A few years ago, I was dating a girl, T(for purposes of the post), from my class when I was attending college in India. She was ambitious, well-read, funny, intelligent and much mature to her age. Every college has a way to produce a few sets of couples every year that become the talk of the town for reasons out of your control and doing and we were one such couple. Although we were of similar age(she was 6 months elder to me), it didn't take me long to realize that women are much mature than men of the same age. We routinely used to meet at the college open auditorium every time we wanted to skip classes since the place is usually not crowded except during the departmental college fests. It was also a great way to not be in the eyes of your professor or the warden in case you were not seen in class. One day, T asked me to meet her at the open auditorium and being in the final year of college, I already gained enough seniority and acquaintance with the professors to skip a couple classes. I woke up a little later that day and put on whatever clothes I could find to appear decent and stepped out. I waited for Adolf Hitler(T's father) to drop her at the campus building while I watched the entire drop-me-at-school-so-I-can-attend-class drama. He watched her closely as she made her walk from the car towards the building and she, as usual, acted the part really well like she needed to hurry so she doesn't miss out on any lecture. A few moments later, she came to meet me at the auditorium.
"Sorry it took me a little longer today because I had to pack your stuff into a bag", said T, handing over a bag of my clothes to me. A few clothes that caught my eye reminded me how I thought I had lost them but in reality, they were all with T, as she kept stealing them from me to wear them to bed.
"That's alright, but why pack my stuff? Did your papa notice them? "I asked, having no clue of what's about to come.
"No I just thought it would be better to give you before the semester break starts", said T. "Well the world is not ending, we will still be on campus for a couple months before we are done with college", I said, bending over to plant a kiss on her lips. She reluctantly paused with her head down and then proceeded to kiss me anyway. Women have an amazing ability to do something so minute that triggers fear and makes men be on top of their toes.
"Is everything okay?", I ask. I proceeded to hold her palms in an attempt to make her comfortable and realized that she's sweating in her palms. "What's the matter?" After a long pause and a few stares towards the entire existence around me except my face, tears start to roll down her face when she says "I'm breaking up with you."
"What?!!!"I said, clearly in a sense of shock.
That was my first serious relationship aka the first lesson at realizing that attraction leads to way more complicated things than just love and happiness. It was the start of many tumultuous days that followed where I pondered over how it came to that and about how I missed the clues all the way leading up to that. Although men and women function with the same anatomy, I'm always amazed about to how the two sexes function so differently when it comes to the matters of heart and attraction. For reasons of this post, I want to share a few observations from my journey after that relationship and how my experiences have given me an understanding of how men and women approach relationships differently and why there is a thing called break up that happens. When I started writing the post, I realized little about how deep this topic is so I wanted to concise this post to four sections.
The pre-relationship phase OR the phase where hormones take over your sanity and decision-making skills:
This is probably the most exciting part of the relationship, irrespective of whether you make it to a relationship or not. Only thing that you can control during this phase is whether you can let your heart and mind remain in sync and make consciously rational decisions, which of course, is not easy, not only in this age or civilization, but ever since Adam and Eve. You meet a person, your eyes make contact and somewhere a spark sets off. Some people wait this phase out to see how long the other person can hold the attraction and 'living-up to' while some get physical. Though I personally believe that getting physical early in the relationship takes a lot of mental tension away and brings only the most important variables to play, there are pros and cons to both situations.
If you don't live up to the attraction that started the spark and you're struggling to keep it up, most chances are your ship is sinking. Most men don't realize that women evaluate a man and what she is going to get out of it thoroughly before committing to someone. Also, men don't realize that a girl gets a lot of attention everyday compared to a guy. Although she chooses to ignore the routine attention she receives everyday, you got to get past the initial struggles of making conversation and earn the credentials of an interesting personality. Being confident could help. They're thinking not just about how you appear but also about what you do, how balanced you are, how your sense of humor is and what's more interesting in you that she doesn't have or possess.
Men might just look at a woman and admire her beauty as she speaks to someone else in the room, but a woman not just looks at you, she is also listening to what you're saying and how you're saying it.
However, hormones are a funny thing. They can cloud judgement and make you doubt your instincts. Hormones have made people go to war and had civilizations and kingdoms collapse so it's not really that surprising that people make mistakes. I really believe that if you're genuinely listening to what your heart says and keeping a watch on all the little clues that were thrown at you, you can spare a heart break.
There is a difference when a woman says 'I might be working late tomorrow so I don't think I can make it to dinner' and when she says 'I might be working late tomorrow so I don't think I can make it to dinner but you know what? Let's get together for lunch tomorrow.' She will find a way if she wants to, in most matters. It might be a good signal that a woman is trying to get to stand with you every time a group picture is being clicked(Beware my beloved men: she might also be doing it to get someone else's attention).
One other reason why men can't understand what goes through a woman's mind is because men do not understand how to read the little signals that are thrown at them and most women do not know how to make their intentions loud and clear. Women are literally the masters at blurting out little signals that are quite complicated to catch and read. Most women feel that if they're a bit more patient, men will play right into women's cards and they always have a way to get what they want. Their intuition on some levels is equivalent to magic.
