Men are from Mars... ? Women are from... ?

Sometimes it feels that way...

I was reflecting today on the amount of stuff I have shared with people about my reaction to my father's recent death, both through this blog, and via emails. Is it all overkill? Do all of my friends really want to know the minutiae of how I'm coming to terms with the emotional aspects of my loss, or the practicalities of managing the other aspects of my life that have taken a back seat to the grief of this time, or even how complex it's been helping my mother to settle Dad's estate here in Sydney?

This made me think of a conversation I recently had with a female friend, who has been going through some difficult experiences in her own life. She told me how her reaction has been so different to that of her husband's in response to the same experiences that have affected them both. It's probably no surprise to hear that for her, she felt the need to confide in one or two of her closest girlfriends, to talk through some of the stuff and her feelings about what was happening, but her husband not only didn't want to share anything about the situation with others, but couldn't understand why she would want to do that, and how it could possibly be helpful for her to do so.

Perhaps it is true that men and women come from completely different planets when it comes to emotional things, or dealing with internal and deep matters... (or even some things that are not so deep).

I remember earlier this year, I had a conversation with a close male friend who was about to head overseas for a number of weeks. Conscious that I would miss him during his absence, I sought reassurance that he would keep in touch whilst away. He said that he would "probably send the occasional email", and then suddenly got all tense and said, "you're not expecting me to send postcards, or detailed email circulars of everything I do, are you?"

My response: "umm... err... I guess not" (as I shifted nervously, thinking that he was making a thinly veiled reference to my own regular email tomes, once again making me question whether people really want to read everything I write in my emails and blogs).

I reached the conclusion that perhaps it was just the male/female divide, flavoured a bit by the variety of individual personality.

And of course, the great exception to this male female divide is my good mate BB, who is far more prolific a blogger than I (well, he seems to write longer, and deeper blog entries than my bits of fluff :-)

(One final word on the Men from Mars, Women from Venus thing- I have never read that particular book, but I do have a book written as a parody of it, called Women are from Bras and Men are from Penis. Hilariously funny, and much thinner than the original :-)