What does he mean "Mysterious?"

Ladies, I present to you the long awaited return of the “Ask a Male Blog”.  Your one stop location to have your questions answered about what and how men think.  Contrary to popular belief, yes we do think.  We often spend a great deal of time thinking.  The downfall is that we often don’t enact what we think about and we often don’t follow through with it. 

Today’s question: What does a man mean when he says that he finds me “Mysterious?”

The age old question, and one of those goals that the staff (of one) that this blog represents, attempts to dissuade some of the mystery behind what either gender is thinking at any given time. Now, I’ve stated in the founding post that I cannot propose to ponder what women think, because I am not a woman, nor what a gay man thinks because I am not a gay man.  I can however attempt to clarify what a straight man means to women when he says something.  

 (Yeah... That pretty well sums it up.)

We have different ways of thinking. The greatest issue that we across the gender gap have is the concept of communication.  We both have issues expressing how we feel, what we want, and what we need from each other.  Both sides honestly feel that the other should just KNOW what we are thinking at any given time. 

But none of us are Psychic.  Honestly; if any woman could read my mind… I’d be rendered dateless for the rest of my existence. 

 

But I digress…

The question is, what a man means when he says “Your Mysterious?”  

Often, when men first meet Women, we are conditioned to see a woman and judge her based on first impression.  Our first trained response is to judge her on the basis of what we find attractive in a woman.  That varies from man to man (or boy to boy as often as the case may be). I could write a whole dissertation on just what men are conditioned to believe is attractive in Women and just what we often realistically do find attractive in Women.  Suffice it to say, if we sit down to have a conversation for longer than five minutes, then we find you ladies attractive. 

The second thing we are attempting to do in conversation and we are trained to judge you on is whether your interests possibly or even remotely match our own.  Now, it would be foolish to expect that our future love hold all or even an exacting amount of interests that we share. At best, we can hope for a few interests in common and enough to give us something to talk about. 

 

So here’s the rub in the scenario… 

After we get past the initial meeting, past the conversation, and our interest is perked… We as men go home after the first date and begin to formulate an idea about the person we’ve met and just what kind of person they may be. How we do it depends… We combine our images of our first impression with the conversation about your interests that don’t match ours and our ideas of what you may think about the future, love, life, faith, sex, whatever the case may be, and we begin to come up with either a positive or negative idea about you.  Usually if it’s negative, it won’t result in a second date.  At worst in the general douche bag scenario, a second date will largely just be a push for a one time sexual encounter and no call and no show. And let’s face it, that’s not a scenario anybody but the douche bag wants. 

So if it moves to a second date, we are attempting to explore our preconceived ideas about you. 

And that’s when you begin to shatter them all.  Because ladies, you are so amazing at that. We develop and indeed feel we have a perfect idea of what you are and what you have to offer. 

And then you have to go and amaze us.  Subtly at first, you might not even notice that you just did it.  But that cute little wink you did when we mentioned our favorite movie.  Or that way your hand touches our knee when we talk about our favorite band.  Or the way you light up about the things that just seem so mundane to us.  Our entire vision of you has shattered…  And you now become so much more interesting. You’re… MYSTERIOUS… 

 

So perplexed… We have to break down our preconceived idea of what we thought you were.  The difficulty we have thereafter is;  can we overcome our preconceived ideas and explore the woman you really are, or is the mystery too insurmountable that we have to disconnect?  

Men have issues, I will be the first to admit it.  Human beings, men and women both, have issues.  The greater strength is shown when we put aside both of our preconceived ideas and begin to explore the mystery that each other holds.