It's a Secret

You know that whole Men are from Mars thing that sold a lot of books and helps justify a lack of effort to understand each other for men and women alike? It’s a load of humbug. Men and women are alike in many more ways than they are different. It’s just that, for some areas, men have better brand managers. 

Take this whole thing of how men make better confidantes, because they keep each others’ secrets much better than women. Makes for a great extension of the old chestnut about how women gossip and men don’t. And hence, since men don’t gossip, they do far less bean spilling also. So the theory goes, anyway. 

Granted, there is some part of the male psyche which takes a request to keep something to yourself quite literally. This is normally great, but when this is used as a ploy so that said fact can be publicized to as wide an audience as possible in the strictest confidence, can be a bit of a dampener. So here is a tip: don’t swear a guy to secrecy unless you really, really mean it. This genetic anomaly could also be the reason why men have garnered the reputation for keeping secrets. 

Unfortunately, just like many other theories (the world being flat, Pakistani batsmen being able to bat with the tail, etc), this one is also not really true. Men are as bad, if not worse, when it comes to letting slip juicy tidbits of information, at the right moment.  And here is proof that this fact is acknowledged at some subconscious level by women – all the situation and romantic comedies you watch never have a best-friend-and-confidante character for the female lead that is a heterosexual male. 

Of course, the brand managers for the male gender have also carefully cultivated an impression that men don’t have the capacity to empathise. The better to watch the cricket unfettered with. And it is hard to confide in a gender whose reputation is that they, famously, don’t give a damn. Makes it kind of difficult to have a confidante when you are pouring your heart to someone on the phone, but cannot be sure if the emotions they are sharing are because of what you are going through, of because City just scored a fifth goal. 

Again, this is all a clever piece of image management. If it wasn’t, my friend wouldn’t have sent me a message after that game which was only half gloating, with the other being an acknowledgement that he understood. Didn’t stop him rubbing it in, of course; what kind of friend would he be if he hadn’t? As that world famous philosopher Homer Simpson famously said, just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand. 

As I type this, part of me is desperately wishing that someone would take this shovel out of my hands. There are some trade secrets you don’t let out even under pain of death, like who let the dogs out, and I fear that this just may be one of them. But it had to be done. After all, how else could I conclusively prove that men can’t keep secrets? Unfortunately, I too have fallen prey to the spin doctor, and don’t have sufficient empathy for the predicament I am about to place myself in. 

Bit of a Catch-22, that.