Men Are NOT Idiots

Sorry for all those people reading this who love the movie Frozen.  Truth is I also enjoy it! The songs are catchy, I have a sister and I love the idea of the female heroin.  All great concepts that are often overlooked in movies.  However, once the cute nostalgic vibe wears off and you actually look at the movie, it has a clear message, women should carry men.   This message is further integrated into pop culture through shows such as Married with Children, The Simpsons, King of Queens, and Family Guy.  The following are three representations in pop culture that harm gender equality in our relations.

1) Men are poor but women can support
them.  Yikes! And, we wonder why our daughters date Billy Welfare who smokes pot all day and plays video games.  TV has invoked a sense of men working odd jobs and being terrible with money, and I mean horrific, as in if they have the family savings they gamble it all or buy bowling shoes.  Frozen for example, the woman is a princess and the man is an....ice salesman??? Really??? Total equality there.  But, as usual it doesn't matter in Lalaland as they have love....ya right??? Wake up people.  Women and men need to be financial equals.

2) Men are apparently stupid.   Why do all shows display men dependant on the smarts of women?? This sets the bar incredibly low for boys and men.  If I were a man I would be pissed.  I would wonder why my gender is constantly portrayed as morons and that women are always so clever.  Reality Check: men and women are both intellectual, in fact some women are incredibly stupid, as are some men.  Trust me date someone who is your intellectual equal.  Without shared intellect you will always be lacking some thing, not to mention your friends and parents will shudder at the thought of conversing with your mate.

3) RESPECT.  Hmm, why is it in pop culture men never listen to their wives?? They always tell them they are nagging and do what they want.  BAD IDEA ALERT! If you ignore your woman and do the opposite of what she asks you will soon not have a woman (if she respects herself) or! You will treat your woman like garbage because you can (and she doesn't respect herself).  Real men are equals to their wives, they listen, they make decisions together and they certainly don't think it is cool to be disrespectful.
Oh mass media you fail both genders when you negatively portray men.  Men are awesome.  They are equals.  They are not ignorant pigs who can only hold the poverty line with zero respect for women.  They are much, much, MUCH more.  As a woman it irritates me to see such crap roles for men and the acceptance of woman of these crap roles.  By accepting these roles we see more and more young women being treated poorly and more young men thinking this behavior is so cool.  You know what is cool? Equality.  Thanks for reading!

Date Your Mom

"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness."

Please take this title figuratively, not literally, unless your nights are filled with banjo strumming over moonshine in the bayou than you should know this already.  This blog is not about the benefits for a man dating a woman like his mother, no, no, this blog is the about the benefits for women to date a man with a mother who has similar personalily traits.  The following are 3 reasons:

 "As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart. I cannot now imagine a life without her."

1) R-E-S-P-E-C-T.  What I have come to realize in my 32 years of life is everyone has different standards of respectful behavior, ways in which we speak and treat one another may be completely fine for one mother and atrocious to the next.  Date a man whose mother instilled your sense of respect.  Trust me it will cut way down on arguments.  The truth is I dated a man whose mother laughed at her children's rude attitude towards her, in exchange he laughed off important conversations and spoke rudely to me.  Mother's are the women who frame how men will respect women.  Save yourself a lot of grief and find a mother-in-law who raised a respectful son, well at least on your standards.

"The mother-in-law is the centre of a family."

Les Dawson

 

2) Quirky.   All my life I have been told I am strange.  Let me please tell you: date a man who grew up with an eccentric mother.   The American did not seem so taken back by me wanting to take photos of my dog and putting outfits on him.  Then we Skyped with his mom and her cat, Sooki.  A man who has grown up with a wonderful and weird mother will appreciate you, regardless of your oddities.  I am NOT saying he won't think you are an odd duck.  Not at all.  However! If he has grown up with quirky women than he will not be accustom to pointing out your strange behaviors.  You will be a lot happier with a man whose grown up with a mother unique like you!

"The only thing more intimidating than a huge international film star is your mother-in-law."

Benjamin Walker

3) Flaws.  I would never write about the flaws of the mother of the man I love because I love her and I respect her.  However, I hypothesize if you date a man whose mother has similar flaws to you than he will be more willing to love you flaws and all.  No one is perfect, if you find yourself relating to a flaw your man voices about his mother appreciate this.  It means he has loved a woman longer through a flaw you identify in yourself.

Truth be told any man should take it as a compliment if I were to tell them they were like my father.   He is a wonderful man who treats people right.  Life in a relationship has enough new terrain, finding a woman or a man who shares personality traits with your parents will solve you a lot of grief.

Separate Beds: What does it mean?

"I love sleep.  My life has a tendency of falling apart when I am awake."

-Ernest Hemmingway

I first need to apologize for my own bias.  When I was first asked to blog about this topic by a dear girlfriend of mine (who will remain anonymous) I thought the worst.   To me personally I want to wake up everyday to the man I love and fall asleep the same way.  But, this does not mean my opinion is for everyone.  The following are three scenarios where separate beds may save your union.

 “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

1) He (or perhaps she) snores or has sleepapnia. Here is the truth sleepapnia is frightening!!! I saw it for the first time three years ago and it is loud and disconcerning. If you or your partner has a sleep disorder that causes your mate to not sleep a wink than separate beds is the caring move to make! I never thought snoring would be a reason but! My family snores and recently I realized how disruptive earth shattering loud snores can be.  Sleep deprivation is not fun, if your relationship suffers from one of you not sleeping, separate beds might be for you.

 “Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2) You work ridiculous hours.  The truth is if you work 12 hour night shifts and your partner works different hours separate beds may be best! No one wants to get up at 4am, let's be honest.  In particular if your mate has woken you up several times in the night.  Sleep is crucial to work accountability and productivity.  Without sleep you may as well not go to work.  Sleep deprivation has often been compared to being intoxicated. If this sounds like you than separate beds may be just right for your relationship.

 “Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

3) You have settled but you are not in love.  Sorry folks but my answers are not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, I am a realist.  People settle.  They settle every second of everyday because they are tired of searching for the right one, they have been together for years, there are a million reasons, so at the end of the day you are happier sleeping alone and waking up not face to face with a partner who you are not crazy about. If you have settled and are not happy separate beds are for you.

 “Even a soul submerged in sleep
is hard at work and helps
make something of the world.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

The truth is whether you share a bed or not does not define your relationship. I prefer to grow old sleeping in the same bed, like my parents did, and still do as my mom has a small bed pushed up against my dad's hospital bed.  That to me is love.  But,we all have our own constructs of love and you must do what makes you happy.  Sleep is essential to mental and physical health so as long as you find a way to balance sleep and your relationship you are on the right path.  Thanks for reading. XO

Can men multi-task?

“Fucking two things up at the same time isn`t multitasking” 
― Dick Masterson, Men Are Better Than Women

The simple answer to the title of this blog is NO.  Recently as The American was washing dishes I asked him to do a small house chore, to which he gave me a little attitude.  Which of course led to a conversation about how he did not want to be doing more than one task at once.  It hit me.  I heard him loud and clear, he does not like multitasking.   Later I breached the topic of men and multitasking to several women and there was a unanimous vote, men don't enjoy multitasking. The following are three points on this topic.

“Juggling is an illusion. ... In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession. ... It is actually task switching.” 
― Gary Keller, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

1.  The box theory.  I recently read an article on how the man's brain is a compilation of small boxes.  Each box contains one action.  I mentioned multitasking later to The American and he went on to explain that men do multitask by doing one task and accomplishing it and then starting a new task....ummm....this explanation sort of sounds like the opposite of multitasking....BUT! Regardless of the path of this week's topic the box theory is interesting and does make sense.  There seemed to be a general observation of all women I spoke to that all men had the same frustrated reaction when posed with a the stress of multitasking.

“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.” 
― Oscar Wilde

2.  The compartmentalization theory led me to believe that men thrive on accomplishing tasks.  While I myself flourish with a multitude of semi finished tasks to keep me busy, men appear to enjoy successfully finishing one task and taking a break.  This use to drive me crazy.  Why only do one task??? AND take a break??? To me this comes across as such a slow way to finish multiple tasks.  But, then it hit me again, MEN ARE SINGLE TASKING, one cannot evaluate the success of single tasking on the merits of multitasking.  Men merit themselves on the singular success of each task.  Every finished task is an accomplishment.

“Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.” 
― Albert Einstein

3. Men don't like to multitask.  This point also came from The American.  His view and the articles I read view women's multitasking as complete sh#t storm chaos.  They view our skewed multitasking brains as pure, bouncing, misdirected, confused poppycock.  Thus while us multitaskers view single taskers as painfully slow, single taskers view us multitaskers as an enigma.  Men do not enjoy multitasking and they therefore should enjoy the path in life that each single task takes them on.

Men and women are so different aren't they??? I know! And, for the first time in a long time I respect our differences.  Instead of thinking I am always right and wanting to change someone, I have found learning about what makes a man tick is far more interesting than changing him.  Thanks for reading!!

Please read these interesting short articles on the multitasking differences of the sexes:
1) http://www.tickld.com/x/why-men-and-women-think-differently
2) http://jane-frankland.com/the-real-truth-about-women-and-multi-tasking/
3) http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/men-and-women-really-do-think-differently/1913014.html
4) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-mens-brains-are-wired-differently-than-women/