THE BLITHELY IGNORANT MALE!

While attending a Marriage Encounter weekend, Ken and his wife Gretchen listened to the instructor declare, "It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other." He addressed the men, "Can you name and describe your wife's favorite flower?"Ken leaned over, touched Gretchen's arm gently and whispered, "Pillsbury All-purpose, isn't it?"

It could happen. We see the bozo zone showing up in men all the time and these are men who can tell you what G.E. stock closed at last night yet this man knows absolutely nothing about his wife's favorite things and that woman goes on and on getting a mixmaster for Christmas when she'd prefer Joy perfume and dark red fragrant roses.

When two people are bonded and one is a woman, she won't turn off the juice no matter what he does, short of murder, bank robbery and pedophelia. And often those things don't do make her leave. SO what leverage does a woman have to catch his attention, make him listen, make him study her likes as she has studied his, make him contribute as she does, on the subtle level, to the joy of the union?

THE SUBTLE ABILITY TO INVADE his brain, bypass the remote clicker, the televised game, his hand on your thigh making him mildly tumescent while he watches men get clobbered --and somehow get the facts in there. Get your LOVE LIST in there. Your wishes, dreams, your want list.

MY LOVE LIST: Which, if I had a man, today, I'd hand him. AT THE FLORIST? Seek TUBEROSE and GARDENIAS for flower bouquets, sweet peas are also nice.

ETHNIC CAFES Lets dine out at Thai, Mex, Chinese tonight. Italian is also good.

HAVE anything you want to give me? Make it in the COLOR BLUE, an electric blue.

It's so little, you know, my wish list, so little for a guy to grasp yet I had a boyfriend who’d been with me for thirty solid years give me a RED PURSE. He'd never seen me near that color in his life. What was he thinking? His Ferrari was red. That was what he was thinking.

Men are so distinctly not of our race that I wonder what testosterone is. Some BLITHENESS chemical? A STUPIDITY hormone? Does one pay for muscles and hairy chests with OBLIVION?

SO LEARN to make your wish lists, bold colors, subtly delivered.

GAMES YOU CAN PLAY TO EMBED YOUR REALITY IN HIS MIND

SHOW AND TELL: Bring home five blue dresses. Try each on in turn. See if he mentions the fact that they’re all blue. This is show and tell. Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t notice. At end of show, say which should I buy? I’ll return the rest. No matter where he goes with this, you’re ready. If he says ‘can we afford a dress?’ Say no, probably not. Tell you what, next time you see a BLUE DRESS you like, please buy it for me. But only blue. That’s all I wear.

FLOWER BOUQUETS- Bring home a single tuberose. Put it near his side of the bed, or at his dinner plate. “That is my favorite flower. TUBEROSE. Interesting name, no tube, no rose. TUBEROSE.” That should embed it like a spike in his memory.

DREAM VACATIONS- CUT out travel or advertising photographs of places. While he’s looking at the photo of JOSE GRECO and his consort doing flamenco poses, talk up you and him watching Flamenco in a gypsy village, dining on roast pig then coming home to your hotel and making flamenco love.

Do that for PARIS. You and him in the Place de Vendome. The bon marche fashions available at the magazines, (*their word for department store,) where a dress can be 30$. Actually if you love dresses, SEOUL KOREA is a better place. They do French stitchery, assembling, just like the couturiers, costs l0$ a dress! But honey, they have the sport fishing boats that catch the rare PARROT FISH. (Be sure to have a picture of that!) Do the research online, things to do in Seoul. Print up little squibs taken from PRICELINE and such. Cut out a lot of supplementary glossy color photos that look like that fishing boat, things he would enjoy. No fjords in Norway or New Zealand. Been there done that when we saw LORD OF THE RINGS. Find collateral things he would enjoy in Rome, where you go to see the leather shops. He will see the sandal maker. In Mexico, while you shop earthenware pottery, he sees the bullfight. In RedChina while you find that textile printer, he can visit the Best Chinese zoo. RESEARCH what each locale has.

PASSTIMES IN TOWN- Show him the theatre ad, the price for mezzanine is affordable. I saw LES MISERABLES from the mezzanine, not a problem. You can’t do show and tell with CHINA TOWN, but you can talk it up. Vividly. Those paper lanterns I love are only 6$ down there. Sure look good in the patio. And we get fresh crab and can stroll the bazaar. I’ve got some money I saved. I want four dinner plates, they are really cheap down there and real keepsakes.

MIND YOU NONE of this stuff does he care about! Plates? Fancy stitchery? HEIRLOOMS. OK, maybe the fresh crab. But as you string out the verbal pictures of what you love, occasionally putting in something that he would enjoy, you are making small dents in his consciousness about things you love that he can share with you. MEN instinctively know that if they share stuff you love, later, you come home happy and share stuff HE loves.

Get the picture? If you do, he will.