"Let's talk about our relationship"

How many times have all you guys out there heard, "You never want to talk about our relationship"?

Please, don't answer all at once, the noise is deafening.

Or, in what may seem like the diametrically opposed conversational direction, heard your date say, in response to something you've told her about yourself, "That's a big red flag!"

I'm not sure who popularized that phrase, by my best guess would be Oprah, the queen of pseudo-self awareness.

I've come to call this attitude in the women I date "Oprah Self-Awareness."

Joe Willy, fellow founding member of the Alfalfa Was Right He-Man Woman Hater's Club describes it thus: "If her self-awareness was a river, it would be a mile wide, and an inch deep."

For, it's not really self-awareness. It extends as far as understanding what one wants from a relationship, but not so far as to understanding what one has to offer in a relationship.

How better to make this plain than to declare that something you've discovered about me is a "red flag" to the success of our relationship? What that tells me is that she is spending all of her time examining my past and my behavior to see if I have something to offer her, and none of her time examining her own past and behavior to decide if she has something to offer me.

This is, of course, (club members, you should be able to repeat this in unison by now) because all women assume that, "of course we have what you want, but it's up to you to prove that you have what we want."

But, I digress; back to my original point, which is not nearly as diametrically opposed as one might think: "You never want to talk about our relationship."

This is an almost universal complaint among women. That is, until you decide you want to talk about your relationship.

Have you seen the cell phone commercial where the couple is at dinner and, she says, "I need to know where this relationship is going"? She becomes angry when the guy ignores her to ask why he has to pay for incoming calls.

Try asking a woman that same question, and you will get a whole different response. Some examples from my life:

"Why do you have to analyze everything? Why can't you just enjoy what we have?"

"That seems like a pretty serious question, after all, we've only been dating (and sleeping together, and sharing our lives with each others' children) for six months."

"This is making me uncomfortable. We were having fun, why do you have to break the mood?"

"I'm just not ready to leave my husband yet. You need to live with that, or we can't continue."

In my experience, every woman I have been with becomes very uncomfortable with questions about the relationship. My theory? Because they feel they are the cruise control in the relationship. They determine the speed at which it progresses - or doesn't progress - because (again, club members, in unison):

"It's all about what they want and need, not what we want or need."

Oprah self-awareness: watch for it in a woman near you.