What Are You Thinking About?

Tread lightly – she's watching. If I make one wrong move here I'll be sleeping on the sofa with a pillow for comfort for the next two weeks. But I'd like to think no negativity can come of this little write-up, to be fair. I just sort of want to use this space to express a few things – from a man's perspective. But, if it wasn't for this vocal challenge, I'd never dare to cross the threshold of the Viva community to begin with. But I'm here. So, you'll have to deal with me for a short while. Sorry about that.

So, women – how do they tick? What makes them who they are and what cycles through their heads every day as they stand over the world? Well, truth be told – I haven't the slightest clue. I look at my wife and I wish to understand a lot of the logic she portrays. At times – I can hardly speak her language at all and I'm totally out of my depth. But, unfortunately, we're all like that. Men, that is. We're not very good at understanding women and, if anything, we act as a whole other species to them at the best of times.

Honestly, I love my wife. I adore her even. And, even though she, in my eyes, is my honest counterpart who I know better than anybody in the world – I still don't know what goes through her head when she looks at me each day. Sure, I can tell an expression just from the way she narrows her brows or grits her teeth, but her mind? Damn, that's a whole other story. That's something no man can unclasp.

So, what are you thinking about? Enlighten me, my love.

What does it mean to be a woman?

That's a pretty broad question and I'm not entirely sure of the correct way to answer it! I guess there is no wrong answer, so I'll tell you what it means TO ME to be a woman.

To me, it means being strong, independent and although as a society we do not admit it, being a woman sometimes means that you need to prove your strength more so than a male would.

Being a woman to me, is trying to be the best mother to my children that I can be, being the best wife to my husband that I can be and being a person that I hope my own mother can be proud of.

Being a woman to me, means being both the strongest that I can be but also being true to myself at the same time.

What hardships do you face that we, the clueless men, fail to understand?

Where do I begin? Childbirth, periods, mood swings?

Seriously though, I think both men and women face different challenges and not being a male myself, I wouldn't fully know!

One I do know for sure though is the childbirth situation. We are about to have our third child and I'm still asking myself why you couldn't do it this time.

I guess, as well, more so years ago than now, society is programmed to think that men are the dominant sex and there's always seemed to be more of a struggle for women to be heard, and taken seriously. I'm no feminist so I'm not going to go into a long winded rant but I'd say those are the main things that come to mind.

How could you enlighten us into understanding your ways?

I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you after.

I don't think a lot of us women understand our ways either. We want something, and then we don't, and then we're sad and it's your fault but we don't know why. All perfectly logical of course.

Everyone is different and I honestly don't think that I could define the ways of women in general into one answer. Men and women think differently and where we think men are curious creatures, I'm sure you feel the same way about us.

Again, I can't speak for everyone but I can be kept happy if you do things before I ask you to do them and somehow know that I want you to do it. Feed me food even when I say I don't want you to buy it for me, run me three baths a day and smile and nod when we're having an argument.

What's the hardest thing about being female?

Well, I'm not sure of the hardest, but here are a few that come to mind.

I think it's difficult living in a time where we are so heavily judged on our appearance and the norm is wearing makeup, dying our hair, shaving, being made to feel like "beautiful" is what we see on TV.

I feel as though women are made to think that they must invest so much more time on their appearance than the average man does and that sucks.

At the same time I think it's difficult trying to make yourself heard but not having people roll their eyes at you and call you a "feminist" or assume that because you want to be taken seriously, you're obviously against all men (Which of course isn't true).

It's difficult to try and be able to act how you want and not have people think that you just want special treatment.

#DayThirtyTwo #VocalChallenge2020 #Viva