A sheep in wolves clothing

According to Wikipedia "perception" is defined as the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. It also states that; What one perceives is a result of interplays between past experiences, including one’s culture, and the interpretation of the perceived. Why you ask is Tonya going all Psych 101 on her blog today? It was triggered by a conversation that I had with a friend about peoples, IE, womens, perceptions of men. We were talking about the "ah ha" moment that you have when you discover, after either much abuse on your part, or struggles, or time, or distance, that the person you are "dating" or are in "love" with, is an entirely different person than you thought that they were, or that you "perceived" them to be.

Take for instance, Jane, and yes I know you don't need a lesson to teach you what perception means, I get that, I get that you understand what I'm talking about, but just stay with me for a minute, I want to weigh in on how I think WOMEN perceive MEN. Ok, so back to Jane. Jane starts out dating Jack and she "perceives" him to be this really super nice guy, he's always opening doors for her, he's doing all the wonderfully romantic things that we women want men to do, so she "perceives" that he will stay this way as a person down the road, she "perceives" that she has met a man that will treat her nicely, never get mad at her, or cause her to cry. What Jane does in actuality by "perceiving" all of these things about Jack is a)ultimately setting herself up to be hurt and b)setting Jack up for failure, and she's doing it without even knowing it.

I recently started dating someone, and I can admit, I did the exact same thing Jane did. I"perceived" him to be something that he really just isn't. YES, he's a nice guy, YES, he's nice to me, YES, he shows up when he says he's going to, and YES he calls when he's late, but during our initial getting to know each other phase I didn't anticipate that he would have bad days, be late occasionally when we got together because he was held up at work, or make me angry when we tried to work through a little issue that we had, I didn't "anticipate" my sheep to sometimes wear wolves clothing. And who's fault is that but my own.

Now, having said all of that, here's my take on how men perceive women. They see a cute girl, they ask her out, they take her out on a date, they think they might want to kiss her so they do, they ask her out again, they go out again, in the meantime he plays basketball with his friends on Friday, and visits his mother on Saturday, all the while his perception of the "girl" he's been dating is insular, very one dimensional, because men think tangibly, when he's with her, he likes her, he doesn't "perceive" that she won't eventually make him mad, or cause him undue stress over where to park the car or what movie to choose at the movie theater, no, a man's "perception" of a woman is never built up in their heads like it is for us, they're just way more simple than that. They just are.

In fact, here's proof of what I speak of muahahaha! Here's an excerpt from an article on the internet comprised by Victor W. Harris, MS entitled "The Top 11 ways Men and Women differ".

In it he states: Because women are generally more perceptive and aware in their relationships, they tend to expect men to be more aware and perceptive, as well. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case. For this reason, unless women become skilled at congruent communication (i.e., to say what you mean and mean what you say), they will begin to feel that their needs are not being met. It is not that men do not want to help them meet their needs, but the fact of the matter is that men are generally socialized to congruently communicate what they need and not to expect others to read their minds.

So, here's what I think:

I think we should all just stick to what feels right to us about the other person based upon concrete fact and evidence, otherwise, what we "perceive" may up end "DEceiving" us instead.

Thanks for reading!