Your spontaneity offends us: "Want to get dinner in an hour?" "I'm drunk at a bar. I want to see you, come out!" At first, men think women will read this as, "If I ask to see a women so soon, she will feel I really want to see her." They eventually learn that we see it as, "If he really wanted to see me, he would have checked what my schedule was way more in advance than this!"
The moments right after sex are crucial: Don't toss a towel at us. Don't make a phone call in bed to a buddy to talk about a stupid YouTube video. Don't leave within five minutes. Men learn these rules eventually. They learn that women need some time to just chill together after sex, maybe talk, maybe not talk at all. But, men learn that their attention can't just jet off elsewhere within minutes after intimacy.
We're not all relationship-hungry: After women have had their hearts broken enough times in high school, college and their early twenties, they become more cautious. They choose quality over quantity. A lot of men, during that transition for women, are taken by surprise when it turns out a girl they've been seeing seriously is seeing somebody else! After this happens to them a few times they realize, "Maybe women aren't these needy, relationship-hungry people I thought they were. Maybe they keep their options open... just like I do."
Didn't call? We want an explanation! If we take hours, or days, to call a friend back, the first thing we say is, "Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I've been so caught up with…" Men learn that if they take a few hours, or days, to call back, and they just begin the conversation with, "Hey, how's it going?" they're probably going to get some passive aggression, some coldness, if not some straight up "How's it going?! You tell me! I haven't heard from you in three days!"
We don't always need advice: If we vent about something, and you say, "Well, maybe next time that happens you can do this and that," we feel you're saying we didn't do it right the first time. Also, we might just have wanted someone to say, "That totally sucks that that happened to you. Come here," and hug us. The time when we are emotional is not the time to get practical. Most men figure that out after a few blowups.
PMS jokes make us PMS: Any time your reaction to our emotions is, "Are you PMS'ing?" we suddenly feel that you A) don't see us as a unique individual at all, but rather just another chick run by her hormones, and B) that you really weren't listening to what we just said and all you could see as a giant "PMS" sign flashing over our heads. And then, whether we were pissed off before, we are really pissed off after. Men think the joke will shut us up. It spurs us on.
It probably won't freak us out: Worried about sending that text "I've been thinking about you," "I miss you," "I feel so lucky to have met you"? Many women have the experience of sending such a text and getting the "I'm afraid you want something more serious than I do" response. And, since men are the ones giving that response, when it comes their time to feel all needy and sentimental, they know how the tables could turn. But, eventually, they learn that women don't get scared off by those things from someone they like, but rather welcome them.
