Martians and Venusians

 This is going to be an extremely boring post for all of you not curious as to what this book says, so skip it if ya want. :D


Righty, anyone who has read Men are from Mars and Woman are from Venus will know where I'm going with this. I'm here to teach you all it's wonderous knowledge! Now, men. Do not cringe and go "oh it's going to be so innacurate and horrid because it's written by some feminism he-woman" Oh no. It's written by a very understanding and particularly accurate married man. And according to my male source, it's quite agreeable.

Okay, so points it makes.

• Men feel satisfied with progress and competancy, power and skills are what they like to have.
• Women pride themselves on being understanding, perfectionists and compassionate. 
• From this, men will need to do things alone, problems are best solved alone and asking for help is mostly uneccessary and even a sign of weakness. 
• To solve physical problems, they will do it themselves or ask someone with the intention of getting advice. Emotional problems, they will retreat to 'their cave' in which they can sit and think peacefully. 
• Women will often communicate their feelings and their one aim is to understand anothers problems to successfully empathise.
  They do not like silence and feel that offering help is a sign of love. Any problems will be talked over until both understand one another, offering advice is not usually helpful.

This is where problems arise. As you can see, men don't want help that isn't asked for - they feel like the woman is accusing them of being incapable of doing it themselves. And when women share their feelings, they don't want solutions like a man, they want listening and understanding. Women won't like men going to their caves, they will bug them and ask to understand and talk - making men angry. This is when women get burned by the 'dragon' guarding the 'cave'. (The writer likes to make a whole separate world for Martians and Venusians, it's pretty effective.)

You all following? It's pretty simple that bit, that's mostly the jist of it. Oh there's one bit called Men are like Rubber Bands. Here's that summarised.

• A male intimacy cycle consists of pulling away and springing back periodically. 
• When a woman pulls back because she is hurt or feels unheard whereas a man pulls away to feel independent, he needs to pull away to realise he needs to go back. If you chase him, he'll never stretch the full distance and will keep pulling back. 
• When he returns, he will feel no need to get reaquainted, which can be puzzling and intruding for the partially neglected woman so he will need to slow down the process of coming back to save her.

Got that? Rubber band man. Pretty easy, I think that's pretty accurate. Apparently it will happen most often when a woman smothers a man with attention and too much love. When she overshares and talks and talks, he wants his space. It's that whole "We need a break" feeling to a lesser degree. I see it in men. Right, here's the female version. Women are like waves. How poetic.  Oh and we have a 'well' instead of a 'cave'.

• This is a woman's intimacy cycle and also is linked to her self esteem.
• A woman will feel a gradual soft wave of ups and downs of self esteem, however sometimes she will reach a peak which then naturally crashes and leads to a dip. 
• When a woman has a high wave, then she has lots of love to give and when she is low, she needs to be cared for and filled up with love instead.
• That crashing feeling is like descending into a well of subconscious thoughts. Filled with vague and unexplainable bad feelings, you feel hopeless and unsupported. 
• When she reaches the bottom of that well, she will automatically come back up again but needs to be heard and vent and talk first. 
• A man will mistakenly think it's his fault or is uneccessary. This makes things worse as he explains why she shouldn't feel bad - He's not listening or understanding, he's just giving bad solutions. 

You see? We're not mad, we're waves!  We have to hit rock bottom to come back up. So even if a man listens right and she seems more upset, it's working, we're hitting the bottom faster so we can come up sooner. Seeeee? There's one last thing which is point scoring, this is a biggy. I agree with the womans side and can see the men's side, Joe can only agree with the man's side >.> Arse. Anyways, point scoring summed up!

• Men assume that big things will get big points and little things will get little points, so he will focus on doing one or two large things like earning a lot of money and buying a holiday. 
• Women count points by one for each thing. Size does not matter, every little thing and big thing gets one point. So she will do lots of things, often smaller, and want to get recognition.
• Also, women will always subtract his points from her to see it different. If she thinks she has 30 and him 10, she will conclude it's 20 to 0. But he's not 0, he's given 10!
• And, men will give penalty points. If the woman does something bad or doesn't appreciate him, he make take points back.

You can see where the arguments arise. "You do nothing for me and I've been doing all of these things for your!" "Nothing? I've been a work all day to pay for this house and our holidays! Even then all you do is nag." Apparently you just have to understand one another to be able to fix it. I agree with that.

See? That made sense. Right, bored now bye!