I have never had a lot to do with men, they have always been kind of mysterious and slightly odd. I went to an all girls school for most of my adolescents and then I went to Uni and studied nursing were the majority of the other students and lecturers were girls.  Since I left Uni I worked in health again with lots of female nurses, I missed an important part of my teenage language development I never learnt the subtle differences between boy English and girl English.

When I realised that I would be in a very masculine environment with 12 men and only 1 other girl I was a little bit nervous. I mean what do you actually talk to boys about?  Especially boysy boys!!!  What are the day to day topics?  Not boys that you are flirting with or meeting in a bar but boys that you live with all the time and share beer with and watch t.v and eat breakfast every morning.

Luckily the other girl that I work with speaks fluent boy so she has been helping me upskill.  I know that this blog article will be no revelation to most of you who are not as female centric in your social lives as me but I have been fascinated to explore the differences up close and personal.

Boys actually say what they want.

So refreshing, with women there is sometimes a subtext that you need to be aware of, a hidden message that most other females read subconsciously. I don’t say this to diss my fellow ladies, it is the way we are socialised as young children. Females learn to display behaviour that is socially acceptable and this includes the language that we use and the behavior’s that we employ to get what we want/need without appearing to bossy / forward / bitchy / ‘unfeminine’. Our control over situations is subtle, men just say what they want, it is simple.

My lesson has been to ask for what I want … with a little less subtext.

They love their girlfriends and talk about it to each other!!!!

So while casual hook-ups are fair game for bar discussion, and yes it can get kind of nitty gritty hilarious boys are no worse then girls when it comes to comparing a one nighter.  However when guys speak about their girlfriends it is as if they are Princesses and this I find very endearing. They adore their partners, they worry about little things happening at home that might make their Princess unhappy and most special they set alarms so that they ring home on time when they are meant to!!!!  How cool is that.

They don’t bitch… much well usually only after quite a few beers

Lets face it girls like to gossip and have a bit of a bitch.  I think it is a sign of frustration from the about, not saying what we want.  Repress one behaviour and something else will occur to counter it.  When guys do bitch, they have general had a few drinks and they are generally discussing behaviour that they find frustrating in each other.  While girls judge boys get frustrated.  There is a difference

They are surprisingly easy to talk to!!!

You just talk, the only difference is the lack of subtext.  It’s quite liberating really.  Maybe I just struck it lucky and got stuck with 12 amazing boys that are easy to talk to and interesting but I think it is more likely that men really aren’t from mars and women really aren’t from venus.  We are just socialised slightly differently and so boys don’t have a subtext running.

They can talk about lots of things not just cars or football

Its amazing, I know, I totally thought that I would need to start reading the sports pages but actually we have had talks about politics, Indigenous affairs, finance, books, travel, permaculture, Japanese moss gardens…. the list is endless

So the trick is don’t over think it!!!!