#1: I Can't Stand Someone Who Likes to Spend Excessive Time as a Couch Potato. There's nothing wrong with relaxing, but being in a relationship with a couch potato can get old fast. In fact, men are so wary of lazy women that it sneaks into the Top Ten list of Can't Stands.
In the early 1990's, a writer and relationship counselor by the name of John Gray, Ph.D. wrote a little book you may have heard of: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. When the book was published in 1992, it became a pop culture phenomenon that eventually led to more books, seminars, a TV sitcom and even a one-man Broadway show.
Touch is so significant in our lives the lack of it can cause us to become ill or otherwise disordered. According to Sarah Trenholm, a communication professor at Ithaca College, “People deprived of touch may develop physical, mental, and social disorders. In fact, studies have linked touch deprivation to depression, alienation, and violence.” In talking about his recent book, Intimate Behavior: A Long Look At What Society Has Done to Our Need for Physical Contact with Other Members of the Same Species, anthropologist Desmond Morris chalks it up to our prenatal experience.
Indeed, social blushing is both a common emotional response and a communicative signal. Indeed, social blushing is both a common emotional response and a communicative signal. I was conducting one of my He Speaks, She Speaks seminars on gender communication when a male participant began talking about the obvious biological differences between men and women, including their genitalia. I picked up the thread, and continued to discuss how genitals are one obvious marker of the differences. I was on my way to an elaboration on body size and how “big” men can get, meaning how much personal space they can take up. “Men have a tendency to get big,” I began. But the audience was still stuck on the idea of genitalia.
Last week's Dude's List was all about why he likes to be a him rather than a her. However, I not so subtly hinted in that article that every advantage reflects a disadvantage, every strength hides a weakness, and so, this Dude's List I turn the tables on the boys. This time I go over the top dozen reasons you've got it over us.
Why is the face so important? Of course we communicate from the neck down, but the majority of meaning and the richest source of nonverbal data come from the face. Our visage provides the most information about how we feel, and our body movements indicate the intensity of the emotion. According to anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell, human beings are capable of making 250,000 facial expressions without uttering a word.
I watched a young couple having dinner, noting that the whole evening passed without them looking at anyone else in the room. She did a lot of "gender signaling”—she tossed back her head, and smiled and laughed a lot--acting as though she found her young man profoundly entertaining.
