Red Green's Beginner's Guide to Women
Page 18
Sound impossible? Not to an experienced husband, or “lifer,” as they’re known in the business.
To achieve this seemingly impossible result will require a certain amount of gamesmanship on your part. And not just any gamesmanship: I’m talking about the kind of subtle strategy used by master chess players. I’ll use a chess game as an analogy for two reasons. First, because it’s the closest physical representation of the “bait and switch” approach so necessary to successful negotiation, and second, because I wanted to show you that I know the word analogy.
Let’s say you want to spend this coming Saturday fishing with your friend Ted. Your wife, on the other hand, wants you to go shopping with her to get a new washing machine. So this is how it looks at the start of your chess game.
You have the first move. You mention that Ted asked you to go fishing on Saturday but you told him you can’t because the two of you are going shopping for a washer. Chess equivalent: King’s Pawn to King 3.
Her move. She answers, “That’s right. Maybe you can go with Ted another time. We’ll see.” Chess equivalent: King’s Pawn to King 4.
You mention that you’ve been researching washers, and as environmentally responsible adults, you think you should buy a high-efficiency unit that uses much less water and detergent. Chess equivalent: King’s Bishop to Queen’s Bishop 4.
She agrees and compliments you on your opinion. Chess equivalent: Queen’s Pawn to Queen 3. (She wanted to go to Queen 4, but your bishop prevents that.)
Your move. You say how glad you are that she feels the same way. The high-efficiency units start at around $1,500 which means you’ll have to cut back in other areas, but we all have to be prepared to sacrifice to save the planet. Chess equivalent: Queen to King’s Rook 5.
“Fifteen hundred dollars?! Wow. That’s a lot of money. Maybe we should think it over.” Chess equivalent: King’s Knight to King’s Bishop 3 (putting your queen at risk).
Your move. The phone rings. Your wife answers. It’s Ted’s wife, asking her to spend Saturday at the spa since Ted is going fishing. She comes off the phone and announces a change of plans and hopes you have a great time with Ted on Saturday. She never needs to know that you arranged the phone call. Chess equivalent: Queen to King’s Bishop 7, taking her pawn. Checkmate.
FORGIVE AND FORGET? FORGET IT
I’ve heard that there are people in this world who can forgive and forget, who can bury the hatchet, who can let bygones be bygones, but I can’t honestly say I’ve ever met any of them. Most people pretend to forgive, but they never forget, and even if they bury the hatchet it’s in a very shallow grave. For them, bygones are “are heres.” There are two main reasons for that: 1) normal people aren’t that nice and 2) we are instinctively programmed neither to forgive nor forget. It has to do with survival.
It’s important that you learn from anything that doesn’t kill you. So if somebody does something that hurts you, if you can forgive and forget, you’re no further ahead.
Rather than be upset with someone who won’t forgive and forget, I suggest you look at the reality of the situation. You did something wrong or dangerous or both and put that person at risk, so when you ask them to forgive and forget, you’re asking them to put themselves at risk again, and this time, with a person who’s already proven themselves to be unreliable. So basically, you’re asking them to be an idiot. And you’re offended when they refuse.
Of course, all of this is a precursor to what I really want to talk about, which is that—and please pay attention here—your wife will never forgive and forget. Let me rephrase that: she will never forgive. She may forget what happened specifically, but she knows better than to forgive, even if she can’t remember what it is she’s not forgiving you for.
I’ve heard stories about couples who’ve been married for over twenty-five years and in the heat of an argument she will bring up hurtful things that he did or said between their first and second dates. I’m telling you this not as a criticism of women. Quite the opposite. I’m telling you that women are more suited for survival. The ability to forgive and forget has caused a lot of injuries and may be the reason so many animals are extinct. If, instead of forgiving and forgetting a harsh winter, they used their anger and memory to move to a warmer climate, they might still be with us.
So before you do something that you know is going to cause problems at home, you need to accept that whatever the fallout is, it will go on forever. I’ve heard husbands in that situation say, “She’ll get over it,” and yes she will, but that’s not the point. She’ll make sure you’ll never get over it. Thirty-five years later, when you do something completely unrelated or make a comment that in no way refers to what we’ll call “the incident,” she will throw it back onto the table like it happened an hour ago.
You are married to a queen. When you please her, her favour will smile on you for a day or so. When you displease her, a part of you will be banished for all of eternity. It’s her way of trying to make you a better man. I know how annoying that is for you.
BLUE BOOK VALUE
If you’ve ever been in a position where you suddenly have a vehicle to sell, either because you bought another car or you’ve had a financial setback or the vehicle in question is on fire, you will soon become uncomfortably aware of what they call “blue book value.”
This is supposed to be an objective market valuation of your vehicle given its age, mileage and condition. It’s usually good news for the buyer and bad news for the seller. I’m not sure how the blue book concept got started, but my suspicions are that sellers had unrealistic ideas of what their cars were worth. It’s hard to believe that a vehicle you still owe ten thousand dollars on is valued at seven hundred bucks.
The whole premise of the market-value approach is to educate both parties so that mistakes made by the seller do not get transferred on to an unsuspecting buyer. It’s really a way to clean up the used car business, which, up until about twenty years ago, really needed it.
Personally, I’ve had both positive and negative experiences from this approach, but overall I’d say it’s good to have a consistent, reliable way of measuring what a vehicle is worth. The truth is we sometimes need a wake-up call, a reminder of the true value of things. It’s an outside-in approach that doesn’t come naturally to many of us. And I’m saying that it’s a worthwhile exercise, not just for our possessions, but for ourselves.
Maybe at this point you’ve been married for fifteen years or more and you have a conception about which one of you has retained their appeal in the open free market. It’s important that you find out the facts. You need to see the blue book value of both yourself and your wife. Chances are you think she’s lost a lot of value since you took her off the lot, while you, on the other hand, have retained, if not increased, your original sticker price. You need to find out if all of that is true because, in time, your perception of those relative values will impact your relationship.
Here’s what to do. Ask your wife to meet you at a busy restaurant for dinner at six o’clock. Tell her you’re pretty sure you can be there by six, but just in case, she should just go to the bar and wait for you if you’re not there. You arrive at the restaurant at 5:45, but sit near the back in a dark corner where nobody can see you, but you can see the bar. You’ll see your wife come in and look around for you and then sit at the bar and wait. Watch what happens.
Do men speak to her? Do they offer to buy her a drink? Pay no attention to her response. It’s irrelevant and will only hurt your feelings. You need to focus on what the men are doing. Are they trying to include her in their conversation? Are they moving closer? When you’ve seen enough, slip out the back door and then re-enter the restaurant and have a big, juicy hello and be damn glad she’s with you.
And what’s even more important, you need to return to the same restaurant a few days later by yourself. Sit at the bar and try to make conversation with women who are alone, as your wife was. You need to focus on the women’s response.
Do they try to engage in a conversation? Or do they pretend someone they knew just drove by on a motorcycle and then rush out to chase them?
Now, don’t get me wrong: this is not an exercise to show you how disappointing your blue book value is. It’s to make you thankful that you’re not for sale.
A BETTER MAN
Who can forget Jack Nicholson’s classic line from As Good As It Gets: “You make me want to be a better man”? This could be the most dangerous sentence ever said by a man out loud. The reason it’s so diabolical is that it’s the sentence women most want to hear, and it’s also the sentence men least want to say.
Women want to hear it because they see their man as a project, a work in progress. They know he will change and they accept that. But if they do nothing he may change for the worse. So if they try to make him better, he will at least remain somewhat the same. Men, on the other hand, don’t want anybody or anything to change. It confuses them. They want their wives to look and act exactly the same as the day they met them. Regardless of anything the man might do to negatively influence the woman’s appearance, behaviour or attitude. Especially attitude.
Men reject change. Expecting, wanting or forcing him to change works in direct opposition to his misguided instincts. And even if a guy wants to be a better man, that doesn’t necessarily make things better. That’s because a husband’s idea of what a better man is will probably be a lot different than his wife’s. A man thinks a better man is more manly. Just like him, only more so. Bigger, stronger, more assertive, more aggressive, with more testosterone. Whereas his wife thinks to be a better man he needs to be more feminine. Kinder, gentler, more caring, more sensitive, with more estrogen.
For me, the basis of any disagreement between men and women is expressed when they stand face to face and ask each other, “Why can’t you be more like me?” When a man and woman are similar, all of the problems go away. However, they are also an incredibly boring couple and run the risk of being murdered by their friends. That’s because nature thrives on difference. It needs opposing forces to survive. From the fertilization of seeds to the orbits of the planets, it’s opposing forces that make it all work.
So here we are in an environment defined by our need to be different, trying to fulfill an innate desire for the other person to be the same. There’s no hope for peace, but maybe we can reach a truce. If each partner tries to be like the other while simultaneously accepting each other’s need to be different, throw in a little alcohol once in a while and maybe we can make this thing work.
THE KINETIC CONNECTION
Whenever I see a car sitting in a driveway with a big pink bow stuck on the windshield, I immediately start worrying about the guy who bought it. That’s because this is wrong on oh, so many levels.
He’s obviously bought this vehicle as a surprise for his wife. Okay, first question: Why would he buy her something that expensive? Is it love? Maybe. Is it guilt? Now you’re talking.
And why would he buy her something that expensive and then make it a surprise? Because he thinks she would really like a fully loaded Rambler American convertible? No. He’s not thinking at all. He’s assuming. He’s taking what he would like and projecting that onto his wife.
That’s how he got into trouble in the first place. The odds are pretty good that his wife is going to see this thing in the driveway and think bad thoughts. Like “This guy just spent a whole bunch of our money on something I don’t even care about and he did it without discussing it with me and now we have no money to buy anything I would actually enjoy.”
And to top it off, he’s expecting her to squeal with excitement and hug and kiss him like he’s somebody else. None of that is likely to happen. My guess is within an hour she’ll be reading a book in a locked bedroom and he’ll be trying to feed a large pink bow to a garbage disposal.
It’s hard to know where to start on this issue, but let’s go with the different attitudes on cars. Most men love cars. They name them. They personalize them. They see them as an extension of their personality and manhood. Whereas women see them as cars. A woman looks at a car the way a man looks at a stove. They have a purpose and some are better than others, but overall it’s not something personal. And when you’re getting a woman a gift, it should always be something personal.
To understand the difference in the way the two sexes look at cars, you have to examine the way they feel about any kind of movement. Men love movement. As kids, they love to watch wheels go around and see big trucks go down the road. As mature adults, they love to watch wheels go around and see big trucks go down the road. Similarly, men will sit and watch a construction site or a roofing job or water running out of a hose for hours on end.
Women don’t do that. Women feel they need to be doing something. They need to accomplish something. Men feel that something needs to get done. Something needs to be accomplished. But they don’t have to be the ones doing it. That’s why they like to see really powerful, efficient machinery at work. Because it compensates for their inertness and raises the overall productivity level without them having to contribute. For a man, that is a sweet feeling.
I’m not suggesting you fight these differences or even try to change them. I’m saying you need to accept them and you need to acknowledge them when you’re making a gift selection. Here’s a bulletin: when you buy a gift for your wife, it doesn’t matter how much you like it. Instead, try to study her for hints as to what she’s interested in and would enjoy. If that requires more sensitivity than your skill level can handle, ask a friend for suggestions. A female friend.
Don’t just buy a set of pneumatic tools that you’ve always had your eye on and then wrap a big pink bow around them.
THE MAGIC OF GPS
Earlier in this book, I described how you can make travelling more pleasant by customizing the passenger seat so it faces backwards. But maybe that’s too much work for you, or there’s some other negative component that we’d both rather not go into. So for you, I recommend a modern miracle that can make driving long distances with your wife a positive experience for all. Of course, I’m talking about a GPS.
Now, I’m not exactly sure how GPS works. I thought at first that it had some magical way of sensing exactly where it is at each second and can then not only relay that location to you, but also help you get where you want to go. I have found out since that the GPS is only capable of finding satellites, not locations. Satellites are easier to find because they don’t move and you’re not involved in any way with telling the GPS where those satellites are. Once it finds the satellites, the rest is just software. By comparing the various angles of the satellite signals it can figure out its own location and then stick that on a map for you to see.
Same deal when you punch in a location. The GPS is programmed with all the roads that will take you from your current coordinates to the destination’s coordinates. It’s impersonal and deadly accurate. The exact opposite of your wife—except for the deadly part.
So now you have in your car the one thing that kills all arguments: an expert. Somebody who knows what they’re talking about. In your life, you’re not going to meet many such people. And neither are they.
Your only obstacle is that your wife may not trust the GPS, or she may prefer to travel without using it. It’s very important that you win this particular argument, even if you lose a hundred others. You need your wife to accept the GPS as a feature that makes for a safer, more efficient driving experience. You’re going to get where you’re going in the best possible way, and it removes from her the onus of navigating.
You’ve got all the evidence on your side, and let’s hope and pray that’s enough. Because the GPS not only eliminates arguments between the two of you, it also removes the possibility of taking some bizarre side trip to visit the Bee Museum. GPS is like a man: it needs to know where it is, it needs to know where it’s going, and it needs to go there.
Once you have her convinced, it’s very important which voice you select to gi
ve you directions. Make sure it’s a woman’s voice. She doesn’t need another male voice in the car pretending he knows what he’s doing. But don’t choose just any female voice. For example, a woman with a French accent telling you what moves to make is not going to sit well with your better half. Find a woman’s voice that’s as close as possible to hers. And then just sit back and enjoy.
The GPS will be giving the orders, not your wife. And there’s a huge difference. The GPS will say everything the same way—there are no tone issues. If you make a mistake, the GPS will just say “recalculating” rather than call you harsh names. The GPS will constantly update your expected arrival time so you’ll know how long you have to be civil to each other.
And the best part is you’ll never have to remember how you got anywhere, because while your wife is asleep in the back seat, the GPS will still be perky and capable of getting you home.
MASTERING THE EVASIVE ANSWER
As a man growing up in a world where expectations of excellence are placed upon you, it is absolutely natural to adopt a keen, competitive approach. Even if you can’t be the best, as long as you can beat somebody, you won’t be the worst.
While this competitiveness may be necessary and even desirable on the playing field or in the world of commerce, it has no place in a successful relationship. It is not in your best interest to beat your wife at anything, even if you could.