Typical Guy Mistakes at Work

LOVE / SEX - I was tempted to call this post "Being a Bonehead at Work".

As a guy I, on a regular basis, sometimes make stupid mistakes. Bonehead mistakes. Its not that I am stupid... its just that I wasn't thinking.

For women when men do that they call it something else. Being Inconsiderate, because we didn't think of their feelings when we did something stupid.

Now I want to point out that doing a Typical Guy Mistake happens a lot. We just don't think sometimes and we do something and only afterwards realize we were being a bonehead.

Somewhere out there in the world I can guarantee there is multiple men making a bonehead mistake right now... and at the same time there is a bunch of others who are regretting their action.

Typical Guy Mistakes aren't the result of greed, hatred or malice. Although some of them might be done in the name of laziness and/or efficiency. As guys we have a tendency to think of the most efficient use of our time... so if we can carry 3 boxes up the stairs in one trip instead of making 3 trips, well by golly, we're going to carry all three boxes at once!

And that isn't really laziness because we're doing extra effort to make more efficient use of time. It takes us more energy to carry all three boxes at once.

Now if we drop 1 of the boxes and it contained your great-grandmother's antique heirloom knitting needles and the knitting needles get broken... well, gee, we're sorry. We thought we could do it without too much difficulty and weren't thinking about the danger to your precious heirloom.

And such things just happen.

Another Typical Guy Mistake is when we blurt something out and we're being honest. Nothing wrong with the truth right? Ha, if only.

Another Typical Guy Mistake is when we embarrass you by behaving like a dumb*ss. You roll your eyes in embarrassment and look the other way and later berate us later about how its rude to ask Asian people where they're from and conversing with them in their native language (as someone who speaks Korean, Japanese and Mandarin I've done this a lot, mostly because I use any excuse to hone my language skills and get needed practice).

I think you get the point.

The thing about Typical Guy Mistakes is that we know we were being stupid when we made the mistakes, but we don't think we did anything wrong. This is an important disctinction.

Doing something stupid is a whoops. Sorry. I wasn't thinking.

Doing something wrong means we did something immoral out of greed, hatred, envy, etc.

Thus sometimes men will refuse to apologize for a Typical Guy Mistake because we didn't do anything immoral. We already know we did something stupid, but morality isn't part of equation.

We can apologize for our stupidity, but sometimes if we've done multiple stupid mistakes these things add up and women get annoyed at the sheer number of mistakes. If the woman in our life is the type who keeps bringing up old mistakes this isn't going to help either. At some point in resulting arguments she might even refer to him as "a Complete Bonehead".

Being a Complete Bonehead means you're a guy who makes Typical Guy Mistakes on a regular (perhaps even daily) basis. Watch old episodes of Tim Allen on the "Home Improvement" TV show from the 1990s and you will get to see a Complete Bonehead in action.

I am going to give a personal example. One week before Valentines I was at my girlfriend's place and we discussed me staying the night. It was still early in the relationship and she had mentioned wanting to stay up late sometime talking. I was all for snuggling and chatting. However my interest in doing so was apparently misconstrued as sexual lust and she got scared of the seriousness of the relationship and 4 days later we broke up.

Now... did I do anything immoral? Nope. Was it a stupid mistake for me to want to spend the night and chat? Yes.

Now during the actual break up I did another one. I complained about how she frequently changes her mind, cancels meetings, changes meetings and so forth. Sometimes she can't even make up her mind. (If you've ever dated someone like this you know how annoying and frustrating this is.) I felt she was being inconsiderate and selfish by not taking into account my feelings and schedule and the effort I was putting into doing nice things for her. ie. The one time she was supposed to come over for spicy spaghetti and watch movies, but instead she cancelled and went straight home because she was "too tired" from work.

I was upset and said something stupid. Regardless that its true that she does those things, it was still stupid of me to bring up the topic during the breakup.

But in retrospect she was probably just making Typical Girl Mistakes when she cancelled or changed all those meetings. She wasn't thinking, the same way I wasn't thinking.

She knew I was making the meal for her but it never occurred to her that I was making a huge effort making her a special meal and that I would be upset if she cancelled at the last minute.

Such things just happen.

The only thing we can do is try and practice forgiveness and this works equally well for both sexes.