So I was on yahoo checking my email when I saw this article on the little "Today" box (otherwise known as the "black hole of doom" for its uncanny ability to suck me in no matter how stupid/boring/totally divergent from my interests the article displayed is, and its ability to completely make me forget how stupid/boring/totally divergent from my interests the last article I got sucked into was...and its unwavering conviction that absolutely hilarious videos of cats chasing things are, in fact, news). Aside from the fact that the article should have really only featured one question you should ask yourself before getting back with your ex (Did you guys ever break up? If yes, then all signs point to no.), I didn't find too much issue with the advice printed within. What did irk me, though, is that the article assumed that the person sitting alone, and most likely eating double mocha fudge ice cream with a shovel, contemplating the decision to take back the ex or not was female.
Now, I get it, I really do. The target audience of these sorts of articles is female (hence why I was so quickly dragged in--hypocrisy, thy name is Keisha) and they aren't exactly being very economical by pandering to anyone other than that audience, but, by god, if I have a reason to bitch about anything I'm gonna bitch like my life depends on it!
What always grinds my gears about dating advice books, movies, TV shows, magazine articles, blogs, etc., is that the vast majority of them seem to assume that women are the incompetent ones. Men are simple, drooling slobs who only want to get their respective D's wet, and it's women who come in with their bleeding vaginae and their sissy emotions and their overthinking brains and make complicated messes of relationships. Why, if women could only think like men and not like women, then all relationship troubles would be solved!
What pisses me off about this is not just the fact that it's insulting to both women (for calling them giant sacs of drama and tears) and men (for being compared to a pack of unneutered, untrained dogs), but the fact that it puts all the responsibility of shitty relationships on women. Your man didn't treat you well? Well, obviously it was because you had sex with him too soon/didn't read his signals well enough/don't have enough self-confidence and therefore allow yourself to be treated like shit/didn't train your dog well enough. I mean, with the unrealistic relationship expectations you had in your head, it's no wonder your man was as worthless as a giant turd (and your relationship decomposed twice as fast)! Learn how to present yourself better so that you can attract the right kind of man, girl!
Don't get me wrong, I think that a lot of relationships fail because people have unrealistic expectations, and I do think that self-confidence is important and that if you keep attracting shitty mates then maybe you should take some time to do some reflection on why you only seem to be attracting the sort of person who's been squeezed through a rectum first. But I don't think it's an exclusively female thing. Newsflash: guys can be clueless, unconfident, and emotional too. And they can have a habit of attracting bad relationships the same way women can.
Case and point, this is the conversation I overheard while at the dining hall earlier today (I'm paraphrasing because I have a memory the average squirrel would pity...and yes, I may have eavesdropped on a private conversation. Don't judge me.):
Guy (who kinda looked a bit like Ross from Friends and was just as dorky and clueless, so I'm going to call his love interest Rachel and his female friend Monica): I just don't understand where I stand with Rachel.
Monica: What's going on?
Ross: Well, I tried to talk to her again, and she told me that she doesn't want a relationship right now. I just don't get it. She acts like she likes me and everything and I really want to be with her.
(Eavesdropper's note: the key word here is "again". Meaning, this wasn't the first time she'd totally shot this poor sap down.)
They started talking about some other things that I don't really remember because a belligerent blind guy started making a scene right next to where I was sitting (ah, dining halls...), but the moral of the story is that dudes are just as hopeless as girls. No matter what your gender is, the sentence "I just don't want a relationship right now" translates into "I just don't want a relationship right now...with you. And I probably won't. Ever. But I like the attention you give me so I'm gonna keep feeding you false hope so that you'll stick around, kay?" about 9 times out of 10. And come next weekend the same guy will probably be sitting in the same dining hall with the same platonic friend whining about how Rachel was macking up on some other guy at a party and gave him her number and he just doesn't get it because she said she didn't want a relationship and WHY WOULD SHE PLAY WITH MY EMOTIONS LIKE THAT???
Point is, being pathetic and clueless and emotional when it comes to relationships isn't about gender. For every girl you've seen sobbing into her moose tracks while her girlfriends pat her back and tell her to forget him because "he's just a dick" there's a guy sobbing big man-tears into a Miller Light while his buddies tell him to man up and forget her because "she's just a slut".
And if you don't believe me, talk to Cody about his romantic history sometime. A big ol' ball of tragedy, that one.
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