| Current mood: |  depressed |
| Current music: | Perfect - Simple Plan |
did you ever stop to think?
We have a problem with society. The problem is that no one listens anymore. I think that if someone kills themself and claims in their suicide note that they had no one to talk to, I would believe them. Oh sure, everyone would say..."why didn't they tell me about this?" Or "I was here! I was listening!" But you know what? You weren't. People will only hear the same story a few times before they get sick of it. No one wants to listen more than that. And you know what...talking about a problem a few times isn't going to fix it. So what do you do if you have a problem, you have a situation, you're emotionally distraught and damaged...and everyone is sick of listening to you?
Don't tell me you don't get sick of listening. I get sick of listening. We're all a bunch of self-absorbed assholes. At some point we say "Christ, all that person does is complain. Why don't they cheer up?" or "How much attention do they need." We say this, even though we've been in that position before, because we don't care that much about other people's pain, and that's a sad thing.
You know when we care least about other people's pain? When it hurts us too. A girl gets raped. She wants to talk about it, needs to talk about it...to her mom, to her friends, to her father...but who wants to hear that? Who wants to hear that someone we loved was in pain? So we say "No. Don't talk about it. That's depressing. Hide it, get over it, forget about it." Only it doesn't work that way. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.
Boys do something very similar. A girl is in a bad relationship. She finally gets out of it. She gets into a good relationship. She wants to talk about the bad relationship. She needs to talk about the good stuff, and the bad stuff. She needs to know that it wasn't her fault, and she needs to hear that from her boyfriend. Girls need the comfort of knowing that they didn't nothing wrong, they don't need to change. Would you like to know what happens when girls try to talk about their ex? Boys freak out. They don't want to hear that shit. It bothers them, it depresses them, they get jealous.
The result of this is that the girl maintains a connection with their ex. They start to forgive them. They feel guilty for over reacting about everything. Afterall, the boy that they're with now is a good guy and he apparently doesn't think it's worth talking about. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she screwed up. Maybe her ex was right.
Ever hear of teenage girl syndrome? That's what it is. We're told not to talk about things, not to over-react. Everything we get upset about is blamed on PMS, hormones, and general girl-craziness. 95% of the time, that's not it.
So now we have a situation where girls don't always feel comfortable talking about their problems with their boys. What happens next is that the relationship has problems (as they all do). The girl gets upset, the girl cries (or doesn't cry and you wish she would). The boys just assume the girl is nuts, crazy. They aren't mind readers. How are they supposed to know wtf is up? Well...if you would all take your heads out of your asses and listen to us girls for once, you might get a good idea. Why aren't we crying in front of you? Well...did you ever think to ask us instead if anyone had ever told us when we cried that we were over reacting? And did you ever think to sympathize with this? Why are we pissed off about you chilling with another girl? Well think about it...did our ex ever cheat on us? Why are we possessive? Well...let's put 2 and 2 together here people... maybe we never had a male influence in our life that we felt was readily available and that we were secure with?
You know sometimes I wonder if guys are dense, or lazy, or what? I mean, do you not listen to us because you get jealous? Or because you think if you ignore our problems they'll go away? Or are you just too prideful to ever admit that you're wrong. We don't expect you to always understand, but it wouldn't kill you to stop being so damn defensive and think that maybe there's more to it then us just blaming you for all our problems.
So the moral of the story is...listen to people. Even if you've heard them complain about the same thing over and over and over. Deal with it, offer a suggestion if you have a good one. But let them talk about their problems...don't make them feel guilty for reaching out to someone. And just because it hurts you doesn't mean you should just ignore it or push it away. You can learn from it anyway.
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