Why women want men to change
“So, what do you think?” Sara asked me as the guy we’d been chatting up on the ferry back from a recent Giants game excused himself to use the men’s “facilities.”
“Seems like a pretty nice guy,” I said, and as the words left my lips, I was aware that “nice” can mean many things to many people, so, since I meant nice in the good way, I thought I’d better supplement it. “And cute, in a George Clooney-meets-mad professor kinda way.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Sara said
dreamily. “If he cut his hair, lost those godawful
shorts, whiten his teeth a little …” 
And as Sara continued to detail all the ways in which Mr. Pretty Nice Guy could transform into Mr. Perfect, my head started to hurt.
It’s such a gal thing to look at a guy and think, “yeah, he’s totally a guy I’d like to be with, if he’d only … (add your changes here).” Which,
of course means that he really isn’t a guy you’d be with — well, not until we first turn him into that kind of guy, instead of looking at him as the guy he is.
Do guys do that with women?
My gut says no. Forgive me if I sound somewhat sexist here but my feeling is that guys look at women two ways — f@#ckable or not (and there’s a wide range that fall into the first category).
I think the only time a guy would like to change a woman is after he’s married her and she’s popped out a few babies — and packed on
25 or so pounds. Oh yeah — and change her back into the woman who loved to have sex
and give blow jobs.
The old joke is that women marry men hoping
they’ll change and men marry women hoping they
won’t.
But, why do women want men to change?
Does it give us a sense of power and accomplishment, especially if we convert a “bad boy” into a Snugli-wearing proud papa?
Or do we have so many expectations, so many must-haves, that we’re eager to check them off like a Christmas gift list?
Does this man-changing thing lead us to feeling like we have to “settle“?
I blame it on our upbringing; we’ve been brainwashed! Just look at the way we played as little girls. Playing with dolls, even paper dolls, is all about change — changing their outfits, their shoes, their accessories, and, in the case of Barbie dolls, professions. So is dress up. Women are change artists (and that probably has something to do with our constant battles with our weight and looks; we’re never satisfied).
I guess I’ve sometimes been guilty of man-changing myself to a certain extent — I’m sure I’ve met men in the past with whom I’ve had brief floating thoughts of, “gee, he’s cute and funny. If only he’d …” But if there were too many “if onlys,” I’d pretty much lose interest in wanting to know him better in that way, let alone make it my life’s mission to change him. I have other things to do, people!
- Why do women want to change men?
- Do men want to change women?
Photo © Nathalie P – Fotolia.com
Eat, pray, love or live alone
We were barely past the trailhead yesterday when it started.
“OK, please tell me you’re not going to talk the whole time about ‘Eat Pray Love,’ OK?” I announced to Sara and Mia. They’d gone to late show Saturday night, and I knew they were itching to drag me into the post-divorce self-discovery drama.
“But, we still processing,” Mia said. “Women were crying in the theater. It’s very, very cathartic.”
“Process away. Just
keep me out of it.” 
“Honesty, Kat, what’s your problem? She found happiness after an unhappy marriage, just like we did,” Sara said, a hint of snark in her voice. “What in the world is there not to
like about her story?”
“Look, anyone can find some sort of happiness traveling the world for a year
if they don’t have to worry about paying for it and finding enlightenment in India. I mean, that’s
why people go to India in the first place, for goodness sake!” I said. “But, really — what woman eats with such abandon without freaking about getting fat?”
“So, that’s why you don’t like it?”
“No. I just think it’s self-absorbed and gives women a skewed message.”
“Like?”
“Look, we didn’t find ourselves while traipsing around the world. The real test of life post-divorce is being happy living your normal life. You know, the one when you wake up every day, go to work, do the laundry, figure out how to get your kid to the dentist and soccer when you’re in an office across the bridge from him, deal with the ex and make ends meet.”
Mia and Sara looked at me with scrunched up faces as if they were searching for some sort of a rebuttal. But what was there to say?
I’m all for escaping away from our regular life and finding adventure, spirituality, Javier Bardem. If I could, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
But the path to self-discovery for a woman post divorce has little to do with pasta and ashrams, and everything to do with being on her own and figuring out “Who am I now, at my age, without a husband?”
And key to that is learning how to be alone.
Most of us didn’t do that. We went from the pink-carpeted rooms of our childhood to bunking with college roomies to shacking up with a sweetie or two to the marital bed of a picket-fenced home — where so many of us lost ourselves.
I know some 8 million (mostly female) readers found Elizabeth Gilbert’s story an inspiration. She found herself! She found love! She made millions!
If she could do it, we can, too!
And maybe we could. But I wish she found herself, love and happiness from making better choices while living her normal life. Because most of us will never be able to take a year off to do what she did — and what does that mean for us when it comes to self-discovery?
- Have you “discovered” yourself post-divorce, or are you still on that path?
- Is it better to “find yourself” in exotic locales, or living your day-today life?
Girl talk: It isn’t all about feelings
The dinner party was shaping up to be like so many others — eventually, the women gathered on the couch and the overstuffed chairs around the coffee table and the men hung by the counter with the booze and food.
I have no idea what the men were talking about, but I was in very familiar if often boring and exhausting territory — kids, homework, teachers, grades, chores, SATs, men, clothes, diets, work-life balance, juggling, Botox, yoga. Aka, the world of women. 
I looked over at the men. They were animated
and laughing, while the gals mostly had furrowed brows — well, except
the Botoxed among us, whose brows had their perma-poker faces on.
What the hell are they talking about, I wondered.
But, really, what the hell were we talking about?
“Why are women always talking about men and kids?” my friend Dan asked me weeks after the party as we sat at Sam’s, soaking in the sun and a few beers.
“That’s not all we talk about!” I said a bit defensively, holding back from throwing out some snarky line about what guys talk about.
Not to betray the sisterhood, but he wasn’t totally off the mark. Sure, science has debunked the myth that women talk more than guys, even though we do use a few more words than they do: 16,215 a day to their 15,669. But those 546 words — as well as a good part of the rest of them — couldn’t be more Mars-Venus.
Honestly, when was the last time you heard a man say the word “empowering”?
Exactly.
As any guy will tell you, women spend way too much time as a “Sex and the City” episode, talking about relationships, feelings and shopping. And, as any woman will tell you, men talk way too much about sports and techie things like weighing the pros and cons of the iPad versus the iPhone.
Not to say that we’re all like that — we’re not. But, if we are, is that so bad?
I don’t think so … unless, of course, we’re trying to talk about those things with members of the opposite sex. Honestly, I don’t think guys really want to hear us obsess about our kids and school. I’m absolutely positive they don’t want to hear us obsess about our weight and our feelings — especially if it comes off as insecurities. And, as much as I can get excited about New Zealand’s tie with Italy in the World Cup and Freddy Sanchez’s first homer of the season, it’s not that big a deal to me; I’m not going to remember it much past this week. But I can accept that Sean, The Kid and a lot of other men in my life will.
Women tend to be people people and men tend to be things people, and you know, I’m totally cool with that.
I’m just not cool when we get judged for that, or when someone thinks that’s all we’re about. Because it’s not.
Even when it seems like it is.
Like this weekend, when Sara, Mia and I had worked up a good sweat on the trail, not only because it had some kick-ass elevation, but we’d gotten into a pretty intense discussion about the BP debacle — which somehow morphed into analyzing Mia and Rex’s recently fight. A logical thought progression …
And that’s just when a guy sprinted by.
I know exactly what he heard — and thought. It was totally incriminating girl talk. We must have sounded like a bunch of middle-aged women freaking out about a small thing that a decent guy no doubt wanted to fix while some insecure woman wanted to turn into an “issue.”
“Humpf!” I heard him mumble under his breath as he passed by, shaking his head.
No, no, no! I thought. You should have passed by a few minutes ago!
I always feel a bit embarrassed when we gals are busted for being so emo.
“Why are you looking so pained?” Sara asked me.
“That guy. He passed by just as we were obsessing about Mia and Rex.”
“So what? His wife’s probably somewhere right now talking about him.”
Probably.
But if she’s smart, when he gets home, she’ll shut up.
- Does girl talk bother you?
- Are man and women fundamentally interested in very different things?
- Can men and women communicate well?
Photo © A_nik – Fotolia.com
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