Meg...

...Find that one (safe) attribute, perhaps it's a mole she doesn't like on her back, and say you'd change that - not because it bothers you, but because you know how much it bothers her.

NO! Are you NUTS MAN??? It doesn't bother you, it may bother her but there is only ONE safe way to handle that stupid mole..."Does it bother me? Bother me? Of course not. Don't be silly, that is THE SINGLE SEXIEST mole that I have EVER seen! I just LOOVE the way it's placed so close to your....shoulder blade! It turns me ON BABY!"

Don't you get it man? There is NO safe way to insult, or to agree with a woman as SHE is insulting, any physical attribute of a woman's body. If she has told you that it bothers HER...she wants you to assauge THOSE VERY CONCERNS! If it bothered her in the first place...then you most ASSUREDLY DO NOT want to agree with her! Jeez, and you were so sure that you had found a safe way to comment in anything less that a POSITIVE note! Did I qualify my statement? Did I SAY..."except if it bothers her"? NO! SHE WILL THROW IT BACK IN YOUR FACE SOME DAY, MARK MY WORDS!!!!

If there was a safe way to do it, I would have TOLD you! When I asked Vex that question, I expected him to say, "No..you're just perefct for me!"

But instead, he said, "You're legs. They're too skinny."

Now, I KNEW my legs were too skinny. And I asked that question expecting reassurance about them...Now my legs are more of a concern than EVER!

How do I get it through to you? We ask that question because we have faith in your love and adoration for us and our "mole"! We believe that you love the mole and we never, under any circumstances, want you to AGREE with us when we speak ill of the mole. You my friend, have been tit suckered.

Listen, grasshopper, I don't care how sweetly she leads you to that cliff...DO NOT jump! This question may even be asked over a very long period of time...two to three years perhaps...JUST SAY NO!

Your mother was right..."If you can't say anything nice...DON'T say anything at all!"

Oh my. I see this is going to be much tougher than I had originally thought. I was kinda thinking that you would read what I was telling you and believe me. I know that I can be misleading at times and I tend to sneak up on people...but when I do that...there's a punch line and I purposely let you know that you've been had. Don't you know why I do that?

I do it because I can. I am woman...see me manipulate.

Now, I hope you are taking this in the spirit in which it is offerred. We don't do it on purpose...it isn't a master plan. We just can't help ourselves. It's the way we were conditioned.

All of those negative attributes that are assigned, generally, to men...well, we can make jokes about them. Men are safe. They pretty much lust laugh at the reality of the jokes about them. But to say such things about women...that we manipulate and we pursposely put you guys in untenable situations...is quite an admission. Most women who are guilty of it don't even realize that they are doing it. But, like the conditioning that leads little boys to avoid displaying emotion, we are conditioned to react to those emotions and we feel the need to "get at" them. Especially if we had either a very healthy relationship with our father or a very unhealthy relationship with him..

A happy father/daughter relationship is one of over-concern on the father's part and little girls know how to pull on Daddy's heart strings. I watched a 14 month old baby girl one day. Her father was not in the room. When she fell, she looked at her mother and then just brushed it off and kept on playing. Then Daddy came into the room. Lauren fell again. But this time, she looked straight at Daddy and cried like a baby. He fell for it hook line and sinker. Her mother and I glanced at each other, rolling our eyes at yet another man conditioning another little girl to be coy and spoiled. Then, when she grows up, she wants that same "control" over the man in her life...it's how love has been defined to her. It isn't anything malicious, even though it may come across that way. It's just a frustration over the lack of that control.

Then, you have the sad or absent father/daughter relationship. These women grow up seeking what they never had and make dreadful mistakes. Even if one of these women has a good man, she needs constant reassurance and will seek it from him.

That's the common thing in either type of woman, the reassurance thing. To varying degrees, we all need it. Odd, isn't it?

I don't know why I made such hideous mistakes, my father was the better type. He was always there, he always came home at night and he always paid the bills. The day that my daughter was born into a large Italian family that was heavily populated with males, I asked my father, "Do you think that Mark will be disappointed that she isn't a boy?"

He said, "No. Daddy's love their little girls."

It wasn't my father. Now that I think of it...I think it was the first couple of unrequited loves that I had. I never really let myself get over them before I replaced them. The only acceptable recourse was another man. If I would have taken the time to grow up first, I think I would have been fine.

Anyway, for whatever reason, we like it when you worship us...different women have different tolerances for this, so don't go psycho on anybody. Just use your brains a little bit. To some degree, every women will judge herself based on how you judge her. That's not right or wrong...it just is.

You have the power to make us see ourselves as beautiful and to see ourselves as something less. This isn't admitting a weakness, like I said, some women have given far too much control to that man in her life and others, not so much. But no matter how strong we are, you can make us stronger. I bet you think that we could do the same, 'ey?

Well, I'm gonna go drink some coffee and get ready to run some errands.

See ya,

Meg