Let’s start out with reminding you I am a male.  I think like a male and that is my excuse for what follows.  But stay with me because I will hopefully make my point and erase what ever fears have crept into your mind about where this might be going.

Women and men just don’t think alike.  Women are rational.  There is never just one consequence of an action but rather an entire landslide of events eventually culminating in the inevitable conclusion.  Meanwhile, men see things more clearly.  At least that is the idea that we delude ourselves with and use to justify our snap decisions.  We think inside the box while women think outside of the box.  Either that or they are thinking in a much larger box with several floors and a multitude of rooms.

This leads me to the discussion I recently had with my overly rational wife that spurred this blog.  I felt that if I could write this down, I might actually be able to offer some advice to any male or female that would read this and maybe apply it to their collective partnerships.  It seems that when ever I come upon some tidbit of information, which I in turn wish to share with my wife, I come up short on details every time.  As an example, and I am betting every testosterone driven male can identify with, a friend’s wife has their baby.  Be honest here, have you ever been able to provide even half the information necessary to answer the barrage of questions your partner is about to ask.  I generally provide the following information, ‘They had their baby yesterday”.  What did I miss, apparently everything that mattered.  What time, really?, what was the weight, guessing about a bowling bowl here, what was the length, seriously, under three feet best guess.  Of course I skipped sex and name because here I must admit, I should have been on at least that much of my game.

On this particular occasion, a friend had been in the hospital for a surgery that had been called off midway through.  As my wife was waiting for news of how the recovery was going, I received a text from a second friend.  He stated simply that our friend had indicated he would now actually be eating food at the wedding.  Any guy thinking in the box would take this to mean his humor was intact and he was up for eating.  Enough said.  When I relayed this text as a quote to my wife, the inquisition began.  When did he say that?  Hmm, text says 2:45.  What had our friend asked that elicited this response?  What does this cryptic message really mean?  What else did he say?  A this point I have two choices.  One, start to make up stuff and hope she can’t fact check me, or two, confess to my complete and total ignorance.  I chose option two, sort of.

I explained to my wife, and here in lies the nugget of genius, men receive information in short bursts.  It is all we can handle on either end, and more importantly, when you ask us for the information, we don’t hold anything back.  If we tell you they had the baby, that’s it, they had the baby.  Please don’t believe that you can pry any additional information out of us.  Simple, concise, reasonably accurate and woefully short on detail.  If we were asked to recap a fight it would go something like he said something stupid and then the guy smacked him.  They don’t say “That’s it folks. The fights over” for nothing.  That’s just the sum total of what that poor guy is got to offer.  Fights over, moving on.

So now you have it.  Women, lower your expectations in this area.  What we got is all we got.  You are just going to get frustrated if you expect more.  Men, I guess we can always keep trying.  In the last baby birth debacle, I got almost everything but the sex.  My response to the question “sex?”, “there must have been, roughly nine months ago I’m guessing”.

Thanks for reading…but that’s it.