How I think......Men vs. Women

Hi folks, I hope everyone's Winter Solstice/Lunar Eclipse night went well :)

I've been away from blogging again, and this time all I can say is that I just didn't feel like writing about what I was thinking. As is the norm, I've been going over and over in my mind things that are happening, gaining fresh perspectives, and in the case of recent events, gaining a completely new thought process.

This is one of the hardest things I've ever written about, because it will expose what goes on in my mind, the part of me that no one else but me can see, and I guess that makes me feel a little vulnerable, I don't know if I want anyone to see those parts of me, my innermost thoughts, because I don't want to look like some kind of freak. But I'd rather get it out than to try to cover it up, it's too big of a deal to me, and if I don't write about it, it's just going to eat at me until I do, so here goes.......

For as long as I can remember, at least since I was pubescent, I have always treated women differently in my thoughts than I did men. I don't know if it is partially due to genetic programming, or my upbringing, but regardless of the reasons, when I interact with a woman, or think about a woman, my thoughts are completely different than they are about men. I mentioned in a post not too long ago about the duality of my thoughts, and that's when it hit me, in addition to having a few discussions with a few friends. It's not a duality of thought, it's a completely different thought process between the sexes. With men, I feel little in the way of emotions, I care little for how they take what I say or do, I figure "it's a dude, he can handle it". I can be talking to a man, stranger or friend, and I'm completely logical, with very little in the way of an emotional filter, I don't base my thoughts or actions in the fear of how he will feel about me. But have a woman, any woman, walk up and start conversing with me, and it's like someone flipped a switch, I become a completely different person. All of a sudden, here comes the emotion, I care very deeply about what she thinks, my whole persona changes. My friend at work described it as me turning into a pushover, or "doormat", and my thought was "wet noodle". It's complicated but yet so simple. The thoughts are hard to describe, and since I've done it for so long, it's become "normal" for me, it never even entered my mind that all men don't think the same way when it involves the opposite sex. I even had the idea that I "love" all women, and apparently that was nothing more than my deep rooted concern for women to like me, even love me, every one of them that I interacted with I would be silently sizing up for compatibility. Every single one, and it didn't matter if they were single, married, older, younger, nothing changed the thought process, all I could do is see them as a potential mate. Granted, there are exceptions, but you get the idea. Imagine living your life where every member of the opposite sex is sized up for opportunities to make them your mate, every interaction is processed with intricate detail, every nuance of body language and conversation is analyzed with excruciating precision to wring every last ounce of emotional signals from it, some of it done unconsciously, but most of it consciously, to ensure that this particular person likes you and the interaction goes well. That's the gist of it, every single time, every woman, no one is left out, and up until about a week ago I didn't even realize I was doing it.

Think about men, think one way. Think about women, and it's almost like I am a different person. That's who I am. Two extremes, with no balance. As you can imagine, having that thought process also means that all the people I consider to be my closest friends are women, not men. There's just no emotional attachment to men. And to treat a woman like she's "one of the guys"? Never. I can't do it. All the emotion is on one side, with women, and the men get little to none, only logic, effect follows cause, and therein lies my solution to this problem.

All I have to do is balance the equation, to see everyone in my mind equally, regardless of gender. It's really simple "on paper". In practice, I've found it a little more difficult. I have told myself countless times already to treat everyone the same, and even gone so far as to try to see if I could think about the women as if they were men, and it's having an effect. I'm seeing how the thought process makes my actions and what I say completely different, I'm learning to allay any fears of what someone thinks, I'm losing that thought process of worry, the constant craving for female attention. If it really doesn't matter what someone else thinks of me, if everyone is treated the same in my basic thought processes, then I can finally be free to be my true self to everyone. Up until now, only the men got to see that. I was really that worried, my thoughts were so ingrained to that mentality that most if not all women have never truly met "Me". And that's also why I'm finding this subject so hard to write about, I'm worried that once the women know how I've thought in my mind, that they will hate me, and see me as some kind of pervert or something. That's not who I am, and I needn't worry, but the thoughts creep in nonetheless.

So to put it all together, I know now what has been my achilles heel. I know why I do what I do, I know what makes me "tick". My personal interactions have always baffled me, I could never get a grip on why I did some of the insane things I did that defied logic, and now I know why, it's because there was no logic to be found when it came to thinking about and interacting with women. All the emotion was on their "side", all the logic on the side with the men. To give myself balance, I need to therefore put both together with all people, with no segregation, and I have made conscious efforts to do just that. It won't change overnight, but with practice I'm confident I will emerge a different person altogether, more secure, and most importantly, more balanced. I'm giving men more emotional consideration, and women more logic.

The way I've presented this is not completely the way it all works in my mind, I can't really explain all the specifics, but this has been the condensed version of the process as it works. There have been many instances where I have used emotional thinking with men, and logical thinking with women, but for the vast majority of time, it's been like I've said here. I don't know how I'll come out in the end, but as the saying goes, "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes".