What women want

is to understand men.

I have recently come to the conclusion that yes, men know nothing at all about women. That isn't to say we girls know you guys like the backs of our well manicured hands, but it is a rather distressing thought none the less.

So in order to attempt to rectify this situation I'm going to write this little ditty in the hopes that it helps you guys see how we think (although i highly doubt it will help because we girls hardly ever mean what we say or say what we mean so why should this blog be any different?).

I'm sure plenty of you girls out there know the feeling. One of your closer friends is a guy that you have loads in common with and feel comfortable enough around to do and say just about anything. Then suddenly you look at the poor bloke and realise "holy crap, I'm in love with this idiot". Oh, you'll deny it, you'll kick and scream blue bloody murder before you admit it to anyone, let alone him (or worse, yourself), but all girls seem to develop feelings for boys they spend a lot of time around. It might not be that tingles-down-your-spine feeling you get when someone you're attracted to "accidentally" brushes against you but they are feelings none-the-less.

Personally I start seeing my guy friends as extended family. Brothers that just happen to have been pushed out of a different uterus. But of course there is always that someone special. That one person amongst your friends that you wish was so much more. Girls, you all know what I'm talking about. It's not something you do consciously and it's certainly not something a lot of us are proud of because we know that it can lead to some rather awkward moments. Most of the time it's nothing more than a silly crush that we get over in a day or too. But for some girls things get a little more complicated. You find yourself spending more and more time with your friend and craving his company when you're away from him. And this is where the shit starts hitting the proverbial fan.
When you start to realise that those tingles down your spine are, in fact, not nausea, but physical attraction you lose all of those comfortable feelings you had around the boy and become a rambling idiot. You find yourself suddenly incapable of talking to him without shoving your foot down your throat and then mentally slapping your forehead directly after the word vomit comes spewing out of your mouth afterwards.
You find yourself looking for signs that he might just maybe sort of like you in that way too. You start consciously making an effort not to seem too clingy or obvious about it, realising later that in suddenly acting differently you're making it so obvious it's visible from outer space. I can attest to this personally. So, burdened with these terribly awkward feelings, you rush off to your female friends and ramble on for hours about this poor bloke while the girls listen (some attentively looking for gossip, others mildly curious and still others wondering what else they could be doing while you babble on). Then once you've gotten the entire load dumped off onto them you take in every little snippet of advice they have and store it away for analysis. Your friends will most often pick out things your poor bloke does or says and over analyse them so much that even the poor boy would start to think he must somehow subconsciously like you (regardless of whether he does or not).
As time passes and you start to become more comfortable in your crush, you find that you've either gotten over things or that the simple crush has become a little more. Now this is where things become complicated and I'm going to throw in my own personally nightmare here for an example. X (and I use the letter lightly because it's terribly cliche and ridiculous but works in hiding the identity of my crush and thus allows me to remain a coward who cannot tell him how I feel) and I have had a rather complicated relationship for about two years. We started out as fast friends who had a truck load of things in common and generally had a blast when we where together. Naturally, as I said before, I developed a little bit of a crush on the poor bastard. Much to my surprise (and later horror) he noticed and we shared one of those awkward first kisses that make you want to run and hide for the rest of your life. I'm sure you've all had them. You move in to kiss each other and you're both so nervous you end up cocking it up completely in a mesh of lips and teeth that would make even the most socially inept shudder in horror. This, as I'm sure is painfully obvious, led to a bit of very uncomfortable awkwardness that led to us being "just friends" again. But of course being the silly girl I am, my crush on the poor bugger only got progressively worse, despite desperate emotional boxing and pretending nothing had ever happened. And so we stayed friends and got closer until eventually we parted (for various reasons beyond our control) and once we were apart, I thought my long hidden crush on him had become nothing but lingering affection and platonic closeness. Then, a scant five months later we were reunited and enjoyed a fabulous weekend of frivolity and general naughtiness with friends. It was long overdue and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but there was, once again, that awkward attraction. We laughed and flirted and fooled around like kids and I got several very uncomfortable questions from people I barely knew about whether we were together or not. Things seemed to be all fine and dandy at first. Boy was I wrong.
It was during this little reunion of friends that it really hit me how much I care about the little bugger and the realisation of how I really feel about him came like a boulder rolling down onto a poor unsuspecting marshmallow.
Now you see boys, we girls take love very seriously, perhaps too seriously. We guard our hearts very closely and when we let you in it's usually under close surveillance. It's not very often that we let you sneak your way in and smack us in the ass screaming "hey look where I am! Naah-na-na-naaah-na!" Of course that's not what he said but he might as well have. So thanks to my lovely little realisation, a weekend of fun and inebriation (that means 'getting drunk' to those of you who are scratching your heads right now) turned into a weekend of fun, inebriation and searching for hints of attraction.

What you guys need to understand first and foremost about girls is that we over-analyse everything. And when I say everything I mean everything. It's not very often you find a girl that will take things as they are and leave it at that. We don't do it on purpose of course, it's just how we think. If you sit next to us we'll immediately judge the distance between us out of the corner of our eye and try to come up with why you are sitting so close to or far away from us (even if the only reason you sat there was simply because the chair or space beside you happened to be that close or far away). If you let us lie in your lap or unconsciously put an arm around us our brains go into hyper mode and if you unconsciously play with our fingers or hold our hand you'll be able to see smoke rising out of our ears if you look closely enough. All girls adore being snuggled in any form and it immediately puts it into our heads that you feel some sort of attraction to us. It's unfortunate for girls like me, who are dealing with someone who, all feelings aside she can't physically be with.

I think I might have drifted away from my point again; I seem to do that often. At any rate it is important for you guys to know that if you are trying to get a message across to us, be it a subtle one or a bright red flag that you just happen to be waving in our faces, we girls will over analyse everything you say and do for hours. Things you might have mentioned in passing weeks ago will be brought back today when your hand happens to brush ours while you're walking.
Be careful how you act around a girl and make sure that whatever you say to her can't be manipulated into something completely different. Because we will manipulate it and we will become emotional and moody because we feel you are sending us mixed feelings.

And on that rather missed point I should get back to my job (yes, I have one of those now). Until next time dear readers (here's to hoping I don't take five months to add another entry).