20th May 2001

Following the "success" of my last post... success being gauged purely subjectively by the fact that someone has started an email debate with me about the nature of humanity :p... I decided to tackle this age old puzzle that has confounded most of humanity for almost all of history.

Women are a whole different kettle of fish from men. (I'd write "ball game" but... ah that would be in poor taste) I last wrote that Want changes a man... want from within. Well women are a little tougher to figure out, because... most women don't know what they want :)

I sense feminist heads jerking upright in anger the world over... Hark, the sound of hissing intakes of breath...

But, well so often it's true isn't it? Women have to agonise over decisions men take for granted as obvious, and straightforward. Things like What should I Wear today? :p and Does this outfit make me look Fat? - well and more pressing issues too of course... which escape my mind, since i'm clearly not a woman. To make things worse... women tend to get their brains addled by men. No, that's not a fair thing to say at all... women addle their own brains when they get their man... they persuade themselves to see what they really want, as what the guy really wants... they forsake their own wants; or if they happen to be stronger-minded individuals, then they preserve their own wants - to be indulged in surreptitiously in the absence of Guy, whilst tolerating the Guys wants too... this is called, of course, "compromise".

So what happens over time, is that the woman forgets what she really wants. She begins to forget who she is/was. And that's why in the aftermath of a breakup women tend to get hit harder than men... psychologically i mean. Sure, men go to the pub and drink their brains out, mope around for a bit before deciding sod it, let's go get ourselves a shag... all very therapeutic. Women, or at least the friends i've encountered, go through an incomprehensible - to me - phase of bewilderment, grief, loss, and this whole "emptiness " bereavement reaction thingummagig... because they don't remember who they used to be anymore. And they have to "find" themselves again (and find themselves something nice to eat and wear - AND change their hairstyles)... which frustrates well-intentioned male friends who've seen it twenty times over and still don't know what to say...

What can change the nature of a woman? Lots of things... the promise of security / wealth being a large part of them... but years down the line, when things finally begin to click up there... Woman X. begins to realise that it was all... a pretty lie she'd been telling herself all along. Self-delusion, to a T.

What can change the nature of a woman? God only knows :)

-- written by a Man -- :)