mars vs. venus

It always strikes me as a bit amusing when guys relate that familiar utterance.
"Girls are crazy, man".

Okay I get it-we're emotionally unstable, insecure beings who feel the need to psychoanalyze trivial moments, comments, or rather the lack of comments.

In my relatively short 23 years of life and through my male and female friendships, I feel like I've picked up on a few things and thought I should post it for the benefit of releasing this information into the wild of the Internet. Kidding, these aren't incredibly unique reflections but they are mine and I'm owning it.

Girls need to feel special. That's it. Plain and simple.

While men are locked in a transient aggressive power struggle with other men, women are going through something similar but much more passive aggressive which requires us to be much more cunning. Because women rarely come out in the open and candidly express feelings of resentment, jealousy or anger, we have to navigate the treacherous waters of maintaining our female friendships, which unless we see each other on an equal playing field, is riddled with subtle competition. Because being women and women love to talk, we are constantly measuring ourselves against our friends; our relationships, our careers, and when we embark on motherhood, our children, become the unwitting fodder for our asssessments of ourselves.

Our relationships with the opposite sex in particular fall especially victim to this grading scale. In lieu of the human desire to feel validated and loved, women especially want to be the "special one" to someone. The badboy complex is a particularly intense case of this. We want to be the earth shakers, the world changers, the ones that make him look at the millions of options and pick you. Like it or not we crave this validation in various doses. Fail to appease and you reap the consequences.

As irrational as it may be, I've always kind of appreciated this aspect of my sex. Although I love the dissociation, the stymying of emotions, and the clearheadedness of guys, I admit to being somewhat of a romantic when it comes to gender relations. I can't help but love the fact that we women long for this emotional validation.

Although it may seem weak that we need this kind of affirmation, I prefer to see it as a longing for someone else to recognize what we suspect we are capable of being. There's nothing wrong with a relationship or love helping you actualize into the self that you want to be. I think its in these relationships, platonic and otherwise, where we learn what we can tolerate, what we expect, and in the choices of our partners and friends, how we would like to establish ourselves. I learned a long time ago to let go of those who didn't recognize or contribute to my self and self-worth.

Jesus I sound like a poor man's Oprah. Good night.