What you don't get about the other gender

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’m really not understanding the difficulty with the sports issue. I don’t dance. You don’t throw balls. I don’t watch “Dancing with the Stars”, you don’t watch sports. What’s so hard? We like to watch people do what we wish we could do. I like to review classic chess games. Why? Because I see things in the boards, the moves, the intricacies of the positions that you don’t see. A beautiful dance emerges as these two minds struggle against each other in the “checkered jungle”. At the end, I’m astonished at the amazing talents of the players.

My girlfriend can listen to musicals on YouTube all day long. Why? Because she hears things that I can’t, and therefore can’t describe to you. I only hear notes and voices, and am left rather unimpressed.

“Hey honey, check out this [game/shirt/car/conversation]”
“Uh, yeah. That’s…nice.”
“WHAT?! You don’t understand why this is so [cool/terrible/awesome/inspiring]?!”
“Meh. It’s just a [touchdown/color/model/song] like any other one.”
“But it’s so different! You obviously can’t appreciate this like I can.”

I challenge the dopers to show me an instance where this exchange doesn’t explain it.

42

Not to mention by doing that treat men exactly the same way…

43

I am female but I never quite got the woman going to the bathroom in groups. Go out with a bunch of people, one woman will get up and ask the other women to go to the washroom with her… WHY???

44

I have two kinds of jewelry: dressy and fantasy.

The dressy kind is just a fashion accessory. I have a red glass necklace that looks good to wear to the office with my red sweaters. I have pearl earrings that make me look more grown up and finish my business casual look. Such jewelry is cheap, (no piece costs more then 20 bucks) and I have quite a lot of them. I’m not particularly attached to any of those. If I don’t wear them anymore, I throw them out.

And then there’s the fantasy jewellery. Jewellery that makes me believe I’m special, jewellery helping me to play out a fantasy. A kid dresses up: but alas, an adult cannot go hopping around wearing fantasy garb. (We don’t have ren-faires in the Netherlands, and I truly envy you guys for them).
As a kid, such fantasy jewellery would be my rhinestone tiara with the pink feathers. As a teenager, it would be the elvish, witch-like, and keltish upperarm bracelets, silver rings and the wraths bought on pop-concerts and suchlike.
When I was 18, it was the rhinestone brooch found in an old velvet vintage dress that made me feel like a 40’s moviestar. Or the little silver rings bought for me by first boyfriends as a gift. The real (okay, cultured) pearl necklace I bought when I was 30 that made me feel all grown up and which made me look (or so I hoped) like a professional woman. And, last year, the gold engagement ring with a real sliver of a diamond that made me feel someone found me worthy of such luxuries.
Such jewellery may be flaunted at first, when the wearer still feels secure in her fairytale. Later, that particular fantasy loses its allure, or she feels a bit ridiculous in that role. So she will stop wearing the jewellery. But she might keep the jewellery in a box, careful, so the last bits of the fantasy won’t break and thier sweet memory will linger on a bit longer.

45

“What are you thinking about?”

46

:slight_smile:

Except for the fact that you’re married and live like a thousand miles away, back atcha!

I get talking on the phone. It’s a way to connect and share your lives without having to, you know, put on clean underwear and pants.

What I don’t get is toilet lid covers. Why would you want to decorate the piss pot? And inevitable, a guy will come along and try to pee, and not realize that the thickness of the fuzzy material keeps the lid from opening fully, so it slams shut at the worst possible time. This results in a ridiculous looking decoration getting soaked with piss. And who’s the bad guy?

47

Sounds like my house, Athena. Where does one find the “strong, silent types” I’m always hearing about?

48

You.

Sorry, automatic reaction.

49

If I say something am I out of the running?

50

I HATE this. I had so many problems with my group of girlfriends back in high school because they would take it personally when I went to the bathroom by myself. Our school bathrooms were gross - all I ever wanted to do was to relieve myself and get the hell out of there. Certainly not my idea of an ideal social setting.

51

I am really bad at being a woman - 99% of the “things women do” in this thread, I don’t do or understand either :frowning:

One thing about dudes that I don’t understand is how most of the guys I know are really good at quoting movies and TV shows. I’m not talking about the movies they have seen several times, or their favorite flicks. I mean like, they can see something like Boat Trip once and three years later recall an entire scene’s worth of dialogue. I’ve seen a lot of movies and TV shows and I just don’t have that sort of recall.

52

Ignores teela, continues doing pushups

53

here!

54

Aw…what about me?

:smiley:

55

Here’s my list.

  1. Julia Roberts - Women love her and think she’s gorgeous. I don’t get it. Her mouth is kind of screwed up, she looks like a female version of her brother Eric, and she’s too thin.

  2. Fake breasts - They don’t look natural, no matter how well they’re done. They don’t feel natural. They’re obvious. I don’t personally know any man who’d want his SO to get them. I also don’t know any man who’d want to have a relationship with a woman who has them. In many men’s minds fake breasts=easy, so I don’t understand why, other than lack of self esteem, so many women these days decide to mutilate themselves in this way.

  3. Fake facial moles, or worse, accentuating real facial moles with makeup - WTF do women find so sexy about moles? I’ve actually heard women comment positively about another woman’s mole and how sexy it makes her. I don’t get it. Why would something that looks like a little, brown, nondescript bug on someone’s face be in any way sexy?

  4. Short hair - Men prefer long hair on women. Period. The more, the better. Yeah, yeah, I know there’ll be a few girly men who’ll argue this point, but deep down you know you’d prefer your SO to have longer, more luxurious tresses. You can lie to me but you can’t lie to yourselves :). Why do women insist on giving men heart attacks by surprising us with drastic cuts that’ll take months, MONTHS I tell you, to grow back? I don’t get it.

  5. The never-ending argument - Why do women (and I’ve gotten corroboration from other men as well, so it’s not just me) always bring up the past when having a disagreement in the present about an entirely different topic?? Just how many times will I have to pay for walking on the inside of the sidewalk, causing you to be splashed when that car drove by? I’ve apologized for it 50 bloody times at this point. And what can that possibly have to do with my forgetting the apples when I went to the supermarket last night?

56

Wash cold, hang to dry. Fold the cups to overlap, turn one inside out to match the curve of the other. Back straps then fold into the cup, shoulder straps go into the cup.

Stack on the bed and leave it to her to put away. You’ll never get it right.

57

The corollary: The obligation for the husband to like the drastic change.

My soon-to-be-ex knows I like women with long brunette, auburn, or red hair. Curls or waves are a plus. What does she do? She cuts it short, straightens it, and dyes it blonde.

Somehow, I’m the one in trouble when I don’t like it…

58

You and only you, darling.

Wow, I have the jerkiest knee in the world.

59

Corollary II: The haircut where she gets the exact same style, only .000001 inches shorter, and you’re the bad guy for not noticing.

60

I’m a guy, but one thing I don’t get about a lot of guys is the constant need for competition. “Taking the piss” is one thing–jokingly asserting your superiority to your friends, and settling disputes by playing Bloody Knuckles or dueling in Guitar Hero–but some men are obsessed with being better than other men at everything. Just the other day I ran into a (female) friend of mine who loves Ren Faires, and I had a couple of free Ren Faire tickets from work so I offered them to her. Another guy who sort-of knew her, and who I’d never met, jumped in and badgered me the whole time: “Which Ren Faire is it? Where is it? Oh, that one? I could get free tickets if I wanted to–I know the people who own that one. But <other Ren Faire> is better.” Congratufuckinglations, want a cookie? I’m giving away those tickets becuase I don’t give a shit about it and I thought I could brighten a friend’s day with them. If I cared about Ren Faires I would be going. The saddest part is, looking back on it now I think he was trying to impress her.

As a male who was once sports-obsessed and now has a more casual relationship with the wide world of sports, I’d guess it’s all about living vicariously. Which is also a primarily male pastime, it seems.

Oh yeah, because that’s not happening the other way around in this very same thread.

I can’t watch the playoffs, but tdn can throw the possessive case around like a redheaded stepchild? If that’s how the dating game works, I’ll stick to masturbation, thanks! :wink:

If you think that’s weird, I had a girl go into the (men’s, public) bathroom with me to do her business while I was doing mine. On the first date. Before the movie. I figured she must be either extremely confident or psychotic.

Later found out it was both.

]

Same for Sarah Michelle Gellar.

This was one of the reasons I dumped one particular ex. She had some of the best mammaries I’d ever seen, and by far the best ass of anyone I’d ever dated, but she insisted she was going to have both surgically enhanced someday. She just would not believe me when I said that she didn’t need it and it would only mess with a beautiful thing. I can’t be with someone who thinks that way.

What the fuck ever. OK, since you’re apparently King Shit of Fuck Mountain, why don’t you tell me which car and sports team I should like and which major I should pick? Sorry, you don’t get to decide the universal beauty standard. Just like clothes, perfume, etc., different hairstyles work differently on different women. Some women look good to some men with short hair and to others with long hair.