Women are from Venus, Men are from WackyTownVilleLand

Now, don't laugh, but I was in this discount bookstore yesterday and I found a trendy chick-lit-looking paperback copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus for dead cheap. I skimmed through the book back in 1995 or whatever when my dad bought it for my mom, but I didn't remember much beyond caves and rubber bands. Plus, I'd never even been on a date in 1995, so it wasn't like the information had any practical worth.

Only now I'm dating dear sweet WR, and sometimes I think we are both a bit baffled by what is going on in the other person's head. "Are you serious? That's what you think?" This isn't made easier by the fact that WR is a smart lawyer boy who finds logical arguments exhilarating, and I'm a opinionated headcase who would rather just have people do what I want without the conflict.

So I bought it. I figured it couldn't hurt and would at least be good for a laugh. But I also bought a Mother's Day card and fresh strawberries from the market and dessert from Marks & Spencer, so I'm still kind of cool, okay? Also, I'm pretty sure I look exactly like the girl on the cover. Only I don't have any hooker boots, sadly.

Anyway, last night I started reading and it was just crazy! The stuff I've read so far about women makes all kinds of good normal sense, but the stuff about guys was just insane. How can anyone actually think this way? It's completely irrational!

For instance, it talks about ways that men and women "score points" with each other. For women, both the big and the little sweet things that guys do usually score the same number of points (say 1), and they add up as guys do nice things. So a compliment and a flower and an "I love you" and a nice dinner theoretically add up to 4 points. Which I can see, even though I think some special things can carry a bit more weight. And if a guy doesn't do nice things (little or big) then they don't get any points and girls start to feel a bit sad.

But this book said that guys will actually TAKE AWAY points from women when they don't do the "right" thing at the right time. So, like, you could make a guy dinner and do all these nice things for him, but if he gets lost and you suggest that he ask for directions then you just BAM lose 30 points or something like that, because that's a not-supportive thing to do. And then the nice things you've been doing don't even matter anymore because they've been negated by the hugeness of the perceived non-support, and you're now 15 points in the hole without knowing it.

Wow.

Guys? Is there any truth to this?

Posted in: England