What Men Say and How Women Interpret It
(but don’t take it personally guys)
©Jan Andersen 2001
Most women believe that the majority of men are either compulsive liars, or else afraid of voicing their true opinions for fear of the consequences. Thus, nothing a man says can be taken at face value and everything he says to a woman is open to (mis)interpretation.
Women have a sixth sense. Their natural intuition means that they already know the answer to a question before they ask it, so that if you deviate even slightly from what they know to be the truth, then you could be limping for yet another month. Let’s take the following scenario as an example.
You are travelling along in the car with your beloved woman by your side when, looming up in the distance, an attractive female with fabulous legs and an obscenely short skirt comes strutting along the sidewalk. In the few seconds that it takes for her to appear as a life-size Barbie Doll and then shrink back to a mere speck on the horizon once again, you have already gauged her vital statistics and mentally run your hands across her naked body, all without moving your head an inch. Apart from the saliva trickling down your chin, you manage to exercise restraint and diplomacy and avoid any obvious statements of ogling.
A split second later, however, a blood-curdling voice shrieks, “What d’you think you’re looking at?”
You reply, “The road, of course. I’m driving aren’t I?”
This, naturally, is the wrong answer. She, who must be obeyed, then proffers the correct answer of, “You were looking at that tarty girl weren’t you?”
“No. I was checking my wing mirrors.”
What you have to understand is that not only are women psychic, but they also have compound eyes, enabling them to have full 360-degree vision. They may apparently be staring ahead, but they will detect the sideward shift of your eyeballs caused by the magnetic pull of any marginally attractive female within the vicinity. They also know that the last time you correctly used your wing mirrors was during your driving test.
Statistics suggest that, on average, men tend to outshine women in mathematical subjects. This however, does not seem to apply when they are informing you as to how many pints of beer they are planning to consume / have consumed on a night out at the pub.
When my partner tells me that he is going to have a “couple of beers”, this translates as “three or four” (during the course of which he’ll crack uncomical jokes and laugh out loud at them – alone. If anyone else laughs, it’s either at him, or to humour him). If he informs me that he is intending to knock back “a few beers”, this decodes as “nine or ten”, (following which he’ll throw up and ask me whether the chicken I gave him for dinner was properly cooked).
Men also seem to have trouble with their numbers when it comes to talking about how many previous sexual partners they’ve had. When asked this question by their male buddies, a man inevitably adds an extra nought. The sad thing is that his mates believe him, culminating in his instant elevation to Stud status. When a woman asks a man how many women he’s slept with, however, she is fully aware that he will knock a nought off of the real number, because he knows that if he tells her the truth, she’ll never allow him to invade her personal space unless he’s wearing a contamination suit.
There are many well-used phrases and terminology that a man uses to portray his alleged caring, sharing side in a hollow attempt to demonstrate that he is not one of those ill-mannered, primates who has only one thing on his mind. Unfortunately, we women sussed out the real meaning behind your thoughtful little terms of endearment long ago. Let me quote a few more examples.
When my partner says to me, “Come and sit down honey. You need a rest”, this is interpreted as, “When you keep tapping away on that computer keyboard, I can’t hear the football commentator on the TV.” When he says, “What are you doing sweetheart?” he means, “Why aren’t you giving me your undivided attention?” And, his very favourite of all, which is, “Would you like a nice long massage baby?” can only ever mean one thing.
I was just pondering how to wittily conclude this month’s column, when my beloved poked his head around the door with our baby daughter and said, “She’s just done a big poo.” Roughly translated, this means, “You need to go and change your daughter’s nappy because I have just invented a far more pressing task to do……”
