Men & Selective Hearing

Know what’s weird about men? They have selective memory.

Mars, for instance, has not forgotten a trivial fact since 1957 (does anyone else remember what pantyhose Joe Namath wore in that famous commercial? Or even who Joe Namath was?). But he cannot remember that two nights ago I told him I wanted to keep the latest edition of Seattle Magazine so I could blog about the ad on the back cover.

Last week, he mentioned hearing John Gray on the podcast, Authors on Tour Live! Gray, you may remember, is the man who wrote the book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. He has a new book out called, Why Mars and Venus Collide, and Mars (my husband, that is) was very excited about it.

“He has the answer,” Mars said. “To everything! Stress, our relationship, our busy lives, time together — everything!” OK, so I kicked up the enthusiasm. Emotional levels of 1-2 on a scale of 1-10 aren’t that interesting to read. But for him, he was very enthusiastic.

“So what’s the answer?” I asked.

“It’s easy,” he said. “We need to have sex once a week!”

I stood there goggling at him. Finally, I said, “OK.”

“Seriously! You have to listen to the podcast. It’s all about hormones: testosterone for me and oxytocin for you. But basically, we just need to have sex once a week.”

Hormones, schmormones. I couldn’t care less what his reasoning was. He’s suggesting more sex, I am all over that, baby! “OK,” I said again. “Or more. More would be all right too.”

Today I finally got around to listening to the podcast, and indeed, John Gray recommended we have sex at least once a week. And he did, indeed, talk a lot about testosterone and oxytocin.

But he also said — and this came as a complete surprise since Mars didn’t even allude to it — that we need romance. In fact, he virtually never said “sex” without saying “sex and romance” or “romance and sex.”

Yep, men — and their selective memory — are definitely from another planet.

Tags: Authors on Tour Live!, human nature, John Gray, Men are from mars