Whispering Love
Imagine that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. One day, long ago, the Martians, looking through their telescopes, discovered the Venusians. Just glimpsing the Venusians awakened feelings they had never known. They fell in love and quickly invented space travel and flew to Venus. The Venusians welcomed the Martians with open arms. The love between the Venusians and Martians with open arms. The love between the Venusians and Martians was magical. They delighted in being together, doing things together and sharing together. Both the Martians and Venusians forgot that they were from different planets, and that were supposed to be different. And one morning, everything they had learned about their differences was erased from their memory. And since that day, men and women have been in conflict.
The most frequently expressed complaint women have about men is that men don’t listen. Either a man completely ignores her when she speaks, or he listen for a few beasts, assesses what’s bothering her, and then he proudly puts on his Mr. Fix-it hat and offers her a solution to make her feel better. No matter how many times she tells him that he’s not listening, he doesn’t get it, and he keeps doing the same thing. She wants empathy, he thinks she wants solutions.
The most frequently expressed complaint men have about women is that woman loves a man, she feels responsible to assist him to improve the way he does things. She forms the Home Improvement Committee, and he becomes her primary focus. No matter how much he resists her help, she persists, waiting for an opportunity to help him or to tell him what to do. She thinks she’s nurturing him, while he feels he’s being controlled. Martians value power, competency, efficiency, and achievement. Their sense of self is defined through their ability results. Achieving goals is very important to Martian, because it’s the way for him to prove his competence and thus feel good about himself. And for him to feel good himself, he must achieve these goals alone, by himself.
To offer a man unsolicited advice is to presume that he doesn’t know what to do or that he can’t do it on his own. Men are very touchy about this, because the issue of competence is so very important to them. However, if he truly does need help, then it’s sign of wisdom to get it. In this case, he’ll find someone he respects and then talk about his problem. Talking about a problem on Mars is an invitation for advice. Another Martian feels honored by the opportunity. Automatically, he puts on his Mr. Fix-it hat, listens for a few beats, and then offers some jewels of advice. This Martian custom if one of the reasons men instinctively offer solutions when a woman talks about her feelings or about her problems.