Gaps

I’ve been listening to a lot of books by author Abby Jimenez. I discovered her on TikTok (an app that allows complete strangers to share video clips of all kinds) years ago because she has two hilarious dogs that she’d share videos of. Then I learned she was an author.

(One time she posted a TT about how she used to run a bakery out of her home and then listed all the incredible things she’s done and continues to do. It wasn’t a brag, she was telling a story. I went to her comments section and wrote “you really are an underachiever” She responded “I’ll try to do better” So I think we’re friends now.)

I’ve listened to three or four of her books at this point. She does something I’ve never experienced before – her characters show up in each others’ books. I think it’s really clever.

The other thing is all her protagonists are in an impossible romantic relationship scenario, which they invariably solve by one or both persons altering their life plans so the two can be together, giving them their happily ever after.

I always liked these books. The characters were modern with current senses of humor..

It has two flaws which I have finally noticed (how did I not until now?!). The first is that the main plot in all these books remind me of the last relationship I had years go. (Yes, you read that right. YEARS.)

That guy from years ago and I spoke about trying to make it work but came to far more mature conclusions than the characters in Jimenez’ books; He would never ask me to move away from my family, friends and job to his country to see if we could work, and I would never ask him to stay, especially considering his dislike for the Boston area and his love for his home country.

And that was that.

The second thing I’ve made note of with these books is how the men are flawless. They say the right things, do the right things, are endlessly selfless, etc.

Talk about fiction!

There is a change happening online lately; society has caught on and is talking about the fact that women have evolved, and men simply are not evolving. I’ve stumbled on many videos and articles about his very topic. I write this knowing that when you use social apps like Instagram and TikTok, their algorithm brings back the same topics to you over time. So, this may onyl be taking over MY personal sources of content.

A researcher (of I don’t know what) talked about how women are “killing it” in life and men simply are not. A woman talking about how it moved her to see the marathoner spot her friend cheering her on during the race. The friend had flown in from out of town for 24 hours to support her marathoning friend. The idea being that basically, women do exceptional things and men just don’t do stuff like that. (I will say that I’ve seen lot of lovely videos of men going out of their way for their friends, so I recognize the generalization found in the previous sentences. Do they do it on their own or are their wives involved? I don’t know)

I’m on a dating app again and consistently get “Hey” as an introductory message, or the classic one-word answer to a question I asked after looking at their profile. There’s no return question, no inquiry about info found on my profile.

One guy did this, but also viewed my TikTok profile (the app tells you who had visited your profile page). Two weeks later, he started “following” my TT profile. I thought maybe he was actually interested, so I went back to the app and asked a question to see if the conversation would start up again.

He gave me a banal answer and no follow-up, to which I responded “OK well, I hope you find what you’re looking for here!”. I then blocked him from viewing my TT profile page.

It really is incredibly lame.

Last week I attended the UPAA’s annual symposium. This year it was hosted in politically problematic but physically beautiful Utah. There were countless intelligent interactions with men which helped me feel a bit better about their species. Not to mention I have countless men in my life who are intelligent, both emotionally and generally speaking. This is not an “all men” kind of post, even if it reads this way.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is simply that it’s been interesting to see our culture begin to recognize the distance between the seeming growth of women’s accomplishments and emotional intelligence and mens’ seeming lack thereof.