Tuesday, March 30, 2010

He's not a Jerk....He Just Cannot Do Two Things at Once

Frustrated in line at a coffee shop, everything was annoying me. The slowness of the server, the fact that the girl in front ordered a soy something or other, then she is digging for exact change. The barista is holding the cup for the drip coffee while he stands idly waiting on soy something or other girl. The café manager in me silently screams, you idiot pour the coffee while she savages for 11 cents. WAKE UP you have a line forming. Be efficient. I am 2 seconds from an audible and disempowering sigh accompanied with an eye roll when it occurs to me…he is a man and can only do one thing at a time. They can only hunt one animal at a time and they can only produce one result at a time.

I have heard for years that men are single focused. I never truly knew what that meant until that moment.

Later that evening I am chatting on Facebook, I notice that the chat with men is contemplative, slow and systematic compared to the women who are firing off messages like life depends on it and covering three topics in one thread. Single focus.

So many times, I jump to unfavorable conclusions sitting in a bar feeling ignored while the guy I am with watches the game NOT talking to me, “Is something wrong?” “Just watching the game” Huh? I can watch the TV and have a discussion at the same time. Must just be an excuse for NOT conversing with me. I pout and what had been a pleasant outing takes a turn for the worst. Football finished, he finally notices my sour mood asking, “What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I retort thinking let’s play tit for tat. Sadly, we were not playing anything until I started it. Men cannot simultaneously watch baseball and disregard me because that would be doing two things.

When I turned 28, my dad forgot phone me to wish me a Happy Birthday. He knew it was my birthday when he left the house but forgot while he was driving to Detroit for the day. I was baffled.

So many times I have not understood when a man says, “Sorry, I couldn’t call you back I was doing blah blah blah….” Yeah, right. You couldn’t stop doing blah blah blah and call me? If you really cared you would call me. You must not love me. No. He is a hunter and if he doesn’t kill that animal (blah blah blah) the entire village could die or he wouldn’t be able to provide.

Understanding this clarifies why men think I am nuts when I jump to unfavorable conclusions which to the female brain make sense. The coven always validates my point of view. “If my boyfriend did that, I would break up with him!” “What a jerk!” “You believe him?” “He could have called.”

Men are not complicated; however, I have been making them outright sinister creating uncalled for conflict. This destructive direction of thinking turns me, a usually confident woman, into a needy, insecure, whiney teenage girl. When I am like that I am neither attractive to men or myself.

The barista provided me with coffee but a practical example of single focus. He led me to an inquiry which has much of my relationships with men make sense. In the long run, the server’s inability to multitask will prevent fights and the ugliness that ensues.

12 comments:

  1. Yeah, I hate to overgeneralize, but men cannot multi-task.

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  2. It is not overgeneralizing...they are not made to multitask....it serves no function for them in keeping the species going. It does serve a purpose for women....

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  3. I'd call you to slap you through the phone but I'm currently preoccupied with breathing. ;P

    - Just Another Typical Male

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  4. Alyssa, you should (re)read Johnathon Livingston Seagull. You are now present to what you didn't know that you didn't know and you now have access to very fulfilling relationships with men.

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  5. ....And that is the truth, ladies. Men are simple, women are way more complex.

    Great writing, Alyssa!

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  6. This research seems to lead to the conclusion that it's not really a gender issue. What do you think?

    http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html

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  7. Oh my. I've had a crash course in this over and over and over and...yeah, you get the idea between the 3 guys in my house, ages 10, 12, and 34. You know how much time I spend waiting for them to finish what they are working on so we can get to the next thing...? "Walk the dog" "Clean your room", "Finish your homework", whatever it is, it cannot be done until the last thing they were working on is perfect. (Isn't it wonderful that my boys have inherited my rabid perfectionism? Speeds things up real quick!)

    The thing that's difficult (and I have alluded to in a previous post), is this is extremely frustrating and upsetting to the women that are their teachers, principals, den leaders, etc. Most women really don't understand why boys and men don't multitask, and they do take it personally. No one should. But, they are not alone.

    It might be worthy of note, the more creative, sensitive, brilliant the boy/man, the more difficult is seems to be for them to transition topics. I guess something has to give, right? Putting out that creative fire seems criminal to me though, just for pure ego.

    Women seem to equate love or respect (as is the case with their teachers) with a males ability to constantly change their focus to what she finds to be of utmost importance at that minute. The trick is to teach a compromise for everyone. We ladies, just need to be patient and the guys, try to keep one ear perked toward the ambient noise.
    :-)

    And don't let the coven rule your heart. What goes on between you and your S.O is not for the community jury. If you really want to piss a guy off, tell him that you've told all your business to your friends! Epic FAIL! Men don't put the same value on the little things that we women do. Women are like, "how hard is it to call" but for some guys, it's just more stuff in a long line of stuff they are already trying to remember, all of which is important. They want to wait until they can truly devote the time and energy to you in the way they think they should. Then they feel like they are in a lose/lose if they call but are in the middle of working a deal and can't talk. Well which is it? Patience. Security that if he can't talk to you, he has a reason and it's a good one, not that he doesn't love you. Benefit of the doubt. We all need that to maintain healthy realtionships.

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  8. Cat, so well said.

    Jim, the post never says anything about gender. And the study refers to media which is different than what this post addresses. This is about being about to pour a cup of coffee and collect money at the same time. I agree with the study but it does not address single focus.

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  9. I am commenting on this blog on my mac, there are a stack of 20+ cd's that I'm ripping into my itunes library on my laptop to my left...sorry, it was time to put in a new cd...28 weeks later is playing in a small window on the top left of my mac, my homework assignment is compiling in another window in my spaces on this mac, and I'm intermittently texting my insomniac of a friend in baltimore about why his data types keep getting truncated in his sql queries.

    why is it that when a woman is driving, on the phone, putting on lipstick and plucking her eyebrows, it's effective multitasking...when a man does it he's, well...he's just girly...or, more commonly, ADHD?

    It have the occurrence that I have only been scolded for "multitasking" when one of the tasks involved paying attention to an individual. I can walk into the room and participate in up to 5 conversations. oddly enough, this only works when the conversations are with groups. I haven't tried it but I'm pretty sure that if I attempt to take on 5 conversations with five individuals, regardless if I can keep up, I will still get my hand slapped for not paying attention.

    ok...done ranting.

    I am of the opinion that nobody wants someone multitasking when they are what that person is multitasking around. I, personally, think it disquieting when someone does not appear to be focusing on me. note I said "appear to be focusing" because I have no way of knowing whether they are or not.

    Knowing that about me, I simply make the request: Can you please multitask in your head and provide for me the illusion that I am all you are thinking of right now? I'm self centered, like that.

    ok...done ranting...really...

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  10. Our species has been on Planet Earth for about 100,000 years. For about 990,000 years men were pretty much hunters. For the last 10,000 years they became farmers, and from there artisans, craftsmen, tradesmen, and so forth.

    Multi-tasking never seemed to come up. (This could be kind of comical. "Honey, after you and the boys kill the woolly mammoth, can you bring home some milk?"

    Women were the organizers and gatherers in most pre-tribal societies. In doing things like watching kids, scavenging for roots, fruits, nuts, and berries, and looking out for predators, the ability to multi-task would have been a very adaptive quality.

    We now live in a time where we have technologically outgrown our primitive ancestry. This leads to some complexity in male/female relationships. :)

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