-=> Quoting Maurice Kinal to Nancy Backus on 10-15-06  18:19 <=-

 NB> Ah.  They probably wouldn't have admitted to being overtly 
 NB> disrespectful anyway... :)

 MK> I can only recall one instance of me pushing that point and I
 MK> seriously doubt it altered the amount of respect they actually had or
 MK> have towards me.  Now that you have me thinking about it I recall at
 MK> least once them demanding respect from me towards them but they did it
 MK> individually rather then a group effort.

Yeah, that happened here, too... 

 MK> Hm.  Funny how respect works.

True enough.  I suspect that there are different definitions of respect
out there, just like there are for love.  I keep hearing on the one hand
that "you have to EARN my respect"...  but on the other hand "everyone
deserves equal respect".   And then there's the respect due one because
of their position (ie boss, president/king/queen, parent, etc).  Sure
sounds like different definitions at play here... 

 NB> You probably knew more about the woman experience than
 NB> they were giving you credit for, as well... if you'd paid any 
 NB> attention at all to the "wife stuff" or to the
"mother stuff"... 
 NB> Or had a sister you were close to, for that matter... :)

 MK> Two sisters, one older and the other younger.  They were completely
 MK> different from each other so I am not entirely convinced I have a good
 MK> handle on women in general.  In fact if the truth be told I think that
 MK> it may have been more advantageous not to have that experience.  :-)

Ah, so you discovered that women (like men, one might add) are all
different in unpredictable ways...?     More similar in more ways
than one would expect... and at the same time, different in ways where
one would have hoped for more similarities.  :)

 NB> But of course!  :)  It also helps to be reasonably bilingual in
 NB> male/female languages...  

 MK> Sometimes.  One thing I believe is that it is best to keep the extra
 MK> ace up the sleeve and never play it.  Most times it is best not to even
 MK> threaten to play it.  Just be a man and suck it in is usually the
 MK> better course of action.     Right?
 
There are ways and ways of playing it, you know.  ;)  Making a big scene
of playing it probably would backfire more times than not...  but since
life and relationship isn't nearly as straightforward as a poker game,
one can sometimes play the card so subtly that the other one doesn't
realize it was even IN play... :)   One doesn't have to say EVERYthing
one knows, after all... 

 MK> Good for her.  I think the lines of communications between my mother
 MK> and I were pretty good.  However the problem with using her as a
 MK> measure of women in general would be a mistake, other then perhaps as a
 MK> rough guide.  I certainly don't wish to replace her with a wife,
 MK> girlfriend or any sort of male/female relationship thingy.  I only had
 MK> one mother and she is irreplaceable. 

Oh, that wasn't what I was getting at at all.  Of course she isn't going
to be replaced by other women in your life (not even daughters).  And
using her as other than a rough guide to "all" women is likewise silly,
as you indicate.  In fact, one of the hurdles in our marriage was caused
by his expecting me to be/react/etc just like his mom, where I had
learned a different pattern from my parents.  In working it out, though,
while I'm still not "his mother", I'm also very definitely not "my
mother" either!  The precise attribute in this case was independence...
over the years we've pretty much worked out a compromise position
between the different views of how much and in what ways I should be my
own person (and that is actually four points of view, not just two, of
course...his mom, his, my parents, and mine).  

What I was trying to indicate is that the ways in which women are
ACTUALLY different from men are the things that an observant person
could pick up from relationship with previous women in his life, like
mother, sisters, even a wife, with even a reasonable amount of open
communication with them.  Or one could get them from a particularly
specific anatomy class in school, together with how different structure
and hormones can affect emotions...  

Most of the ways that women and men appear to be different are really
just the differences from one person to another, as far as I can tell.

 NB> the two of us have done some couple counseling together... 

 MK> I was under the impression that counselling took more then just two
 MK> sessions.  ;-)

Silly...  you know I mean counseling of couples, not a couple of
sessions...     Yes, generally more than just two sessions...
although it does make a difference just how LONG the sessions are... ;)

 MK> Most guys are really easy to figure out so I think you have the better
 MK> advantage.  Just don't overthink it as you'd be giving them far too
 MK> much credit.
 
Same with women, really.  It's just different points of view, in some
ways... and the group (not just male/female) one is part of usually is
simplest to figure out than the so-called opposite one, just because it
is the one that is most familiar, and is most ingrained.

 NB> I think most of us sowed at least some wild oats... and made poor
 NB> choices...  Hopefully we learned from it all, though...  

 MK> We're still here so at the very least we survived.

Yup.  :)

ttyl          neb

... Logic: Men's futile defense against women's intuition!

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20

--- ViaMAIL!/WC v1.60d