C standing on that very pedestal (that’s mine get off!) waving and giving me the finger as he trots off to pull another victim that he can now be a bit more cocky with (BTW guys have their patterns too! We’ll come back to this another time!)

Here I am single again and decide I’m swearing off guys for at least 2/3 months – so they cycle begins again…

Going round in circles

My very good friend Julie keeps on telling me to not be so nice, that I’m too available, treat them mean keep them keen etc – I can’t help but think however, that if they were the right person for me all the game playing and being ‘hard to get’ just wouldn’t matter.

Take Neal for example, I mentioned him about three weeks ago, the one I met at Circo Loco – you remember, you don’t! Just humour me…

We had a lovely night, exchanged numbers, I didn’t hear, four days later he added me on the book of face and explained he’d been ill and lost his phone. I responded the next day and haven’t heard from him since. No idea what happened there considering I didn’t even have the chance to mess that one up, ha!

The there’s the lovely Paul, half Maltese, half English Aussie who I haven’t seen since he turned up at my house on Australia day. Sure he’s asked me on dates and then cancels on the day, or the day before if he was feeling a bit more respectful. However, I still get those phone calls at 10:30pm on a Saturday night, which I ignore.  Randomly he got in touch on Sunday and apologised for being MIA for the past four months, advised that he was saving so had been lying low. (Oh yeah because that’s the law apparently when you’re saving, you can’t text!) He then said he still owed me a dinner that he’d promised – As if he has to ego to think I’ve been waiting up every night for him to ‘lock in’ our long overdue date – I think not!

A recent article in Good Health magazine by Helen Foster provided the findings to a recent study that highlights that men and women are worlds apart:

It concludes that women feel pain differently:

“When we get an ache it tends to feel more severe and last longer than the same pain might in men. This is partly biological — oestrogen increases the amount of nerves a painful feeling stimulates, “but while men focus merely on the way a pain feels, women tend to focus on how it’s going to affect them”, says US psychologist Dr Jennifer Kelly, who spoke on gender and pain at the recent convention of the American Psychological Association. “This makes you feel more negatively about it.”

(Full article can be found here)

It got me to thinking; I wonder if this is the same for emotional pain? Answers on a post card please.

Three’s a crowd

Okay I’m in somewhat of a dating dilemma and I can’t decide which the best course of action to take is or which path to turn to. Mainly because in my experience all roads lead to 1 Dumped Avenue, Singleton-ville!

Now let me get this straight, I’m the kind of girl who goes through stages, peaks and troughs, swings and round abouts et al… you catch my drift! I am by no means a man eater, I’ll go though months and months with nothing, not even a glimmer of bloke that throws any interest in my general direction.

Then all of a sudden after a drought (usually about a three month cycle) about three men come at once – there was a saying once about men and buses, you know!

Anywayyyyyy… It just so happens that I seem to be partaking in one of life’s peaks at this moment in time, rather than the Valley of the Trough (or the bottom of my pedestal that I so gallantly climbed to the top of, only to break my stiletto heel, fall to the bottom and land in a big pile of sh1t! It happens apparently!)

On overview, or synopsis if you will, follows:

The lovely Liam is back on the scene – after the bus incident he has still been contacting me to meet up (yeah I still judge him!). He’s been around for two years – we went through the ‘mate zone’ for a year and now I’m still no closer to gauging what we are. I do get the feeling that he wants to talk to me about something serious (due to his lack of desire to attend group functions, requesting we just catch up one-on-one). I have locked him in this weekend, so all shall be revealed, I hope!

Then there’s the guy that I was seeing casually, we touched on my issues with this here. The cute half Maltese, half English Aussie guy, remember? Well we’ve kept in touch and he is still yet to ask me out, not best practice! We’re in the zone where we just meet up on a night out, is there a way out of this zone? Or am I stuck in it forever as a product of my own making?

Then we’re left with Tim, a guy I really hit it off with on my travels over Xmas, he was my NY smooch (nothing else mind!). We stayed up all night on the lake putting the world to right. We also have a lot in common, his Dad’s originally from Liverpool (I went to uni in Liverpool and heart it!) his mum is also a Brit of the Southern variety, she’s from Chelsea. Again he’s an Aussie born and bred, that lives in Sydney! He also has the British banter added for good measure!  He too is yet to ask me out, we have the whole flirting situation happening via e-mail and text, but still nothing, nada, diddley squat!!

So as you can see, yes there are three guys on the ‘potential date’ zone, but none of them have made that step into the ‘date zone’. I believe it is quite scary for some guys, but seriously, I’m getting very bored of waiting to be asked.

Now I need your assistance here, as my judgement is all clouded by the fact that they’re cute,  funny, surfers, rugby players, like a drink, got loadsa mates etc etc I need someone’s view from the outside.

Do I wipe the slate clean and start again with a guy that is willing to take the giant leap for mankind into the (sshhhhhhhhhhhh don’t say it too loud or it might scare them) – ‘date zone’, or do I persevere and let fate run its course, if it’s meant to be it will??