I am not a good listener.

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I come into things with preconceived notions and pretty much stick with those. I can be 'learned', but you best have a good grip on logic and even wisdom. If you are weak in logic or sureness, or are too sure, you will likely have me laugh you off the podium. I prefer action to talking. Either do something or do not, but discussing a problem has never lead to a solution as I have seen things. Talking might, and I do mean might, lead to action. Action which might solve the problem. And, when you add women in as the ones who wish to talk, my patience ends about as soon as she begins speaking.

I think the sexes ought, probably, to be segregated for that reason alone. Men to go off and do things and solve problems, women to talk about problems or create problems through discussion that never existed before and will never be solved in any case. Which, actually, is pretty much what happens wherever one finds oneself in the world. Americans do it one way, Europeans do it another, and all cultures seem to have a means of keeping the sexes apart, bringing them together mostly to mate.

I am always surprised to hear men and women say that their partner is their best friend. I have to think there is some grain of truth in there. I know a few couples who are almost inseparable, in more ways then one (I am not discussing the kissy face clingers here either). They think as one, are always together, and act as one. The she becomes slightly more masculine, the he becomes slightly more feminine, and they take turns finishing each other's sentences. But I still feel that these types, usually childless or empty nesters, are an aberration of either age or natural cycle. In other words, it only works if family creation has failed or ended, only sometimes then, and is not an approach plausible for a developing family.

I am not certain about all this, or more about how this all works. But I do not think men and women can really be friends as they set about creating a family. The realities of body, chemistry, social interaction, intellectual function, and possibly spiritual realities cannot allow for other than a hierarchy favoring male dominance. Anything else is a modern remake of past failed social experiments.

I suppose that is why, when a woman sets about to discuss how to help men be men, I cannot be bothered to look more into the details. Even if she happens to be on target... La lalalala I cannot hear you. Take no offense, just understand some men need no help being men. If I knew her better, I might send her flowers though. Something about the notion that it is the thought that counts.