Simple Creatures

Hi.  My name is Angela.  And I don’t understand men.

For those of you who don’t know about my past relationship history…Ok, sorry…Let me start over…For those of you who have chosen to listen to my past relationship history, here it is.  Again.  When I was 19, I started dating the guy who would become my first boyfriend.  When I was 20, I married that guy.  When I was 31, that guy and I got divorced.  So, for those of you who can complete a simple math equation, you can figure that 1/3 of my life and pretty much my entire adult life, I was engaged in a relationship with the same dude.  Uhhhhh….Well…Guess what happens when you find yourself divorced at 31 after having one solid relationship under your belt.

Uh….(That’s what happens.)

There I was.  With a child.  A job.  A couple of cats.  Living in the country.  And now I was single.  Ok.  Divorced.  I’ve been told it’s not really the same thing.  But it is kind of???  Ok.  Anyway.  There I was.  “Alone.”  I decided to go to the beach.  To go to bars.  To go to the city.  I had friends over for dinner.  I did stuff.  But after being with the same man for 11 years, I had no idea how men worked.  That’s the PERFECT time to start dating.  :-l ß No, it really isn’t.  But I dabbled a little.  And the outcome was always the same:  “Uhhhh????”

Sometimes they moved too fast.  Sometimes I expected too much.  Sometimes I didn’t understand a man’s intentions.  Mostly, I didn’t understand my own intentions.  After all, I h ad been married for my Entire.  Adult.  Life.  What’s the unit of measurement when you only have one experience to measure off of?  What do you do with that? 

Expectations. (That’s what you do with it.)

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  Sorry.  I can’t help but laugh when I think about expectations.  But anyway, as time passed, I started talking to men.  And I expected certain things from them.  For example, I expected them to ask me out.  And they did.  I expected them to understand what I meant.   HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!  Ok…Sorry.  I still am laughing at expectations.  I realize it was foolish for me to expect men to understand what women mean.  I mean, c’mon.  It’s pretty complicated.  When we say things like “I had a good time”, it actually means “I had a good time.” Or we might say something along of the lines of “I’ll call you tomorrow.”  Believe it or not, that means that we will call you tomorrow.  Or when we say something like “why don’t you come over for dinner?”  We actually mean, “Hey come over for dinner.  Maybe we can have sex and a good meal.  Even dessert?”   IT DOESN’T MEAN I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES, YOU ASS!!!!

So, expectations were real hard for me.  Even though they seemed logical, they never seemed to translate over gender lines.  And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the disconnect was.  You know, that empty space between what women say to men and what men hear women say.  I was tortured by it.  How can something this simple be so complicated?  My girlfriends tried to explain it to me.  “Angela,” they said, “it’s too easy.  Men are only interested in the chase.  It’s exciting.  When  you are honest with them…Or nice to them…Or too accepting of them, they lose interest.  You need to play the game.”  Uhhhh…..What?  The?  Fuck?

Simple Creatures.  (This is not a metaphor).

In case you didn’t capture my emotion…WHAT THE FUCK???  I don’t understand games.  So, I told my girlfriends:  “I don’t understand games.  And I’m not going to play them. “  I stood by my position on this for a VERY long time.  Then, by accident, I gave into the game.  And I got a very unexpected response.  And by unexpected response, I mean that I got a response.  From a man.  And I was baffled.  So, I took to the streets in search of the answer.  I asked all of my male gendered friends “What happened?  How is it that after all of these years of being honest about my expectations and acting reasonable, I got nothing?  But as soon as I act like a raging cunt and make myself unavailable, I suddenly am the hottest commodity on the market??”  And the answer I got was simple.  A little surprising.  But very simple.  My friend Pedro shared this insight with me:  “Women need to realize that what happens in a man’s head is nothing even close to resembling what happens in a woman’s head.  When you realize that, your entire gender will be better off.  Men are SIMPLE creatures.  Women are not.”  And all the men in the room, at the same time, nodded their heads in agreement.  Pedro continued:  “When we hear a woman say ‘yeah, call if you want’, we assume that it cool to keep playing Xbox and we’ll call when we actually want  When we hear a woman say ‘I hate you and I will kill your entire family’, we assume you mean business and will ACTUALLY kill our entire family.  We are SIMPLE.”  Huh. 

Huh.

So, now what?  I am not going to change my ways.  I am not going to become hateful and hostile and resentful to get a man.  Because I have enough game playing in my life.  Enough hurdles to jump over.  I have enough bullshit.  If getting a man’s attention only comes at my own anguish, then I’ll be cool with a vibrator and 8 rechargeable batteries.  It’s that simple.  And I don’t think that I should have to be the one to suffer because I am honest about my intentions.  AND I DON’T WANT TO HAVE ANYONE’S BABIES!!!!  So how’s that for inner peas?