It's frustrating to no end in this game of love and war. And that's what it feels like… a war to gain love for those you want it from. It's not exactly a 'fist to cuffs' war or a verbal diatribe, but it's a war of miscommunication, courage (or lack of) and rejection. But there is a simple explanation why it is all so…
Men and women think differently. Men compartmentalise everything into boxes - a box for work, a box for wife/lover (or one each for both!), a box for kids, a box for car, a box for finances, a box for home, a box for sport, a box for entertainment, and a box for nothing. You know when you are trying to communicate with a man and he's in dreamy day dream land… yet that's right - he's in his 'box of nothing!' Whereas, women are like the internet… wires connecting everything to anything. Women think that work is related to money, which is related to how much money you can spend on buying/renting a house/car, to what size house/car you need to house your family/kids/pets, to how much entertaining do we need space for in our home or do we want to live close to amenities/restaurants/cafes/beach to entertain ourselves, and the list is continuously in motion. You can kind of understand why men freak out when a woman says 'I thought we were saving the money to buy a bigger house,' when he goes and buys himself a new car without making a decision with her. For him, it's 'his' car, so why should she have a say?
This box theory makes sense to me in my relationships. Recently, I asked a friend who started flirting with me about his 'partner', and his response was 'she knows I will never leave her.' Hmmm… box for me, box for her. My lover constantly talked about his boxes and I asked him once if I was a shiny red box in front of the Christmas tree, or something nearer the trunk, tucked away so no one could see (hmm… I bet you can guess which one!). But when my box started to move to the front of the Christmas tree because our relationship became more emotionally involved, he started to freak out, because he couldn't tell which box was mine and which one was his wife's box as they were starting to become similar (i.e. he was telling me stuff before he told his wife, and then when his wife asked him why he hadn't told her, he thought that he already had!) He wasn't used to his boxes starting to look the same and didn't like that he was confusing them. My ex-husband was a real trooper for boxes, because he couldn't understand that his ability (or I should say 'non ability') to contribute to the welfare of his family would determine if he stayed with us or not. He was dumbfounded when I told him to leave because he thought every box was it's own individual issue and that he could tackle one and forget about the others, yet I saw them as being all interconnected.
Some men blend their boxes… for instant having an affair with someone at work, or an affair with one of their children's friend's mothers, or they need a luxury car to show off at work, but it is fairly rare for a man to be able to combine three or more boxes into a bigger box.
So if we can understand this about men, then we shouldn't have a problem with communicating with them. It's all about keeping it simple. Yet we women are not simple creatures. We analyse, worry and store things in our memory to bring them up ten years down the track after all the built up anger destroys our soul… We have more courage to create a change in thinking than men do. We will ask the hard questions, hoping to move things along rather than staying still. We want to see courage in our men, courage to make a stand and show us how much they desire us, love us and want us in their lives. Yet most are too scared. And the older we get, the more scared men get… as there are too many boxes to worry about - his kids, her kids, living together, not living together, not being burnt again, moving across town or to the other side of the world, wanting more kids, combined money, happy being a bachelor, etc etc… making any decision to make a move to find happiness with someone all too hard.
Arrghhh… so maybe the only thing to do is just enjoy life for what it is…. wait for Mr Brave to ask you a direct question, so you know exactly what he's thinking, exacting what he's wanting, and you can make a decision, because you know that he's found his box of happy in you.
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