Men Are From Mars, Women Aren’t

In the timeless and eternal struggle between men and women in trying valiantly to understand each other, to reach that point where you were both ‘on the same page’ and could be there through at least half a chapter, better women than myself have just flat given up. I take my hat off to them, for they had the right idea. I say that without, believe it or not, the lightest dollop of rancor or the slightest dash of sarcasm. I say it merely because it’s what I feel, right now. In addition, that is, to feeling relieved, relaxed, and more than slightly less overwhelmed than I felt when I was engaged in the Samsonific struggle (and I mean to reference there the battle of the biblical character, not at all the durability of a popular brand of luggage) of trying to see eye to eye with a man for more than 72 hours with any kind of consistency.

Having come to the conclusion that this whole optical symmetry thing is just not in the particular cards I was dealt nearly half a year ago, I’ve waived the white flag better women than myself have waved before me and life, for some reason I can’t fathom (or maybe I can, and that’s why I’m writing this) has settled back into a comfortable, non-upsy-downsy rhythm in which, perhaps, the greatest joy of my day is an early morning walk with my dog, but it beats the buckets out of the slept-through-the-alarm-because-I-was-trying-to-figure-out-a-man so-called sleep I had before now which left, at a minimum, me with less than stellar hair days and my dog entirely frustrated at a morning jog versus a joyous, leisurely sunrise stroll, at a maximum.

Here’s the thing – and this thing won’t make any more sense to those who read this blog (I still believe there may be some, maybe at least one, if you don’t count Sam the Mailman and my Avon Lead) than to those who don’t, but perhaps will, to anyone who’s ever been a single female engaged in a relationship that’s had more rough spots than your basic Contra Costa County roadway – but there’s a certain point you get to when you’ve said all the same things over and over again, and had all the same disagreements and make-ups, and ‘let’s put this behind us’s, and you’ve had, even more memorably, all the good times and the great times and the times when you were so happy it was like Christmas every day – and then been blindsided by something so trivial (when looked at in light of the big picture, and all that) and that thing, or things which had been completely dissected, discussed, analyzed, and ‘moved past’ totally derailed the relationship. And then the relationship came to life again, and you trusted it again….and this thing, or things, came up again…and one day, or night, or one morning commercial break during the Today Show, it finally dawned on you with all the intensity and surety of the first ear piercing clangs of the alarm clock the morning you accidentally set it an hour too early: I’m doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

It was Albert Einstein himself who categorized that as the definition of insanity.
No dummy, Einstein. I never quite caught on to the whole E equals MC squared thing, but this….this, I get.

Sometimes the best part of life, I’m realizing, is to accept it for what it is. Having been raised in middle to upper middle class America (I had many Barbie dolls), I always believed in the ‘Happily Ever After’ thing, and I’m not saying I’m not a believer in that now. I’m just seeing, more clearly, perhaps, than I have in a long time, that it’s not always given to you in one person. Sometimes the whole ‘happily’ thing is a mishmash of many things, and many people. And sometimes – and this really clashes with the core beliefs of someone who actually watched The Wizard of Oz and believed in those red shoes – it’s OK to come that close, and yet not be quite close enough.

Men are from Mars, and Women are Not. I said that myself. It doesn’t mean you don’t love someone. It doesn’t mean you won’t always. It just means, sometimes, that you wake up and inventory your own stuff, as it were, and realize you are such good solid friends with someone you were married to for a long time, and someone else you dated for a long time, and someone else you went for coffee with but it just didn’t pan out. Not knowing if you’ll ever have that with the person you really love (but just can’t seem to get it ‘right’ with, ‘right’ being said in the same vein as what my Grandmother once told me when I used the word ‘Normal’. “Normal,” she said, “is a setting on a washing machine, period. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.”) is unsettling, but it’s not, not in reality, the end of the world.

Maybe it’s just the beginning of something. Like realizing you’re not the first one who finally became so exhausted by something that you just had to let it go. As my Conservative Ohio Matron Turned California Hippie Mother observed (ad nauseum): “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

And that is, I suppose, all I have to say about that…whatever it was I was saying.