Every
woman I know has been more batty than usual this week. Whether it’s
the heat, or the full moon, or panic triggered by seeing our pale
soft flesh prematurely revealed by summer attire, my entire social
circle is demonstrably lacking reason lately. Unfortunately, the
dearth is affecting some kind young men who have no idea what they’re
in for or what has happened to us. This morning I received the following
email, which made me laugh aloud:
“My co-worker is making me a mix. On his iTunes it says ‘Emily
mix’ so I asked him if his girlfriend was going to freak out
when she saw it. He said...‘well, she actually saw it last
night and asked me all about you. Then she flipped out and told
me I was absolutely not allowed to make you a mix. But today she
sent a sweet IM at work to say it was all right if I made you one.’
Then he said when men get old they get quiet and grumpy, and generally
intolerant, and girls get more loopy. Oh yes, we are all crazy.”
Scrolling through my emails from the last 48 hours yielded similar
results:
My friend Kate has been quietly stewing at her boyfriend because
the amount of time and effort he is putting into his MCAT class
is simply not believable to her, and she wants more of his time.
Understandable, if not entirely logical. However, today before she
went home from work, she made sure she ate a hearty meal, because
eating makes her angrier and she wanted to make sure she give him
“a good shout.” My friend Jen is newly furious at her
boyfriend because he doesn’t like carrot cake. Not that she
lovingly made it for him and he retched or anything, just because
he mentioned it and she was adamant for half a minute that she couldn’t
be with someone who didn’t like carrot cake. My friend Abby
has convinced herself that her fiance is only with her because he
loves her dog, and cites as evidence the fact that Rudy the purple-hooded-sweatshirt-wearing
chihuahua always gets the first hug when Papa gets back from work.
Lauren nearly broke up with John because he didn’t hit a guy
that was flirting with her at a bar. Megan questioned her budding
relationship with Greg because he misspelled ‘unwieldy.’
Maybe it is time more girls finally admitted to the world at large,
as opposed to just their female friends, that some of us can be
a little irrational at times. Yes, plenty of guys are assholes and
deserve to be treated poorly, so let’s set them aside for
a moment. The few good ones out there still manage to infuriate
us, but for how much we want to murder or disfigure them, sometimes
it’s only because we know that, in the heat of an argument,
they are being totally sane and we are either a) overreacting or
b) wrong. I know that half of my fits evaporate after about 90 seconds
of a timeout. A little thinking (not yelling) time usually brings
me to a sheepish ‘sorry.’
There is a particular kind of argument, you must understand, that
is brought to fruition simply because she is hormonal, stressed
about something else, or feels some excitement is due.
This
is colloquially referred to as ‘the hissy fit.’ A friend
reenacted one such fit, a prime example of the kind of tiff in which
girls forget what one we’re yelling about halfway in, and
then at a loss, continue roughly thus:
Boy (soothing): Honey blablablabla, sweetie?
Girl (having lost her thread): …That’s not the point!
Why can’t you just communicate? Speak your mind! I’m
not psychic, you know!
Boy: I tell you everything!
Girl: Stop yelling at me! I can’t believe you’re raising
your voice when I’m this sad!
Boy (quieter): I’m not raising my voice.
Girl: Now I can’t hear you! Stop making fun of me! Gawd!
Girl exits in a huff, only to appear 20 minutes to an hour later,
acting as though nothing has happened, and hoping Boy has forgotten
as well.
It is important to discern between crazy and emotional. Anyone can
be emotional. There is nothing wrong with expressing righteous concern,
anger, jealousy, or any number of emotions which are unhealthy to
bottle up. The fascinating thing about a hissy fit is that we absolutely
know while launching into it that we are being completely irrational,
but it cannot be stopped. The madness has a momentum that carries
through until we have run out of subjects, verbs, and breath. Because
a fit is inexplicably unstoppable midstream, the only way for a
girl to avoid having one is to identify it before we get the first
word out, turn on a heel, and abruptly leave the room, preferably
to rush to a car, and return when the anger subsides, with a suitable,
if fabricated , explanation.
And what advice can we give to the poor boys? Keep doing what you’re
doing. Every girl has her freakouts and spine-chilling brushes with
madness, but if a girl makes you happy more often than she makes
you tear your hair out, heed the rest of Emily’s email:
“Some men handle it well and others don’t. Some ignore
the fact that our reason and emotions run awry at times, hand-in-hand.
These are not the ones that should be kept around. The ones that
tune out the madness, hold our hands, dry our eyes, kiss our heads,
and bring us gallons of vodka will endure.”
Email girlonlove@annarborpaper.com |
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