Single Again… Understanding Her

By Kenneth Stepp

Women… I want to understand them, so I thought I’d write about them and see if that illuminates me on their complexities. I doubt it will, but I feel compelled to try. So, while I attempt to stumble through this thought in the few words this space allows, sit back and relax with me for a moment.

As many know, I have been on quite a journey over the past few years. From my romantic relationships, career, friendships, etc., to my entire belief system. It has rocked the foundation of who I am. Even more importantly, it rocked the foundation of how I see others. There are some who, at one time, were heroes in my eyes, who now appear to be something far less admirable. Even more enlightening, I am seeing me in a much different light…. more complex than I once thought possible.

I have grown in my ability to love. I love more uninhibitedly and unrestrained than ever before. The deeper side of love has increased in capacity as well. So, is all this real, or as Ebenezer Scrooge would ask, simply something I ate before going to bed last night?

Now, I am faced with feelings. It doesn’t matter who you are, feelings are real to all of us. And yes, they can fool anyone. You can absolutely know something beyond any doubt is real, even though, it isn’t. You can be 100% convinced that something happened, that never actually happened. It’s a feeling. They run roughshod over logic all the time. Keeping feelings in check can be a full time job. The greater your imagination, the more difficult it can be to discern reality from feelings.

I tend to use too much logic, I’m scattered, I have profound ADD, and I am simply a guy. Understanding women, for me, is as complicated a process as there can be, meaning I will never understand women completely. As a man, I am a simple creature. Food, shelter, my truck,  intimacy, and I’m a happy camper. The neuroscientific data, and mathematical wonderment that is the female mind, escapes me. We mere men are unarmed in the world when it comes to the female psyche.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to understand women. But I find understanding where the multiverse began, world peace, consciousness, and quantum mechanics are child’s play by comparison. Women are so complex. Why? Because of feelings. Men only think we have feelings, which is really only a working theory. It is believed, in many scholarly circles, that at one time, suddenly there was a man who was endowed with a girl’s feelings, and this is where spontaneous combustion originated, thus solving another historical mystery.

Moving forward with this thought, let me wrap it up and tie a bow on it. What have I learned from all of my pondering on the female mind? I have learned that women are far too complex to understand. I have learned to nod my head in agreement. I have learned that if I want to have a relationship of any kind with a woman that I should give up my right to be right–and am happy to do so. What I have not learned, and I believe never will, is that girls are not understandable unless you are, in fact, a girl, something I will never be. Most of the most important people in my life are girls, not because I understand even scintilla of what makes them tick, but because they care enough about me to overlook the fact that while they are a delicate and intricate work of art, and I am a blob of nothingness, just wanting to be loved, they allow me to remain in their orbit. They amaze me. No doubt. They always will.

“Girl power in my mind is to let girls be exactly what they are. Let them be angry. Let them be resentful. And rebellious. Let them be hard and soft and loving and sad and silly. Let them be wrong. Let them be right. Let them be everything. because, they are everything.” 
― Amy Sherman-Palladino