so tonight I went up to play pinochle with some friends after the end of this horrendous week. (I made it out alive... sortof.) we played 'til well after curfew but thanks to daylight savings rationalized away our sins :P

anyway, when we were done we started talking. we had done one of those fail!classic things of battle of the sexes. (I know, I know. blah.) so of course we said a couple trash talk comments afterwards, as the girls had beat the boys by well over 1400 points, and we jokingly made a comment about how girls were better. one of the opinionated guys - very nice, but very smart and intimidating in that way - said he didn't think that, outside of emotional dealios, that women are better than men. the other girl backed down way quick, and I didn't wanna fight with him at 12/1am. too much effort if you ask me.

but anyway.

I'd like to point out that I think I've seen enough to believe that men are VERY fragile when it comes to emotions, and maybe in some cases more so. (yes, I know: "not me!!" relax. there are always exceptions, and I'm not judging. just generalizing. :P ) women tend to trust a little more openly at first, willing to trust on a basic level and share things as they pertain to the circumstance around them. not to say that men don't, but to get to the sharing-personal-stories level is hard to get to, in my experience. it just doesn't happen that often. however, when you get right down to the core of trust and understanding people, if you break them when you're that close, you basically snap them in half. women and men alike, I think, but I think that because women tend to open themselves up earlier/faster, they're somewhat used to that - if not just on a basic level. not so much for the men. I have seen this a LOT, in my brothers and many of my male friends. when you break a man that far down, it takes a long time for them to recover from a thing like that. some don't recover at all. yes, men don't like to share emotions as much as women. that's fact for life. but they are just as breakable as everything else.

blabla ad nauseam.

my roommate also found a study (I need to get sources to back this up, so don't quote me) that wanted to look at the brain activity in women who compare themselves to other [for body shape, personality, etc]. They found that group of women they wanted and ran their tests and found the spot in the brain that controls that. great. they ran off to find a control group of women who felt good about themselves to see what their brains looked like. surprisingly, the control group still had that kind of activity going on in their brain, even though they felt good about themselves. it was much smaller, comparatively, but every one of those women they looked at had that kind of activity going on in there on a subconscious level at best. HOWEVER, the only people they could find that didn't have that activity going on was in...? yep, you guessed it, men.

so the reason you have to give girls so many words of encouragement and reaffirm your love/support/etc is because they're WIRED for that. if you don't say something or whatever you'd do (pertaining to love languages or what have you), they'll run off and find someone who does. fact for life. it's not that we're high maintenance or whatever else, we can't even help it. some have it less severe than others, sure, but it's still present. plus, that's why we compliment each other so dang much. we've gotta keep those chemical balances in check :P it's not a double standard that men can't compliment other men, or we don't try to make it that way, men just don't need it as much XD

anyway. call that what you will, I just needed a brick wall to vent at before I went to bed. *thumbs up*

happy end of daylight savings? and november! yeah. :)