Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

I've learned an important lesson and wanted to share it with all you ladies...

I used to be the kind of girl who never had girlfriends... didn't see the use for them... they were catty and petty and I didn't want them.... I had enough guy friends.... boy was I making a mistake!!!

Guy friends are great, don't get me wrong but you'll always need friends of both gender. If you block out one you are missing an entire support system that you may need later in life.

Here's what I see as the fundamental difference between guy friends and girl friends:

If you want a problem solved, bring it to a man. When you go to a man w/ a problem he views it as a cry for help and does what he can to fix it. Some are better than others. Some offer insight and some offer ice cream... but what ever it is they offer, they view it as a solution to your problem (or at least the answer that makes you stop crying).

If you just want someone to listen, bring it to a woman. She's not going to try to fix your problem (unless you ask her to)... her job is to listen, relate, tell you her story of when she went thru the same thing... make you laugh if you are crying... offer to kick the crap out of the person who upset you... bring up past experiences you've shared when trying to make a big decision... but if you call a woman crying and say you just want to talk, she'll get that and just let you rant, even if it's 3 am.

So many women run into problems when they don't understand this concept. If you bring a problem to a man and all you wanted was someone to listen to you rant for a few minutes then you're just going to be frustrated in the end... he's going to start telling you what he sees is the problem and how to fix it... you may already know the fix... you many not even want to fix it... you were just upset and wanted to rant... well then you should have brought it to a woman.

On the other hand, if you bring a problem to a woman and you want someone to make the decision for you then you'll be equally as frustrated. You'll spend hours on the phone weighing options, going over past experiences, hearing related stories and getting advice... what you won't get is someone who'll tell you what to do or offer to do it for you.

Apparently I'm not the first or only person to come to this conclusion. Apparently it's one of the points in the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Maybe I should have read it when it was recommended to me years ago and it wouldn't have taken me so long to realize this. Thanks Patrick for trying...