SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

My girlfriend and I were rolling around in the sand drinking bottles of Les Petites baby Evian (yes Evian makes baby Evian, for some reason, we found this uncontrollably hilarious) enjoying the salty air and the clear summer sky and realized we had nothing that legitimate to complain about. Then we remembered we were always pissed off at men.

My girlfriend went on to describe how she felt perpetually unsatisfied in the relationship she was in. Nothing was inherently wrong, per se. She just couldn’t remember why this person deserved her body or time. More importantly, she was positive he couldn’t remember why. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was this nagging feeling that she was getting the short end of the stick, disappearing into unappreciative void, being taken for granted, gagging on emotional quicksand.

Then she broke out with,

“Dude, I just want to be cherished. Why doesn’t he cherish me?”

We then proceeded to make a longwinded series of jokes about how we could make sure our future husbands never got lazy in their life purpose of making us feel worshipped.

Tattooing “Adore Her” on his wrist where his watch should be?

An electroshock wedding ring that stimulated the part of the brain that produces loving compliments at two hour intervals?

Making Madonna’s Cherish song his ringtone?

While I personally am the type that’s more likely to complain about feeling smothered rather than under-cherished, I could partially relate to her whining. Why is it that the men who are so gallant, well-mannered, well-organized, thoughtful, kind, and gentlemanly when they’re pursuing you revert to ill-mannered mongrels once they’ve conquered you?

This is why women get bitchy in stable relationships. Every time a guy doesn’t do the things it he did in courtship, he makes us feel like we’ve made a mistake in choosing him. And women hate to be wrong. Especially, when we have no one to blame but ourselves. It’s pretty simple:

Guys, imagine you’re at a power tool show room. There’s a super cool drill that you’re thinking of buying to install surround sound speakers and a HUGE plasma on your living room wall, where you’ll proceed to watch the best porn of your life and be permanently content in your existence. The salesman in the showroom shows you all the drill’s features – different speeds, different functionalities, battery power and after really thinking things through, you purchase the thing. Once you get it home in your living room, it fails to work and your dreams of a content existence are shattered.

Wouldn’t you be upset?

Wouldn’t you feel cheated?

Wouldn’t you get angry?

Wouldn’t you want to pick fights about life’s small details in a hormonal rage?

And most importantly, wouldn’t you want to smash the non-functional drill into pieces and slap around the manipulative salesman that tricked you into buying it?

Yeah, see men, that’s how we feel about you once you fail to continuously provide the esteem and admiration you demonstrated during courtship.

I asked a male about this over white wine on Monday night. He said that it’s so much more difficult for men to emotionally open up than it is for women. When they do, it’s a huge accomplishment. They feel like they’ve given you SO much that all the other little things (holding open doors, getting out of bed to walk you to a cab) just seem trivial. While to us ladies, these things are far from trivial because failing to perform them gives us buyer’s remorse. And when we feel like we’ve erred, we’re sure as Hell not pretty, and probably fail to have any resemblance to the creature you picked up in our metaphorical show room as well.

Solution?

I dunno. Meet somewhere halfway? Women, expect a downgrade in treatment as things normalize and just try to relish in the fact that he’s not being the emotional equivalent of a rock? Men, try to pretend that you don’t know we like you back yet, even when you do?

Yuck. Sounds like game playing might be the way to go.