Serious conversations with men
I've found that trying to pin down a bloke for a serious/important conversation is one of the most difficult things that a woman will ever attempt to do, and it seems that the harder she tries at it, the more difficult fulfilling her objective will become.
Why is this?
I don't believe it's because blokes don't care that something is botherring us. If it's an important issue for a woman, chances are, it's likely also to be an important issue for the men/man around her, whether that is Father/Husband/partner/friend etc, so why doesn't he want to talk about it?
Even if it were a thing that doesn't directly affect him, if he cares about her, and something is seriously botherring her, then why doesn't he want to talk about it?
To a woman in this situation, a willingness to sit down and talk about something will show that the man actually does care about her and want to help her in her situation. If he doesn't want to talk about it, she will doubt his affection for her, which leads her to be suspicious of the times he has shown her such affection - was he deliberately tricking her? With the evidence laying before her the natural conclusion she makes is that yes, in fact, it actually was a trick, any time he was nice or affectionate to her, to serve his own ends, which is why many women, at one time or another come to the conclusion that "all men are bastards". It may be because of behaviour that men do not consider to be acting like "a bastard", but I'm reasonably certain that it is because of behaviour that all men exhibit, this case in point being my primary example for this. For these purposes I am discounting occasions where men really and truely have behaved like "bastards" towards women, and other men would agree with that prognosis. This also removes any "tit for tat" feelings, because yes, sometimes women behave like "bitches" towards men too, but that is not related to the point of this question.
Returning to the point, one of the only options left to answer this question must be about the way that the question has been asked. For the sake of clarity, let me explain to the men what I, and I believe many other women, are thinking/feeling relating to this issue, in order to better explain the reason why this issue is both so important, and so frustrating. If I have something important or serious to discuss, the reason I would ask if we can sit down to talk about it is many-fold.
Firstly, it means that the other person respects me enough to acknowledge my problem and to put some effort into working through it with me, which will mean a lot. Obviously not every time is an appropriate time to have such a conversation, which is why I like to give a little advance warning and then to both book time into our diaries to deal with it. It's a respect for the problem too because it shows that it is important enough to the other person for them to want to tackle it, rather than just putting something together on the run.
For the respect of both the parties in the conversation, sitting down in a quiet room with no distractions will allow us both to focus solely on the issue at hand, which I believe will then put us in a better position to go about solving it, and setting some time aside to have that conversation means that every possibility or option can then be raised, discussed/worked through together and come to be either accepted or rejected by it's own fair merits. If it is accepted we may discuss varients of it until all things are sorted, but it would then enable both parties to make a plan detailling how the problem will be solved, which means that after the conversation, as both parties are continuing in it's aftermath, both of them do know that they are united in tackling this problem and that they can trust the actions that the other person will take, because of the joint plan that they had made.
To me, and, I believe, to many women, this is very often very obvious. So obvious infact that they often decline to mention it or even to think about it consciously, but then their frustration builds because men are acting in ways that many women consider to be highly inconsiderate of them. The reccurring nature of this instance of events leads me to believe that the issue isn't with that particular man, and it isn't with the nature of whatever problem a woman would like to discuss, but may in fact be connected to a fundamental building-block difference between the way that men approach these things, and I don't know why.
Any thoughts relating to this will be greatly appreciated. However, given that I believe a man may not even approach this entry in the same way that a woman will, by making one clear point and explaining it thoroughly from start to finish, I will also make a poll in case men believe that certain other things are obvious and they feel no need to discuss something to that deapth. I'd really like it if the men could explain in more detail, please, but the poll is there in case you would really rather not :-)
EDIT: The poll feature is not working at the moment, mainly because the poll I wrote was too long. I am intending to rewrite it, but for now I'm just gonna post the entry anyway - please reply in the comments. Thank you :-)
Why is this?
I don't believe it's because blokes don't care that something is botherring us. If it's an important issue for a woman, chances are, it's likely also to be an important issue for the men/man around her, whether that is Father/Husband/partner/friend etc, so why doesn't he want to talk about it?
Even if it were a thing that doesn't directly affect him, if he cares about her, and something is seriously botherring her, then why doesn't he want to talk about it?
To a woman in this situation, a willingness to sit down and talk about something will show that the man actually does care about her and want to help her in her situation. If he doesn't want to talk about it, she will doubt his affection for her, which leads her to be suspicious of the times he has shown her such affection - was he deliberately tricking her? With the evidence laying before her the natural conclusion she makes is that yes, in fact, it actually was a trick, any time he was nice or affectionate to her, to serve his own ends, which is why many women, at one time or another come to the conclusion that "all men are bastards". It may be because of behaviour that men do not consider to be acting like "a bastard", but I'm reasonably certain that it is because of behaviour that all men exhibit, this case in point being my primary example for this. For these purposes I am discounting occasions where men really and truely have behaved like "bastards" towards women, and other men would agree with that prognosis. This also removes any "tit for tat" feelings, because yes, sometimes women behave like "bitches" towards men too, but that is not related to the point of this question.
Returning to the point, one of the only options left to answer this question must be about the way that the question has been asked. For the sake of clarity, let me explain to the men what I, and I believe many other women, are thinking/feeling relating to this issue, in order to better explain the reason why this issue is both so important, and so frustrating. If I have something important or serious to discuss, the reason I would ask if we can sit down to talk about it is many-fold.
Firstly, it means that the other person respects me enough to acknowledge my problem and to put some effort into working through it with me, which will mean a lot. Obviously not every time is an appropriate time to have such a conversation, which is why I like to give a little advance warning and then to both book time into our diaries to deal with it. It's a respect for the problem too because it shows that it is important enough to the other person for them to want to tackle it, rather than just putting something together on the run.
For the respect of both the parties in the conversation, sitting down in a quiet room with no distractions will allow us both to focus solely on the issue at hand, which I believe will then put us in a better position to go about solving it, and setting some time aside to have that conversation means that every possibility or option can then be raised, discussed/worked through together and come to be either accepted or rejected by it's own fair merits. If it is accepted we may discuss varients of it until all things are sorted, but it would then enable both parties to make a plan detailling how the problem will be solved, which means that after the conversation, as both parties are continuing in it's aftermath, both of them do know that they are united in tackling this problem and that they can trust the actions that the other person will take, because of the joint plan that they had made.
To me, and, I believe, to many women, this is very often very obvious. So obvious infact that they often decline to mention it or even to think about it consciously, but then their frustration builds because men are acting in ways that many women consider to be highly inconsiderate of them. The reccurring nature of this instance of events leads me to believe that the issue isn't with that particular man, and it isn't with the nature of whatever problem a woman would like to discuss, but may in fact be connected to a fundamental building-block difference between the way that men approach these things, and I don't know why.
Any thoughts relating to this will be greatly appreciated. However, given that I believe a man may not even approach this entry in the same way that a woman will, by making one clear point and explaining it thoroughly from start to finish, I will also make a poll in case men believe that certain other things are obvious and they feel no need to discuss something to that deapth. I'd really like it if the men could explain in more detail, please, but the poll is there in case you would really rather not :-)
EDIT: The poll feature is not working at the moment, mainly because the poll I wrote was too long. I am intending to rewrite it, but for now I'm just gonna post the entry anyway - please reply in the comments. Thank you :-)