How Guys Connect with Each Other

“…it’s a mistake to judge men’s interactions by assuming we need to be like women.”

-from an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal that focuses on what guys look for in friendships.

Some excerpts:

“Men generally resist high-maintenance relationships, whether with spouses, girlfriends or male pals. When picking friends, ‘men don’t want someone who is too needy’…a third of the men…said they learned positive things from female friendships, but 25% had a negative impression of women as friends, citing issues such as ‘cattiness’ and ‘too much drama’ [see this previous post]. And women are more likely than men to hold grudges toward friends, according to Dr. (Geoffrey) Greif’s 2009 book, Buddy System.”

Researchers say women’s friendships are face to face. They talk, cry together, share secrets. Men’s friendships are side by side: We play golf. We go to football games.

“Our conversations deal with the doing of things rather than the feeling of things…”

“In his poker game, [Dr. Greif] says, if a man were to reveal that he lost his job or that his wife left him, the other guys would say, ‘Gee, dude, that’s too bad. Want us to deal you out of this hand?’

If you are interested in the subject of male friendship and how guys derive support from one another, you can read the whole article here.

A personal reminiscence on the subject:

A little over twenty years ago, I was backing out of the garage in a stick shift to head to work while holding a mug of steaming coffee in one hand and steering with the other, trying to see through the rear view mirror to avoid hitting the center post dividing the garage opening. A slight hand slippage caused the car to veer sideways, bashing in the door trim and drywall next to it. Admittedly, I shouldn't have been wearing sunglasses in the darkened space.

A buddy happened to call later that day to ask what was new. I mentioned the early morning mishap in the course of the conversation. He didn’t ask me how I felt about it. What would have been the point? But, early the next morning on his way to work, he dropped off at our house some pieces of drywall, tape and mud, taping knife and painting tools for me to use to make repairs.

Now, that was a guy friend.

Advice Giving to Make a Living

After checking demographic trends, a marital advice career may not be a broad enough category to ensure a sufficient supply of clients for my services. Not as many people seem to be getting married as in the past.

Therefore, I’ve decided general relationship advice services would allow me to serve more people, not to mention raise the profitability potential of a new venture. Relationship advice is something I already try to provide here occasionally anyway. It’s been one of my intentions regarding this weblog that any reader who followed for a year or two would receive the virtual equivalency of a mail-order relationship-counseling course. Granted, you probably could get the same thing by just listening to a lot of Tammy Wynette’s old songs. I’m thinking some people would still want the caring empathy that only personal contact can provide, which would be where I would come in.

I would, of course, be taking on clients in spite of my tendency to generally avoid unnecessary contact with people due to the possibility of getting drawn into in their personal problems. Maintaining emotional distance through (non)professional separation would be crucial, I suppose. You can see where I’m going with this, right? If I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep I want it to be from wrestling with my own problems, not somebody else’s.

The focus of my advice would be explaining to men why women are so bleeping hard to understand. I could also explain to women what men are thinking but since that’s generally limited to about 3 things I wouldn’t expect there would be much money to be made there.

I suppose I could delve into a list of exclusions – what men are NOT thinking – that could take some time, and time being money, might be worthwhile. Another possibility would be to try to explain to men what women are feeling and why. The drawback there is that by the time you explain it it’s probably changed anyway, which would necessitate perpetual additional sessions. That could be a plus or a minus depending on whether we’re talking about me or the client. Anyway, here’s my best pitch:

Women: With my keen insights and lifetime of observations I can be your one-stop relationship advice source. No need to waste any more time watching Oprah. Men: No need to…well, you probably never worry about relationship stuff anyway, at least until there’s a crisis. But that’s where I can help - avoid the crisis, take my customized, precautionary advice and get it right the first time.

Payment plans can be made flexible so don’t assume you can’t afford my services – and tell your friends – every paying referral will entitle you to 10% free advice, uncontaminated with the sort of personal musings and speculation that you might get from other advice givers (or, even with those things, if you have the time and money to waste).

You won’t find a better deal anywhere. All information is confidential, assuming your check doesn’t bounce, and even if it does, I usually change the names of people and towns when I recycle advice.

So, if anybody needs relationship advice, remember, I’m here for you, for a fee, because I care, and I could really use the money.

Part-time Career Path Detour

Well, so much for my idea of gaining supplementary income in part-time celebrity employment.

A surprisingly large number of people I know are adamantly convinced that being a part-time celebrity is impossible. They believe it’s like attempting to be be part-time pregnant or part-time married or part-time dead. “Either you is…or you isn’t!” seems to be the most (grammar-challenged and) commonly-stated position on the subject. Leave it to your friends to throw cold water on your dreams.

I’m still having trouble seeing it that way since, before TARP and the accompanying credit crisis, I was a full-time architect and am now, for all practical purposes, a part-time architect. Naturally, it was a small leap of logic that celebrity status might be similarly unfixed. Truthfully, I still slip back and forth on conclusions about the matter.

Anyway, I’ve gone back to the drawing board (which in actuality doesn’t exist anymore, having been replaced with computer workstations) and decided that the best supplementary income opportunity for me is to offer marital advice for a small fee.

Why marital advice, you wonder? Well, I’m married myself, my parents are married…heck, some of my best friends are married. I’ve been around married people all my life. I think I could successfully argue that I’m more qualified to offer marital advice than a literature professor who’s never written and published a profitable novel is qualified to teach literature.

Some might point out that there’s already a bunch of advice out there on how to be successfully married but I say, a fat lot of good it’s all doing, right? There seems to be no limit to opportunity, in that there are still a lot of disastrous marriages and people thoroughly confused on the subject. Besides, speaking of confusion, who’s to say my opinions on the subject aren’t at least as credible as anyone else’s?

So, anyone need some marital advice? My first advice is a free sample; after that I’ll have to charge you. I can’t remember where I learned of that business model before, but I’ve heard it helps develop client loyalty, something that we could all use more of.

Free sample advice example: Unless you are very rich and can support two households in lavish fashion, stay married. I’m afraid that any advice beyond this will cost you, but it will still be way cheaper than divorce. I can’t promise that I can help solve all your problems overnight but, that’s why I’ll be charging by the hour.

In order to expand into other fill-able need areas, I guess I should reach beyond marital advice alone and also offer marriage-avoidance counseling, but you need to let me know going in which one you want to focus on so I don’t end up wasting your time and money.

Sound like a plan?

I’m really excited about this new direction. It’s not just about the money either but I’ll be helping other people while also doing something I really love – telling other people what to think and do. I don’t know why I didn’t see this possibility earlier.

Guys Hate Drama!

Thaaaaat’s riiiiight, I’m saying it! Guys cannot stand to be in a drama-driven environment. It produces in us aggravation and dread.

Man alive, was I reminded of this fact again today in the course of documenting some existing conditions in an office suite for which we’re in the process of designing some alterations and expansion facilities. It was during business hours and very crowded with people.

While going about my work I could hear one woman in the adjacent room talking with elevated anxiety about her boyfriend to her female co-worker. She went on and on, speculating what he might have meant by an 8 or 9 word sentence he’d spoken to her. She hit it from different angles, talked about what she thought about each one and how she would respond to every possible scenario. And you know what? I’ll bet the guy can barely remember having had the conversation.

I thought, It is whatever he said, Lady! Why don’t you just ask him what he meant? If you want to look for hidden meanings and symbolism, read Moby Dick. Guys just aren’t that cryptic. If you ask the right questions you’ll get answers that make sense. I hope her boyfriend is recognizing the red flags in the relationship because, if he stays in it, his world will be continually unsettled. Yikes!

I’ve had guys tell me they quit their jobs because of too much drama at work. The only kind of drama a guy likes is the last two minutes of a sports event, maybe coverage of a close election (if he remembered to vote) and the suspenseful plot of an action movie (as long as it is brought to resolution with gunfire, car crashes or explosions, preferably all three).

Guys like stability, order, cause & effect, recognizable patterns, understandable sequences, reasonable dispositions, fair negotiations, clear instructions, stated goals, written contracts, straight talk in plain language, the right tools for the right job and, I might as well throw in, menus in English.

No guy goes to work in the morning thinking, Man, I can’t wait ‘til I finish my shift and I can get out of here to go find me a situation primed with drama! That would really make this job worth it! That said, however, most men of some devotion won’t object to discussing a woman’s concerns or problems in a non-turbulent, non-theatrical manner.

Women, here’s a tip: If you’re looking for male companionship, socially or romantically, the best tack to take is one that avoids appreciably involving guys in endless personal insecurities, emotional chaos and rocky behavior because…get this now, Guys. Hate. Drama.

Why Men Don't Listen

Last week, while leaving from a pre-workday meeting at my friend’s garage, I walked through his kitchen as his wife and daughter were there getting ready to leave for work themselves. Apparently the two of them had been talking over the day’s plans.

“I hope our talking didn’t disturb you,” his wife remarked.

“Of course not,” I replied, “Men don’t hear women. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

I know that it’s hard for women to grasp why this is. It’s generally a mystery to men too, but some research indicates it’s somewhat due to the way men’s minds are biologically wired.

According to this ABC news report, men hear women’s speech differently than the way they hear the speech of other men: “The research shows men decipher female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engage a simpler mechanism [of the brain]…this causes a more complex range of sound frequencies [in a female voice] than in a male voice…”

Am I reading this right? It takes more brainpower to listen to a woman talk than a man?

The report also notes that, due to the greater complexity of the structure of women’s vocal chords and larynx, they have a “greater natural ‘melody’ in their voices.”

So that explains it. Absent focused concentration - perhaps even with it - men’s brains have a tendency to hear women’s talking as innocuous music, I assume much like what is played in an elevator or supermarket to relax patrons. So sometimes instead of hearing the facts of what women are telling us (not to mention the unspoken, emotional subtext), our minds subconsciously just start humming along to whatever it is they're saying. I’ve noticed, myself, that this phenomenon sometimes even produces a soothing, lullaby affect.

So, women, what can you learn from this scientific revelation?

Perhaps this: If you want a man to "hear" you, keep your message(s) short, simple and stick to the main point(s). If it's really important, don't speak at all; write it down and pass him the note. That's your most effective communication mode. You also may find it helpful to refer to this chart I’ve created.


You’ll note from the chart that even if you limit yourself to one subject only in your communication, statistically, the likelihood a man will remember it is no better than about 80%, and it decreases exponentially as the number of subjects in your statement increases.

So, please don’t blame me(n) anymore for not hearing you. A man's brain just finds it too easy to hum along to the sweet song in your voice.

Ch-ch-ch-changes in the New Year

Three or four weeks ago, a buddy at the gym was recounting to me how, while he was working on something, his observing wife tried to tell him he was doing it the wrong way and proceeded to tell him how he should’ve been doing it.

He told me he stopped what he was doing, looked up and asked her rhetorically, if not ironically (and hoping she’d get the point), “How do you think I ever managed to do anything before you came along?”

With a wide-eyed look of perplexity and in all seriousness she replied, “I have absolutely NO idea.”

I believe he then resumed his task, as before.

What’s the saying? Women marry men expecting they’ll change. Men marry women expecting they won’t.

What do you think? Do people really change?

My wife of many years doesn’t think so, not very much, anyway - that as time goes on and people age, the nature of their character traits, rather than changing, only intensifies - at least in the absence of some event traumatic enough to force upon them a completely different way of looking at themselves or the world.

In contrast, the world around us is in a state of constant change. A few changes are foreseeable, but most exist only in the foggy future and remain a mystery until the time of abrupt unveiling.

The media this last week has been awash with all sorts of predictions about the changes coming along this new year. I never know what to make of most of it.

From way out here on a map-dot in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, circumstances on the Mainland or other countries can seem far-removed and non-concerning, yet, tipping point events in history that have caused momentous changes were often the result of small, unpredictable events in faraway places, the repercussions of which carried around the world.

No one can say for sure what the new year holds, but change is sure to occur. Will coming events force us to change something about ourselves in the process? Will we be willing and able to manage such a change?

Whatever events occur, the best preparations that can be made are growing and sustaining good relationships with family members, friends and work-mates.

If we get those things right, we can probably handle most any change the year might come up with.

John's Short-lived Career as an Advice Columnist

This has been submerged under blogosphere water for a while and just surfaced again. Be encouraged, wives out there, the guy you married is probably not a dud after all, just normal.


click on image to enlarge
(h/t to Lumberjack)

Laws of Attraction - Part I

Driving home together from a recent event, Beloved Wife and I had the following conversation:

SHE: "I'm really glad I'm married to you."

I: "Thanks. Good to hear. I don't think you've ever said that to me before."

SHE: "Really? I've never told you that?'

I: "No," (At least never while I was listening).

Hmm..., I thought, this might be one of those times you hear about when women attempt to communicate with their husbands. Think, man, think! What did that Sunday magazine insert relationship advice columnist say the man was supposed to do in these situations?

It's just as well that I drew a blank. Relationship advice is for wimps anyway. Real men don't need advice. It's a well known fact that most men instinctively always know the right thing to say or do. That's just the way we're made.

So, I ran down a quick mental checklist: Continue to earn a living? Check. Sleep at home every night? Check. Shower every day? Yeah, pretty much. I may not be Johnny Depp, or whoever it is that's the current object of women's desire, but I'm not exactly loathsome. So, after 35 years of marriage, five children and several of their own sprouts, why did she choose this moment to tell me this?

I: "Did this conclusion come to you because all the other husbands back there were boring?"

SHE: "Yes."

Hah! Figured it out all by myself! Who 'da man?! WHO 'DA MAN?!!!

So, what can other married men learn from my experience?

Just this: Never be boring. If you can't help being boring, try to get your wife to attend events with you where men who are much more boring than you are are likely to be heavy in the mix. You'll be prized by comparison. Or else be wealthy. That's supposed to make women feel fulfilled being married to you too.

Men, you should be writing this down. Take my advice.