My Boys: Relating To Men

Moxie In The City has a post today that I feel the need to speak a few words on.

"I am always wary of women who say they don't have a lot of female friends or that they don't "relate well" to other women."

"Maybe their feminine nature or love of getting mani/pedis makes you wonder of there's something wrong with you that you aren't in to those things? I'm not saying there is something wrong with you. I'm suggesting that maybe you're the one with an idea of how a woman "should" be and that that is what's keeping you for effectively connecting with other females."



In many ways, she's right. Women who don't get along well with other females (I'm not talking about frenemies, but actually relating) often have insecurity problems with women.

Talk to any man who doesn't understand women. He's got insecurities with women. Stick him in a group of women talking about hairstyles and nail color, just see what happens.

However, there are plenty of men who do get women.. or at least can relate well to them. Given, most of these men are very effeminate and gay, but still men.

So it goes to reason that women who relate to men better than women, might also be a little masculine.

Which is where Moxie heads next:
"The main challenge you're facing, I think, is that these men you're friends with don't find you particularly feminine."

And she implies that her constant exposure to solely men has caused her to be a little more masculine in her relationship skills.

In many ways she's probably right. In some ways, she's probably not. It has to do partly with how you're wired on the inside, and partly due to external causes.

Sure sure, hanging out with more women would probably help her get a better grasp on makeup, clothes, flirting, and other feminine wiles.

But it may not in reality change anything about this girl. Its possible that the superficial changes might help the girl to be more physically attractive to the opposite sex.. but I'm not seeing in the girl's letter that physical attraction is the problem.

My guess is that she has some mild case of aspergers or ADD which affects women in different ways then men. This "faulty" wiring causes her to find women exhausting, catty, and superfluous. Since men have a simpler social structure, pecking order, and ways of fighting, she finds being social with them much more productive and relaxing.

Since there aren't a whole lot of these kinds of women, most men aren't accustomed to it. Instead like most people, jump to conclusions that she cannot be trusted to be faithful and that she is in fact sleeping with one of these men. Or.. that there is something fundamentally wrong with her.. Which might be true.

I agree though with Moxie that this girl does need to seek out women who share her interests. Having a few girlfriends really does help.. If not just so you can commiserate about how guys suck. :)

In the meantime though, she needs to start differentiating how she reacts and relates to the different men in her life. My guess is that she's treating her dates much like she treats her guy friends. He is not her friend and she doesn't want him to be.. seriously.. she doesn't want him to be the kind of friend like her guy friends. Once he's that kind of friend, sex is off the table. There needs to be a difference between what she shares with him and what she shares with her guy friends.

Actually, all this makes me think of that TV sitcom, My Boys. Now if only I was smoking hot, played poker, and liked sports.

Actual Live People

Last night I went out to a Happy Hour party hosted by the Partymeister (he'd actually be pissed I think if he knew I called him that). It was held at his favorite bar, which... to be perfectly honest.. isn't a good bar for mingling. The mingling space they have contains tables that are bolted to the floor and too close together for people to actually mingle around them. So it was kinda annoying.

After the first half-hour of attempting to mingle, I ordered & ate some cheap food, paid my bill and planned to leave.

Just as I was about to say "Goodbye"... In walks Carl.

I'd met Carl several times, and none of those times did we talk much.. but I knew he was funny and talkative.. so I went over to say Hi.

Carl asked how I was doing and how the group was (you know wanting an FYI on everything he'd missed so far).. So I told him it was boring, all the interesting people had left, and so I'd planned to leave...

Without skipping a beat he interrupted, "But now I'M HERE!!" and his face broke out with a huge smile.

I couldn't help but laugh. Shortly after that, Chris came and joined our conversation. We were all friends of Partymeister, and had met several times. Most of the rest of the group were new to us, which is good but sometimes you just want the comfort of people you know.

With Chris and Carl, it became an hour of laughing. Carl loves to make up silly things as if they really happened. Chris was more than willing to join in. At one point, they were explaining to me their Mexican mafia business (Carl is Mexican, Chris is as pasty white as they come) and how many people they could fit into shipping containers and that Chris was waiting for an email confirmation that the container had arrived. (Chris was actually waiting for an email, but from a girl he was non-date-date going to watch the meteor shower with)

About an hour or so later, Chris got his email (came to tell us by saying "The container's arrived, I've got to go") and ran out the door to prep for it. He was making a picnic lunch, packing a bottle of wine, an airmattress, and a sleeping bag. It sounded way too romantic to be a non-date-date, but hey.. ya know..

So that left me and Carl. After tonight, I'm starting to love Carl, at least as a party buddy maybe more. He's just as sick-twisted-demented as me, and we have the same humor. So yeah we had a blast.

Unfortunately he's also at least 3 inches shorter than me, and very skinny. I could twirl him over my head like a baton, but his personality and our connection tonight.. well I'm almost thinking of him as a man and not a baton... which is progress for me right?

At the happy hour though there were two men that were really hot. One was on a date. The other was .. well.. an extreme sports person. Both were 6'-6'2, well built, ruggedly handsome face... *sigh* Now if you could just put Carl's personality into that kind of package..

Yeah.. he'd already be married or be gay. Yeah I know.

But it was a fun night, and despite my exhaustion on returning home, it was good to get out and meet actually live people. I really should do it more often.

A Good Night

I really had a great night last night. Surprisingly, Evie was there as well and she was awesome. Boggle. I think it helped that we were a few people away from each other at the table, so I had my people to talk to and she had hers. It lessened the need for competition.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last night was $2 beers and $2 shots of vodka Happy Hour at a local restaurant. I wasn't going to go, but when I found out it was $2 vodka of a brand that I actually like, I decided I had to go. I figured if it was a total bust, at least I could get drunk for cheap.

I get there early, but people are already getting started. I sat down near one end of the long table. At the time I sat down there was an equal peppering of males vs females along the table. Within the next 10 minutes as people arrived, my end of the table was completely guys (+me) and the other end of the table was mostly women (+ a guy). If I could have planned it out myself, it could not have been better.

Now before you start to jump to conclusions, I was really not interested in any of these guys except maybe one, and I'm not even sure about that. But as I've stated in previous posts, I love the friendship of men. I even love the conversations of men.

Conversing with men is always educational, unless they're morons which these men were not. Every one of these men were relatively successful business men of various fields of business. To be completely honest, they were all quite a catch. I learned about golfing, golf fees, where to golf, why to golf, how to enjoy golf, and how to make loads of cash golfing. I also learned that nearly every heterosexual male loves the UFC, and that NASCAR might actually be palatable if seen in person while drinking loads of beer (for me it would be comparable to going to a sporting event that I could care less about, as long as I'm plied with alcohol I can join in the fun unabated).

While the conversation never really got into anything severely interesting, I found myself entertained quite well by finding out tidbits about them.

Mr. India's third language is English. He loves golf, and buying girls drinks. He bought be a double shot of vodka after I'd already had 3. I'm pretty certain he was trying to get me drunk. When I first met him a couple weeks ago, I thought he was kinda creepy and I wasn't sure what to make of him. That could have been partly due to the fact that he has a habit of looking at me like I'm a steak.

Mr. India turned out to be quite fun though, and I've decided that if I ever take up golf, I'll be golfing his way. Mr. India's golfing style is merely this. Get a bunch of friends together on an empty course, have lots of drinks, and play golfing drinking games. He does this once a year with some friends and when the games were described he mentioned "Yeah we don't usually remember finishing all the holes, and sometimes we don't". He however does like to bet money on his golf game, which I'd have to win the lottery or get really good at golf before I tried that.

Next to him was Kevin, a friend who I'm starting to really love inviting to things as he always brings a friend who is sexier than he is. This time he brought his friend Charles who sat next to me. Charles was the only one at the table that I even thought about dating. He was charming and geeky and knowledgeable. I learned a lot of secrets about Twitter last night which I won't be sharing here. I swear I don't know why, but talking tech geek really fuels my fire.

On the other side of me was Derk. Derk was the first guy Evie stole from me (mentioned in my Women Who Hate Women post). We talked and joked and got long well as usual. People were handing out cards, and crossing out numbers they didn't use any more or didn't want people to use, so I got out my faux cards. Since I don't have a job and haven't for years, I got tired of not having an easy way of giving out my contact information. So I made up some cards that would be safe to hand out to pretty much anyone. It has my first name only, my phone number, my email, and my Myspace (which only has my first name anyway).

When I showed Derk the card, and explained that I just had some personal cards made with only the contact info I wanted people to have, he ooo'd over it and specifically asked if he could have one. WTF?? I'm not sure I want to know why he wants my contact info, but I gave him one. Pretty sure if he calls, all I'm going to ask him about is his ex (Evie says he's not over her yet), his dogs, and Evie. He's a little late on the "asking for my number" bit.

Mr. India also asked for a card, but sadly Charles did not. Charles did say he'd see me on Friday night, the next outing of the group, so maybe we'll see.

(PS.. I think I'll try to forgive Evie, she spent most of the night talking me up to Mr. India who sat beside her.)