Relationships…

Okay.. I am fully aware that this is an extremely cliche topic to write about, but I am seriously hoping that I don’t have to repeat myself over and over again with the same advice for all the friends I have out there who happened to be boyfriends of other female friends of mine. Now I wish all of you can be happy together and can work things out, so I’m dedicating this blog entry to you all.. I will be making some examples with their problems I’ve heard about but since I don’t want to upset people so I won’t mention any names.. and hope to god they can’t figure out who’s whom.

One of the most common things that I hear from these boyfriends is this: “I’ve put in so much effort, yet she’s still not happy.” I don’t care what you did for her, maybe you bought her flowers, but it’s not her favorite kind so she whines; maybe you tried to stay for an extra hour or two at her place at night and may have to face some yelling from parents later, but she’s still giving you the same pouting look as usual; maybe you traveled for quite some time to just see her or drove her all the time to places and she takes you for granted.. it all doesn’t matter. The bottom line you need to realize is that the effort you put out does not equate to the amount of appreciation you’ll receive from the girl. I know it sounds harsh, but let’s face it, when do you actually get exactly what you feel you deserve based on the effort you’ve put in? Let’s stop talking about relationship for a second here, think about anything else that you’ve been working on.. whether if it’s that assignment you’ve coffeed up all night on or that game you’ve tried a million times but can’t pass the level with or the special footwork in some sport that you play and you can’t seem to figure out how over some tries, the amount of effort you devote into the activity never equate to what you actually achieve in the end. If you’ve never tried asking your professor why you didn’t get a higher mark on this exam even though you’ve tried harder than so-and-so, then why should you bother asking me why your girlfriend is not happy when you think you’ve put in more effort this time?

What you CAN do, is rather to ask yourself if it is worth your effort or not. In order to do this, you need to know yourself quite well, you need to know your girlfriend quite well, you need to have some foresight and you also need to remember not to regret. So, to really do this, you need you ask yourself one simple question before doing anything for this girl: is it worth it even though she might not like the flowers to surprise her at her door? I’m starting with a rather simple one here but please bare with me with the steps to follow. The question is simple to ask, but the way you analyze this is not so simple. You first need to think in terms of actually doing this: you’ll need to leave your house a bit earlier, prepare a few more bucks in your pocket, do a bit of research about what kind of flowers you think will suit her, and drop in at a flower store before heading to her place. Alright, so let’s call this part “if I do it what will be my effort”. You then think about what you’ll end up with this effort: there could be multiple results, but I’ll summarize to two extremes. Let’s call this part the “returns”. She is surprised and loves the flowers you brought her, makes out with you and you two begin a very happy date together. She is surprised and hates the flower you picked out and starts bitching at you the entire time during the date. When I say in order to do this, you need to know yourself and the girlfriend quite well, I mean it, and heres why: you now need to decide which one of these situations you’ll receive with the effort. Most of the times, the boyfriends automatically assume it’ll be the first scenario, but honestly, girls are harder to impress in these most of the times situations, so it’ll come in between the extremes.

Now, keep noted of this “if I do it what will be my effort and returns” and move on to “if i don’t do it what will be my effort and returns”. In this section, there is a major concern that I need to break out to you, in relationships, there comes to times where the girl expects certain things so they cry and nag about it when they realize that the expectation has just failed. (Boyfriends expect other things in relationships, so I don’t feel it’s uneven at all..) Back to the analysis, if you don’t do it, you leave at usual time, you arrive with no flowers and pretty much you put in no extra effort this round. The returns as a result is also rather simple, she gets no surprise and you two begin on a rather usual date. This is fine unless you’ve mentioned or hinted that you might be giving her a surprise sometimes soon or you’ve raised the expectations from your girlfriend by showering her with gifts so she’s spoiled enough to be expecting flowers on dates. This expectation comes with a price, it makes her passionate about dating you and looking forward to the surprises you bring her, so if you did not meet that expectation, expect something rather unpleasant from her as a result. So to sum it up, if you don’t do it, more likely for a guy who’d think about a situation to bring your girlfriend flowers on dates, you should expect crying from her and comforting from you for the beginning of the date. NOW, the deciding part, is it worth it to do it or not after thinking about the two situations?

To bring or not to bring is rather a small dose of what I’m trying to explain. There were many cases that I’ve heard that almost ended the relationship simply because the boyfriend felt he’s done more than enough to keep her happy, yet she’s still not happy. The reason for almost all of these cases is because he didn’t feel it’s worth it in the end, but he’s already done what’s been done. When I tell them this, they reply with this expression: “Damn, I just shouldn’t have done anything in the first place.” Again, not doing anything at all also comes with a consequence: as I mentioned before, when involved in a relationship, the girl expects certain things from the boyfriend and when that expectation is not met time after time, problems may also arise, but under a different cause. That cause could be one of the following (just to give you a taste of the horrible things that may go wrong if you’re not doing anything) : she may feel that you don’t care about her, you don’t think she’s good enough for you, you are a player, you are cheating on her, you are gay, you are hiding something (you are on drugs, you are failing from school, you are going to jail.. etc), etc… You may think I’m going overboard with this list, but I’m really not, girls tend to think a lot and worry about a lot of the nonsense stuff in your head, but in the girl’s mind it makes total sense. Since you are trying to get into girls’ heads right now, I say, stop telling me that this is total nonsense, freak out about it, and become single.. instead of all that, think of ways to solve this.

For the boyfriends who already got himself into the crap hole of “I’ve put into so much effort already, but she’s still not happy”. You need to ask yourself, do you still want to continue this relationship? Is it worth it to continue even though you feel you’ve put in so much effort and she’s still not happy? I’m telling you right now that the answer is usually yes since you’ve already gone a long way and throwing all that away is plain stupid. You need to sit down, relax a bit, sleep for now. When you wake up, you’ll feel a lot less stressed and less heated. The reason I said you don’t want to throw it away is also because you should never end a relationship because of this reason: I’ve tried so hard, but she’s still not happy. Because that to me means you still care a lot about this girl, you just don’t know how to understand her and make her happy. Ultimately, if you care a lot about this girl, you do want to make her happy because making her happy will lead to your happiness. That being said, I’m a true believer in we’re all selfish beings, so why would you not want yourself to be happy? What I find in most people, not just boyfriends, is that when they’re upset, they tend to think of reasons/causes that made them upset and become more upset. In terms of boyfriends, for example, one simple matter of I can’t make my girlfriend happy even though I’ve tried so hard may lead to, she’s not the one for me, it’s not the right timing to date, we want separate things in life, then this boyfriend becomes so determined to be upset he wants to break up now because it seems to be the only solution to break free from all this stress. Again, when it’s time like these, go home and sleep.

Let’s assume it’s the next morning now (please make sure it’s the next morning or else you’d still be crazy minded and you won’t understand a word I’m writing here…), instead of reaching for the phone or go on the Internet, think about what would make you happy, and think of this in terms of the girl. I don’t mean this as in you need to think about her happiness, I’m saying this meaning that you’ll think of ways that she could do/say so that you’ll be happier. If you think about things like if I go to a stripe club right now with the guys, it’ll make me happier, then stop thinking and go back to sleep. (Okay, I’m being a little mean here, if you really want to go, then go, but just keep in mind that this is kinda equivalent to breaking up with her. If you want to do that, please refer to the last paragraph and label yourself a dumbass. Damn it, again I didn’t try to be mean..) If you do care about this girl and do like her, then after thinking through you’ll realize that there are a million things that she could say/do to make you feel better at this point. In order for that to happen, you need to understand girls. I know I just said you need to understand girls, and I also know that it’ll never happen.. so basically what I’m telling you to do is to do the impossible. But I do think that for every boyfriend out there, you should at least try to understand some aspects of this one girl, not all, just this one girl who you care about. One cannot understand all girls, but one can understand some aspects of one girl, that’s at least doable I think.

I’ve heard of boyfriends complain how they just have no clue why girls feel insecure and say they can’t trust them. I mean, I’m talking about boyfriends who are trustworthy friends, who’d do out of their way favors for others, who are will educated and well mannered, who do not have criminal records or even bad dating records. Then why do these girlfriends feel so insecure dating these nice guys. To explain this phenomenon, I need to first inform you that each girl is different (yea, no duh), so I can’t really tell you something that applies for one girl only. That being said, I’m going to approach this with a biological/social point of view. Let’s first ask ourselves, what’s the appropriate age range for a single woman? I’d say around 12~30. Anything below 12, consider yourself a pedophile, and anything above 30, I don’t know what to say but to bust out Feud’s theory. When we look at the appropriate age range for a single man, it pretty much ranges from puberty to the day before his death. If anything, the more mature the men are, the more attractive they become. A very different story on the women’s side. On top of this, the healthy age in my opinion for pregnancy is 25~35. I put the 25 bottom age there because I don’t know many educated women who are willing to give birth before the age of 25. The 35 is from online articles I’ve read about, you can read one if you’d like to confirm. If you are dating a girl similar to me, she’d want to be married for a year before giving birth to your child, which leaves the age range to 24~34. If this girl wants an ideal marriage and is not willing to rush into a marriage, then she’d want 2 years of dating experience with you, which then makes the age range 22~32. This leads to the conclusion that women ideally need to be in a relationship already by 22~32 if they want to have a child in the future. Now this doesn’t leave women that much time to be single, considering I’m 20 right now, I should be constantly dating and be involved in relationships in order to secure that possible child in my life in the very near future. If this does not pile up to some sense of insecurity, what will?

Another typical sentence I hear a lot is “Why are girls so picky and hard to impress?” Okay, again, I can say your girlfriend is simply bitchy or whatever, but I don’t want to specify to just one girl. Let’s again look at it in a biological perspective and ask this question: “How many children can one woman possibly give birth to?” (It’ll seem kind of random at first, but please bare with me, I promise I’ll link it back eventually) I’ll calculate it for you, if the woman received her very first period by the age of 12, by 35 she’ll be able to produce at least 276 eggs. This provides her with 276 chances to be pregnant, but wait, it takes one 10 months to give birth to one child.. so I’ll be generous here, I’ll round it off to 30 children because who knows if there might be twins and triplets odds lying around somewhere. For a men on the other hand, may contribute to become fathers of millions if not billions of children. I’m not going to research about how much sperm one can produce per second, but if you’ve taken sex education in high school, you should have a vague idea and confirm with me on this one. I’ve mentioned this because I think according to this, it should be clear why women are more picky when it comes to selecting the appropriate candidate for her uterus. In modern days, women can’t simply say I’m being picky about you because of anything remotely close related to her uterus, so it has to be the flowers, the dating location, the food, the hair, the whatever.

Now that if you understand or can now at least try to understand why girls feel insecure and are hard to impress, you should now ask yourself whether if you want to put up with that or not. Whatever your choice is, I just want to mention that back in the days, really really ancient days, when men need to hunt for food and live in coves, they did what they do best. They went around impregnating every woman they could possibly find. According to my Psychology professor, that didn’t go so well because they soon realized that the chances of their offspring actually gets delivered and carried on is very rare if they don’t take care of the women they’ve impregnated. Women are more vulnerable when they’re pregnant and they can’t go out to hunt for food, they need to be taking care of during labor. Once the baby is delivered, the woman can’t go out and hunt for food again, because they can’t take the baby with them and cannot leave them alone in the cove or else the baby will be food for some other bigger animal. So men needed to make a decision, they need to choose one woman to take care of so that their offspring will eventually be delivered and the generation will be carried on. This almost sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? I just need to add a “then they’ve lived happily ever after”. Now let’s relate to modern lives, men no longer need to suffer through the consequence of dying while hunting for food, for there’s something called job security; no longer need to live in a cove and help the woman to deliver the baby, for there’s more specialized procedure for better chances. What men now need to do should be much more simple and they should therefore have better chances landing on a good woman capable of living healthily and happily the rest of his life with. But men nowadays stress over the idea that women are hard to please.. I do feel guilty piling all that seemingly responsibilities on men, because I do realize that a large chunk of why women are hard to please is because they’re spoiled as modern day brats. But so are men, if women are spoiled because we’re living in the 20th century, why aren’t men spoiled? If women are hard to impress, then men are hard to impress as well. Then based on the fact that I’ve never heard of any of my female friends complaining about, “he’s so hard to impress I’m not sure what to get him for whatever event”.. I can only conclude that women try harder to impress men while men are lazy to match that.

Please don’t tell me a specific case where you’ve tried harder and your girlfriend does nothing in your opinion. If you feel that she’s lazy and you are doing all the work, ask yourself whether if it’s worth it or not and refer to the very first method I described. If spending time with her is simply enough to make you feel happy, then why ask for more? If seeing her happy makes you happy, then why don’t you put a smile on her face more often? If nothing you do make her happy yet you two are still together, then ask yourself what’s keep up the relationship going and if that’s worth it for you, then be it.

To summarize: effort does not equate appreciation from your girlfriend; women are insecure so do not blame them for not trusting you and feel insulted when they tell you they can’t trust you; women are picky, understand that instead of using that as an excuse for breaking up with one.. The bottom line is, please try to understand the girl you are dating a bit better before you get all stressed about whatever you are doing that’s not working in your opinion. Also.. only time will do the trick about the trusting issue. After a few years, the fact that you two are still together will show how trustworthy you are to her.

Hopefully this blog entry will mean something to someone who I care greatly about.