Think Like a Man

Women think: If someone looks like they need help, you should jump in and help them.
Men think: If someone needs help they will ask for it.

Women think: If he really loves me he will know what I need without me having to ask.
Men think: If she wants my help she will ask for it.

In my classroom I always try to pair up boys and girls together for group work. They communicate better and get more done than same sex teams. I don't know why. It is just something I noticed. As friends, co-workers and classmates, men and women work well together. But when they move in together, get married, etc, something strange happens. Women start expecting their men to act like women. They think: this person is my partner and most intimate friend. I expect him to act like all the close friends I have had in my life (which were women). Although he may be the love of your life, he will never think like a woman.

Women tend to relate to each other by sharing joys and triumphs, likes and dislikes, failures and sorrow. Over the course of the relationship a woman will look for opportunities to offer her help to the other woman. This is the ultimate show of affection for a woman. When her best friend offers to take her out to lunch, sit and talk for an hour, or watch her kids for her, it is her way of saying how well she understands what her friend needs at that moment. Women come to expect this of their friends, so much so that they never have to ask for help.

Let me say that again. Women get used to NEVER having to ask for help from the people they love.

I won't pretend to know how men relate to each other. It seems very complicated, with many unwritten rules and mores. Kind of like cricket. But I understand how a man shows his respect and admiration for his friends. He does this by never offering to help. He believes his friend to be capable of handling the situation on his own. If the situation is drastic his friend may ask for help and he will gladly give it.

Of course, you see where I'm going with this, but let me lay it out for you anyway. The woman, valuing her husband as her beloved best friend, either offers to help him or waits for help to be offered. In the first instance, she is disrespecting her husband by suggesting he cannot handle the situation. He is too dumb, lazy, incompetent, or in some other way incapable of handling the situation so she needs to jump in and save him.

In the second instance, she is stupidly waiting for help that will never be offered. The only way for the woman to get the help she wants is to ask for it directly. She should think like a man! Or at least remember that her husband loves and respects her enough to NOT offer his help. Yep. Strange though it may seem, those are the rules on his planet.