BoyTalk/GirlTalk

In my recent days as I have relocated to a new city, my company has been filled with young men, thus prompting this comeback post that has desperately needed to be written.  I have wrestled with many different topics this summer hoping that I would have been motivated to write one earlier than now, but this is my return entry hoping that more topics and more fun can be talked and thought about.  Thank you for your patience and thank you for reading!

The theory behind boy-talk and girl-talk.

I believe there are two misconceptions.
1. The mystery that boys do not talk about girls –> Do boys talk about girls like girls talk about guys (aka do they talk about me)?
2. Girls talk about boys all the time.

What I have come to learn to disprove these misconceptions are that boys do talk about girls, but boys and girls talk about each other in different ways.

In high school and in college I remember having conversations with girlfriends wondering if guys talk about girls as much as girls talk about guys.  With hormones raging, everyone figuring out how to fit in, and keeping up with studies — we tried to keep boys/girls in the back of our minds, but they always managed to find its way to the front and we continued to ask, how do I get that person to like me?  While trying to figure out one part of our life that would define us in the working world, we most desperately want to find our other half, our other life, our other partner.  So of course we talk about it.  We talk about it until we find that person.

On the second point: I do not know nor understand why girls just seem to be the gender that talks more about the opposite sex, but I think it is because we do not have the upper hand.  Traditionally, guys are supposed to make the first move.  They get to dictate who they like and who they want to date.  They are the ones that make the move.  I think guys tend to widen their scope and are able to feel out the options before choosing that one girl they want to pursue.  For girls, we wait to be asked out, thus lessening our choices and chances to date, tending to invest our energy into one guy, straight on. Hence, why we end up talking about boys — we want you to choose us.

So what may seem from the male-outsider as a boy-gossip-fest is really just a thing girls do best, talk.  I cannot take away that stereotype or even try to make us look better, but yes, we talk and we talk a lot.  At least at this point of my life and where a lot of my friends seem to be is that we do not talk about boys all the time; we talk about different things, catching up with our lives, discovering what people are reading and watching, trying to be girlfriends.  Of course we like still boys and talk about them, we love to talk about them, but I have to give us the credit to say that boys are not the staple thing we talk about, although we do tend to always digress back towards them. 🙂

I also often find that guys tend to look and get excited about something they see quickly (that sounds bad, but you have heard it before and you know what I mean).  Girls do find those bodacious looking guys and report them to the pack, but I do not think most of us fall in love at first sight and think of the ways to ask him out, thus bringing us back to that one guy.

Back to the first point: Girls get blamed a lot for talking about guys, but I have seen and have been a part of a surprising amount of girl-talk.  It is comforting and fun to hear about these girls, whether its for a few minutes or even a few weeks.  I have had my share of great guy friends growing up and we would talk about girls they liked too, but those one on one conversations are set in different parameters than being around it every other day. So yes, boys do talk about us and they talk about us more often than we ever thought.

I have created a nice flow chart that quickly defines the difference between guys and girls and how they approach their relationships with the opposite sex, in both a reality setting as well as from an educated biology species standpoint (thank you college degree).  All presented to you by the characters of Disney.

Even after all of this talk and kind of smashing on the guys, which was not my intention, more credit has to be given to them knowing that  liking someone and dating is a lot more complicated.  We all have great guy friends, I have great guy friends, and us, girls are just going to keep on talking about you because we know that you are quality and datable guys.  Be glad we talk about you, but sorry for the supplemental drama we may cause.