Men Are From Mars/Women Are From Venus

Friends, this is total nonsense. Men are NOT from Mars, and women are NOT from Venus. Rather, men are from the planet "Huh?!" and women are from the planet, "How can you NOT KNOW THIS?!"

I've been banging my head against a wall lately with a man or two in my life. You know how you have those conversations that just seem to go around and around, always ending up back at the point where the guy says, "I don't get why you are mad" and the woman says, "I CANNOT believe you don't get why this is wrong/stupid/mean/inconsiderate/embarrassing/ludicrous..."? Much has been made by men of the inscrutability of women, but I have recently spent a considerable amount of my own--and my girl friends' time--trying to unlock the mystery that is the male brain.

I ask the following questions about men (in the spirit of loving bafflement), for input from men and women alike:

1) If you KNOW they are fake, why do you still like them? Doesn’t knowing they aren’t real ruin the whole point of looking at them? If I had a computer full of photos of men with glaringly obvious penile implants, wouldn’t you wonder why I found that enjoyable? Wouldn’t you say, “why not just look at a smaller, functioning real one than one you know isn’t entirely real?” This is all I’m asking.

2) Why do some men not make the connection between the importance (as Chris Rock says) of “keeping your daughter ‘off the pole’” and the obvious fact that you are looking at someone else’s daughter on the pole? Why does it feel like women see the larger picture, the wider ramifications of things, while men see…well, boobies? This is all I’m asking.

3) If you love a girl, why do you find it so hard to just make the leap and say so publicly? Not one of my married friends ended up married without telling the guy, “your window is closing; and when it’s closing I’m gone.” Why does it take a friendly ultimatum to get you to do what you know you want to/ought to/need to do anyway? This is all I’m asking.

4) Why is it, when you fall for a girl who dislikes your female friends, that you don’t see the massive, waving red flag? Corollary: why are you so afraid to admit you have female friends to your girlfriend? If they are just friends like you say they are, what’s the big deal? This is all I’m asking.

5) Why is it “obsessive” to remember people’s birthdays and anniversaries and to send them greeting cards? This is all I’m asking.

6) Why the belief that you can overuse the phrase “I love you” with your female partner? Why the total lack of knowledge that you simply cannot tell a woman too many times that she is beautiful and she rocks your world? Especially when she is naked. This is all I’m asking.

7) Why the insistence on the drinking of OJ out of the carton?

8) Why—why—why the attraction to Angelina Jolie? Why?

9) Why the encyclopedic knowledge of sports with the concomitant cluelessness on important dates such as “our 6 month anniversary,” “the 6 month anniversary of the first time we were ‘together’,” “the 7th anniversary of our 6th week together since Arbor Day?”

10) Why the insistence on “dutch ovens”?

This is all I’m asking.