The Wilful Sunflower

Half-way through a romance novel this evening, it occurred to me that romance novels are invariably written by women. Then it occurred to me that only a woman would know what kind of men other women want & dream about. And then it occurred to me that those are the type of men that romance novelists create & write about. No wonder those novels are so seductive!

This 'revelation' follows on the heels of me getting my grubby hands on the books For Women Only (by Shaunti Feldhahn) and For Men Only (by Shaunti & Jeff Feldhahn) last week. For each book, Shaunti surveyed & interviewed thousands of people from the appropriate gender -- men for women and women for men -- and then wrote about what goes on in the male & female head and heart. The back cover of the guys' book (For Men Only) says, "Finally. You CAN understand her!" haha

I read through the women's book first. After all, I am a woman and I wondered if I would learn anything new about the way men tick. Then I read the men's book to see how accurate it was.

So, in the men's book, there's this part where Jeff Feldhahn relates a conversation he'd had with his wife Shaunti about the scene in The Parent Trap (staring Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson & a 12-year-old Lindsay Lohan) where Nick asks Elizabeth why she'd left him all those years ago. Elizabeth essentially says that after their last quarrel, she had been so mad that she'd packed and gotten on the first flight out... and he hadn't come after her. After a long pause, Nick replies, nonplussed: "I didn't know I was supposed to."

I asked, "But why didn't she just tell him that she wanted him to stop her from leaving? Why play games and make him read her mind?"

She [Shaunti] looked at me, totally astonished. "Because if she said, 'Come after me,' it wouldn't mean anything! It would be her decision, not his. She'd always doubt whether he did it on his own or because she asked him and guilted him into it."

Oh. Now I get it.

When I read this, I was shocked. "You mean guys DON'T KNOW THIS?!?!" I exclaimed to Emmy.

"Apparently not," she replied.

I mean, I know I think this way, but I thought so did everybody else! My goodness. But now I'm figuring it out... so that's why men always complain that they don't know what women want, and claim that women seem to say or do one thing but mean another. Like when you ask her what she wants for her birthday, and she says, "Nothing," you really get her nothing, and then end up so bewildered when she gets all hurt and upset. Holy cow.

Dude: she can't tell you what she wants because if she did tell you, then you would be buying it because she'd asked for it, not because you'd thought of it yourself and had gotten it out of a genuine desire to please her.

But all is not lost, because a woman will tell you what she wants -- either directly or indirectly -- BEFORE the occasion at hand. If you know a woman well enough, you will know what kind of books she likes to read, what kind of fashion accessories she likes to wear, what kind of movies she likes to watch, and so on. It's easy enough to consider her tastes, likes & dislikes, interests, and hobbies, and get her something in line with any of those. Even if you don't get it exactly right, ten to one she'll notice the effort you put into it and be very touched. Trust me ;)

Anyway, discovering that men really don't think like women and neither do women think like men was not really such a shocker, but discovering the WAYS in which our thinking differs was.

In the particular romance novel I was reading tonight, the lady was feeling very ill but was insisting she didn't want her husband to cancel his appointments and stay home with her. However, despite what she had said, he was determined to do so in order to show her that he loved her. And she was happy that he had chosen to be with her in her illness, because to her, it proved that he put her before his job and that he had made her his Number One priority. Not only that, it was what she had secretly wanted him to do all along.

That's what made me sit up and take notice -- the fact that firstly, she had said, "Don't stay," when she had actually wanted him to stay; and secondly, he hadn't said, "Okay," when she told him she didn't need him, and then happily gone off to his business meetings. Before this, I would totally have taken this guy's reaction for granted. Now I'm marvelling that he'd actually figured out what she really wanted and managed to do it!

I read that, and I immediately thought, "This book was unmistakably written by a woman." That's when it hit me that all romance novels are written by women. And that's when it hit me that, NO WONDER all the men in these books always end up saying & doing all the right things to melt the lady's heart. Because women writers know exactly what will melt their own and their fellow sisters' hearts! D'oh!