Why Guys Can’t Listen!
“How many times I have told you not to feed me with solutions and suggestions!!! Why can’t you just listen?” I moaned as my friend, Abhishek sighed at the other end of the phone. Having had a long and unusually stressful day, I had the natural urge to dislodge my baggage of thoughts on someone. But my best friend Nidhi, was out of town which added to my pain and I couldn’t really focus on anything else other than wallowing about my differences with my new workmates.
I reluctantly decided to call up my long time friend Abhishek, hoping in vain that he wouldn’t let his gender interfere my goal! But alas whom was I kidding! Ok I give him the credit for atleast hearing me out for good 10 minutes, in which time I had narrated only half of my story about how I had mailed my assignment to my classmate so that she could get the print out for me the next day, and how she conveniently drew ‘inspiration’ from my work.
I hadn’t even gotten to the part when we had a brilliant argument which made quite a show the next day in the class, when Abhishek callously interrupted and said “hold on! I am getting a call from home” and before I could voice my disapproval, I was put on hold.
At this point I was fuming like a pressure cooker about to burst, for you see, I had come to the climax of my story where I called my classmate a ‘back stabbing bitch’ to which she cunningly smiled and retorted’ deal with it loser’ and this scenario played and replayed in my head for as long as I was on hold, being constantly being given the choice in the background by that mechanical female voice to stay online or call again later!!
I was about to disconnect when Abhishek’s voice finally brought my train of thoughts to a halt, as he wearily asked, “Where were we?” and I impatiently reminded him, “ the part where I was summoned by the Boss for stealing my colleague’s work which was originally mine”.
And then he was like, “oh yeah! So what happened next? Any dirty girl fight? With a bit of tossing over the floor and tearing off each other’s clothes?” and he chuckled which irritated me more than ever!
Dismissing his desired ending to my hateful story, I finally managed to narrate him the entire thing. To which he said, “big deal! She stole your ideas, you called her a bitch, she called you a loser, now you guys are even! Let go of it”.
His response felt like a slap on my face, greater than being called a loser and being tricked by a stranger. And I roared over the phone, “Abhishek!! This is anything but a small deal! Come on dude, it was my work, my effort, what she did was stealing! How can you ask me to let go of it!”.
Judging how serious and hurt I sounded, he immediately changed tracks and calmly suggested, “either way, you cant do much about it yar. Alright she copied your assignment, but why are you losing your mind over it? I would suggest, you be a little more cautious with your assignments in the future and right now do something to take your mind off this incident. Go for a walk maybe or watch a movie”.
Well this sound advice didn’t help me either, it just added fuel to fire, as I shrieked How many times I have told you not to feed me with solutions and suggestions!!! Why cant you just listen?” which takes you back to where I started from.
After five minutes I hung up myself, shaking my head in great disappointment and with greater unease than to begin with. For the phone call hadn’t helped at all, if anything, it had just messed up my head more than ever and this ironical development made me wonder, why did something as simple as a phone call to a friend didn’t serve the required purpose?
Well because I called a guy. But then the next thought was, so what, why cant guys get you as well as girls do? Or more so why cant they just listen and pretend to get you, than giving you solutions and suggestions? Well probably that is where the difference lies. Guys and girls think differently. But I guess each of us is conditioned to think in a way that benefits us.
Cribbing and lamenting about a problem helps women, no matter how unwise it sounds. But probably tangible solutions to all kinds of problems from trivial ones to absurd ones, helps guys. And then it made me wonder, does it really help them? Yes I guess, for I haven’t seen half as many men crib and cry as women. You see we women have a very twisted but effective solution to our problem.
We talk about our problems, nearly embrace them till the time we don’t get it out of our systems. While guys, at the very sight of a problem, get into their rational modes (that is, if they ever step out of this mode) and try to find the most effective solution to their problem.
It is like their minds work like assembly lines, as soon as a problem appears from nowhere, immediately they start working on it. And if a problem is beyond a solution they bury it so as to get over it, while we women cry it out of our system. So unwittingly we are thought of as back biting bitches and gossip mongers, but research supports out queer habits.
Many research reports indicate, that women cry, and thus they live longer, such an absurd phenomenon yet simple, but sadly ridiculed by bottled up men who die five years before us on an average .
Well all these statistical thoughts made me smile, for I thought that if crying and cribbing makes me live longer, then why not? And if the thought of it now makes me smile, then again it’s a win-win deal for no human suffers from smiling a great deal!
