Presto Change-O

Men can often come off as emotional black-holes. This has been the case in our culture for a long time now. Everyone knows that the guys always just want the quick hook up and that the girls always get attached, right? This notion is such bullshit that I have decided to blow the lid off of our whole cover. Here it is: Every man out there is a giant pussy. I don't care who you are or what you have been through; if you have balls, you are a pussy. The thing is, it takes a very specific set of circumstances to bring this fact to light. Guys, just to keep things in perspective; if you picture her fucking someone else and it bothers you, she's already making a baby out of you.

For most people, there is nothing wrong with that feeling. This is how a real relationship usually starts. It doesn't start on the first date or the first time a couple has sex. It doesn't start the first time you get jealous or have a stupid fight. Just because a couple has come to terms with the fact that they are not allowed to fuck other people, it doesn't mean that there is trust on either end. A real relationship starts when being vulnerable feels good. Most relationships don't reach that point due to the fact that most couples spend the majority of their time bullshitting each other and thinking of ways to cope if the other should do something fucked up. Most relationships are like a tandem magic show. Each magician flourishes and deceives the other into believing the legitimacy of each illusion. Most couples break up at a point well before the smoke and mirrors have been cleared and packed away. Others break up after someone glimpses the wire attached to the levitating assistant. Still others stay together after the show to become bored with their off-stage counterparts. Through all of this, real trust is seldom forged.

I have personally reached a point in my life at which vulnerability never fully feels good, and that fact has played a part in turning me into the callous asshole you have been coming to know over the past months. I am not the only one, though. This has happened to countless people and there are new recruits every day. These people have not been purged of emotion or vulnerability; they just keep it so guarded that most will never see it in its full manifestation. It seems that men are quicker to reach this point and become able to compartmentalize the things they want from people. This does not make us less emotionally vulnerable or complex than women; it only makes us harder to reach. Women, just know this: Once you strike a nerve, we can become blubbering pansies as quickly as you can become jealous of a hot waitress with awesome tits.

As an example to prove my angle on this whole thing I want you to envision this scenario: We have a couple (for the sake of this exercise we'll assume it's a guy/girl couple). The guy has a pretty bad cold. We men have a reputation for being total babies when we're sick, but that's not completely true. I'm about to blow up another of our trade secrets. A single sick dude will plow through the day as if he doesn't even know that he feels any different. He will go to work, then come home and play video games and eat some shitty food and then jerk off and go to sleep and then do it all again the next day. The guy with the girlfriend approaches the scenario very differently. A sick dude with a girlfriend becomes a soccer player in the last seconds of a game who gets tripped in the box and needs to draw a card for any chance of tying. With no formal training in drama or theater, a man with a cold can make his girlfriend believe that she could lose him forever to the next embellished sneezing fit. I know this because I am a man and I am no less guilty of this than anyone else. But don't get mad at us for this. While it seems like it's just a ploy for attention, what it really is is a ploy for attention and affection. The cold is the perfect excuse for a guy to stop being macho and let you stroke his head until he falls asleep on your chest like the squishy little baby he really is. Women never need to employ this tactic due to the fact that they are consistently open about their need for affection.

The fact is that some of us, male and female, have done a great job of burying these desires under layers of doubt, distrust, and overall apathy. Some of us have buried this stuff so deep that it would take an oil drill and a pumpjack to extract it. Having things tucked so snugly away can be at the same time empowering and depressing. It's nice to be able to snap your fingers and almost magically stop giving a shit about something, but sometimes such emotional solitude brings dark thoughts. It doesn't take away from one's empathy the way you might think, but it does occasionally stymie one's natural inclination for self-preservation. For this reason, I think it's of paramount importance to try to understand how your own mind works; otherwise you invariably develop self destructive behaviors and habits. I'll stop that train of thought just because I don't want this post to turn into a "How to be an Asshole" clinic.

This whole post stemmed from a conversation I had yesterday. I realized during that conversation that despite the wealth of experience and knowledge we have of how people really work, we still fall back on the old stand-up comedy versions of how men and women work. I'm not a psychologist or a human behavioral expert by any means; I'm just going on my appraisal of what I have seen in people thus far. I think that the reason we accept these simplified synopses of our emotional standings is that it is just easier than actually trying to figure ourselves and each other out.