Utterly Clueless Males, Wake Up to What the Women In Your Life AREN'T Saying!

Ladies, you can read this one for the nodding, but this is directed primarily toward men (although teenage and adult female children can pay attention too). Ladies, you can even ask the males in your life if they’d read something written by a man that is important to you, and then show it to them. And if any of them still have a problem with it afterwards, they’re probably either selfish piggish morons or it has hit SO close to home they can’t quite assimilate it yet.

Men, here’s the holiday fantasy she doesn’t tell you: She’s busy in the kitchen in her apron, and members of her family, instead of being completely self-absorbed, instead come through from time to time and notice that she’s busy making some delicate, time sensitive, dish. Seeing this, they go to the sink and start washing a dish or two, or offer to take out the trash, or even take the giant turkey out of the oven since it seems to weigh an extra hundred pounds or so after it's steaming hot.

Cut. Woman shakes her head of that fantasy and goes back to working hard on the holiday meal.

Take Two: She’s busy in the kitchen and the family (and maybe even some extended family) sit down at the island to keep her company and say "Here, let me chop that onion for you."

Cut. Woman huffs away that fantasy, swallows some resentment, and goes back to working.

Take Three: Her husband comes in and says "I've cleaned off the porch because I noticed it needed it. I also cleaned the bathroom and ran the vacuum since you are so busy in here. How do you still look so beautiful when you are working so hard?"

Cut. The choking bile in her throat now drives that fantasy clean away.

The fantasy movie in her head can’t compete with the reality show. She’ll slave away for two days, 14 hour ones. No one offers to help her do anything, despite everyone supposedly knowing that shared work not only goes faster, but goes better and with far less resentment. After all the no help, the passive aggressive housewife in her is more than ready to go shopping and buy herself something(s). Maybe Black Friday has an additional cause after all…

Recognize yourselves yet, fellas? If you don’t, you’re probably lying to yourself. I know I have been guilty in the past of the above. We men seem to have a disconnected circuit about that endlessly repeated scene. What is obvious, PAINFULLY, maddeningly, agonizingly obvious to her, is a mind scatoma to you, my fellow male. Sure, we can offer up explanations—we are finally relaxing from too much outside work, or are exhibiting our own exhaustion, or it’s a habit from our own upbringing, or we were being unintentionally thoughtless or lazy, or that we might admit we are being selfish, etc. But all that doesn't matter a great deal, and sounds like weak sauce excuses anyway. The point is that this needs correction! We men need to get on the stick (or, as my dad would say, "get your head out of your ass, boy!"). Time for we males to smell the overwhelming coffee aroma!

Do you know that females often discuss that they are the ones who keep the holiday traditions alive, and that in this day and age of so much stress on them, all that boils in the bitterness cauldron? As if we needed to add anything else to problems between women and their husbands and families. For meals are not the only thing they feel most of the burden about: the tree, the decorations, presents wrapping (even for ones not from them!), the holiday lights, cleaning up the associated messes, etc.

You know why they don’t speak up to us? Because we usually respond with anger in some fashion, or dismiss them as bitchy, PMS, hormonal, mental, or about to have a nervous breakdown because no, NO way can their resentment be about what they say it is. So they go quiet and just do most all of it themselves, but it only adds more to that giant kettle of bitterness. Especially when they remember that anything we DO happen to do, we have to point it out endlessly to her and everybody, as if we need a medal for our usually minimalist effort (or at least minimalist compared to how much she’s been doing). And then one day we are “surprised” when it boils over into real trouble.

Hazel Henderson once came to my house and sat down and explained to me over coffee that there is SO much work that women do that is VERY vital, yet doesn’t reflect in the crude and incomplete measurements of “goods and services of the Gross National Product.” In fact, if women didn’t do so much of this unpaid work, the society could not function. That little talk was eye-opening for me.

Maledom: Next holiday meal, be man enough to help. WITHOUT bitching like you were having to offer up a kidney. You might find the food even tastes better. Perceiving, appreciating, and working together have a way of doing that...