ABOUT WOMEN
All that talk about having 'The Talk' is blown out of proportion
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By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer
"Everything was going great. We were hanging out, having fun, just cruising. Then she had to ruin it."
He shook his head, defeated and disappointed. His world was obviously spiraling downward. And from the lack of color in his face, I already knew what my guy friend had been doing the night before. Possibly that morning, too.
"She wanted to have ..." He paused, choking it back, wanting desperately to make it go away, wishing it never happened. He took a deep breath before the words escaped his mouth:
"The Talk."
The audience gasped.
No, not The Talk!
Mention it to any guy and watch them wince and wriggle like third-graders who have to hold a girl's hand. They don't like to see their carefree world of late nights downing Coronas and scoring digits destroyed by family dinners and grocery shopping. They don't want to trade in watching football on Sunday mornings for beating the crowd at Macy's.
They don't want to give up the perks of being a bachelor for the perils of domestication.
But it's not just guys who dread The Talk.
One of my girlfriends has been cleverly dodging it for six months now. Her plan: When it comes up, she'll move to the Mainland.
Another girlfriend is in complete denial. She was practically living with one of her "special friends" for a year, never calling him her boyfriend and never admitting she wasn't single anymore. Until he forced a decision. So she changed her cell number.
Commitment phobia is not exclusive to the male species. We have our doubts about relationships, too. We don't want to give up our perfectly happy existence of clean bathrooms and organized laundry. We have a hard enough time just juggling our careers, yoga and girls' night-outs to complicate our lives with balled-up socks and Monday Night Football.
But it's not only the discussion of exclusivity that freaks us out. It's finding out that all this time it wasn't.
Exclusive, that is.
Simple case of miscommunication, and mostly in the physical form: He calls all the time, he introduces you to his friends, he wants to see you every weekend. But you don't realize that all those days you were busy at ceramics class or shopping with your girlfriends, he was out with another woman, calling her all the time, introducing her to his friends, planning dates for those off days.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's called dating. But you were completely unaware of what was going on.
Because you never had The Talk.
It's nothing to freak out about, actually. The Talk can save you. You can come clean about what you want, what you need and what you expect from each other. Once you both are on the same page, you can turn it and start a new chapter.
No more misunderstandings, no more ridiculous expectations. The Talk, like the truth, will set you free.
But I'm sure moving away says a lot, too.
Reach Catherine E. Toth at 535-8103 or ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.
