upworthy

dating

Humor

Men share 30 women's habits they had no idea about until they actually lived with a woman

"Similar to cats, they naturally gravitate to the warmest parts of the house."

Photo credit: Canva

These all seem to ring true.

While we are moving away from the rigidly binary “men are from Mars, women are from Venus,” mentality, we all know that each gender tends to have its own special quirks. And often, unless we grew up with a bunch of siblings from the opposite sex, we don’t learn what those quirks are until we move in with a significant other. Truly, it can feel like observing the daily ritual of another species entirely.

Recently, men were asked to open up about the womanly habits they had no idea were a thing until they got a girlfriend. Their answers were funny, sweet, and (not to speak for all women, but…) totally relatable. I’m certainly guilty of every single one of these.

Keep reading to see what the fellas said:

1. “She talks to herself when she blowdries her hair. Every time, and only then. Due to the noise of the dryer, I can't understand what she's saying, but she really goes on. Once she stops drying, she stops talking. Happens every day.”

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineA woman blowdrying her hairPhoto credit: Canva

2. “Anything that comes in a mini size is called cute. Mini bullet = cute. Mini Machete = cute. Doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s mini.”

3. "Similarly to cats, they naturally gravitate to the warmest parts of the house. It might be the cozy chair, a heated blanket, or the bed section I was just lying in. I'm honestly unsure if she loves me or just my excess heat (and I'm honestly OK either way)."

4. “The "everything" shower.”

5. “Common areas which can be seen by guests: SPOTLESS. Their personal space that closes that cannot be seen by guests: FUCKING DISASTER.”

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineA woman in a closetPhoto credit: Canva

6. “First time I moved in with a partner I certainly wasn't ready for the transformation my bathroom counter was about to go through.”

7. “I don't know if it's women in general, but my wife sheds clothes like a snake around the house. You can find evidence of exactly where she became uncomfortable and how much, depending on if the discarded clothes are in a small pile or strewn around the room.”

8. “How much time and effort they spend curating style. The reason they call “shopping” a whole hobby is bc half the time they aren’t even buying anything. They’re spending hours just browsing (online or at a store) just concocting aesthetics in their heads and brainstorming new looks or ideas. Meanwhile I’ve been wearing the same 8 shirts and 8 pairs of pants for the last ten years.”

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineOnline shoppingPhoto credit: Canva

9. “That skincare was such a big deal. I think before I met my wife, I used to just use soap on my face, which almost gave her an aneurysm. Meanwhile, she is using about 5000 products in the morning and night on her face (snail something was the strangest one).After 7 years together she managed to get me using cleanser and moisturizer. I still can't tell the difference.”

10. “3 foot tall piles of clothes on the ground I’d assume are dirty but apparently they’re not? But at the same time some are dirty? I guess? Idfk.”

11. "The fact that they take showers with boiling water. I'll occasionally try to be a little spontaneous with my wife and sneak in the shower with her. First, I must locate the shower because I can't see a foot in front of me due to all the steam. When I finally step in, I must use her as a human shield until she turns the temperature down."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineA hot showerPhoto credit: Canva

12. "They never finish their drinks. I find two cups of half-drunken coffee scattered around the house multiple times a week until we run out of coffee cups."

13. "She takes her bra off at the end of the day the same way I take my belt off my jeans when I get home. It is with the force of a thousand suns and a sigh of relief."

14. "Women have a million black hair ties and also none."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineHair tiesPhoto credit: Canva

15. “A compulsive need to squeeze blackheads and tweeze [rogue] hairs. Sometimes, she will be scratching my back or scalp, and I think, hey, this is wonderful. I wonder what I did to deserve this, and then out of nowhere, I feel like I've become the victim of 1,000 fire ants."

16. "That a 5-foot-tall, 100-pound woman can take up an entire king-size bed."

17. "My wife pulls on the toilet paper roll like she's trying to start a lawn mower."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineA woman holding toilet paperPhoto credit: Canva

18. "They plan things way more than I do and much further out. I have no clue what tomorrow will bring, but my wife has the next five-plus years of our life together planned out."

19. "Hair washing is something that needs planning for and has consequences if missed or overdone."

20. "If you buy snacks for yourself, hide dat sh*t. She'll find it."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineA woman eating a donutPhoto credit: Canva

21. "Makeup is a whole thing. I never saw my mom put it on as a little kid. When I lived with my first significant other, watching her put on makeup fascinated me. I lost track of time when she went full-on with the makeup for an event."

22. "They are either cold or hungry. Sometimes both. Never neither."

23. "Their hair gets everywhere. One time, my toe was hurting, so I removed my shoe and sock and noticed that a strand of my girlfriend's hair had wrapped itself TIGHTLY around my toe and cut off the circulation."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineHair on the floorPhoto credit: Canva

24. "As a guy with long hair, I’m still thoroughly confused about why there is so much more hair everywhere now than when I was living alone."

25. "How tricky it is to find a well-fitting bra and how darn expensive they are."

26. "Pillows. Pillows everywhere. The more decorative pillow, the better."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routinePillowsPhoto credit: Canva

27. "How much time women spend in the bathroom every night before sleeping. No, sir, it's not just a matter of brushing your teeth and going to bed."

28. "A cute little thing I noticed after we were married is that my wife holds her breath when she applies mascara."

29. "A trip to the grocery store can turn into a full day of reorganizing the entire pantry and refrigerator."

living with a woman, men vs women, women's skincare, moving in, relationships, beauty routineA woman shoppingPhoto credit: Canva

30. "How much of their social life is tied to their personal safety. Women have safety protocols for going on date with guys they meet on apps, making sure they don’t get drugged at parties, making sure they aren’t nabbed off the street, letting each other know which men around them are safe and who they need to be careful around, etc. It’s insane. And like wtf, so heartbreaking that it’s necessary."

From Your Site Articles
relationships
Mental Health

Guy's brutally honest breakup text goes viral and reminds everyone that 'ghosting' isn't cool

This is the ideal example of how to let someone down easy.

via Shuttershock

Ghosting just isn't okay.

All too often, people leave a date with no idea how the other person feels about them. And if you're not into the other person, it can be stressful trying to gauge how they feel about the situation and ultimately what you should do moving forward.

Should you go ahead and have another date to see if something blossoms? Will it come across as presumptuous to let them down? If they're not into you either, will they make you feel stupid for laying out the reasons you don't want to go out again? Or is it leading someone on to stay mum about the lack of connection?

While there's no easy way to navigate letting a date down, avoiding these awkward conversations oftentimes results in the awful trend of ghosting, which leaves one person completely in the emotional lurch.

Ghosting may sound harmless at first, but it's actually a harmful (and totally lame) way to treat another person. It's especially gross when you consider that this other person is someone you invested time in and who invested time in you. Even if there was no spark or connection on one end, ghosting is essentially like throwing the other person away and acting as if they don't matter. There are many reasons why someone might ghost, but when you poke at them enough, they really don't hold any water. In an article for Psychology Today, Janneke M. Schokkenbroek, Ph.D., gives several reasons for why people ghost. Number one? Convenience.

ghosting, ghosted, dating, relationships, communication I Love You Lol GIF by LifetimeGiphy

Sure, it may be convenient to walk away from a situation and pretend it no longer exists, but this bit of convenience can be extremely damaging for the person on the receiving end. In fact, a lot of research has come out in the last several years outlining the harmful affects of ghosting on the mental health of both parties. Unfortunately, since ghosting is so common, it's rare to see healthy emotional rejection modeled online. In 2019, though, Reddit user karmabandido's shared a breakup text he sent to his date that quickly went viral for its honesty and clarity.


text, honesty, ghosting, dating, relationshipsA masterclass is classy dating.Via Reddit

This is an ideal example of how to let someone down easy. He was polite, respectful, and transparent about how feelings, wants, and needs. He didn't ghost her—but he also didn't mince words about the lack of connection.

In return, she was able to reveal that she felt the same way and they were able to avoid further awkward interactions without negging or having to resort to ghosting.

Bottom line: ghosting isn't nice and it isn't cool. Instead, be honest, open, and respectful because it treats other people with dignity. It may be hard, but kindly and clearly saying how you feel is the right thing to do, people appreciate it, and it goes a long way.

modern dating, dating, ghost, ghosting, ghosted, communication A little respect goes a long way.Image via Canva

This article was originally published six years ago. It has been updated.

From Your Site Articles
dating
Love Stories

Researchers have been secretly studying who gets "the ick" and what it might say about you

"The ick" has been around for ages but never measured and analyzed. Until now.

Canva Photos

The ick: A sudden revulsion to a romantic partner over trivial behavior.

The first time I heard of "the ick" came from watching the hit Netflix show Nobody Wants This. In the show, Kristen Bell's character suddenly develops the ick for Adam Brody's character (whom she's dating) after a series of relatively minor faux pas as he's trying to impress her parents. He wears a cheesy sports coat and makes one-too-many corny jokes, to be precise. She suddenly finds herself repulsed by him, and insists that no one has "ever come back from the ick."

Adam Brody's character eventually wins her back over with an impressive display of emotional maturity, but it was a fascinating sequence nonetheless. It brought the term to the attention of a lot of viewers and catapulted it even higher into the zeitgeist.

A new study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences aims to shed light on this phenomenon, and the people who experience it.


dating, relationships, break ups, divorce, the ick, dating studyThe Ick even made it to JeopardyGiphy

For starters, let's define "the ick," or rather, let the authors of the study do it:

"The 'ick' 'is a sudden and visceral aversion to a romantic partner, often triggered by behaviors or characteristics that superficially signal incompatibility or low mate quality."

In other words, it's when a person says or does something that really skeeves you out or turns you off. It sounds a little silly, but the ick can be extremely powerful and tough for people to shake. That's because, as the authors note, whatever the behavior is that icked you out might signal that you're not a good match for this person, or that they're just a low quality partner in general. So in a sense, it's an evolutionary protection mechanism.

It seems extremely harsh that our bodies would be trained to reject partners at the slightest misstep, but in evolutionary terms, it makes a lot of sense:

"A false-positive error—accepting an incompatible partner—can drain resources, reduce reproductive success, and carry long-term relational consequences, whereas a false-negative error—rejecting a compatible partner—results in a missed opportunity but poses fewer immediate risks," the study says.

So if the guy you were into shows up in a fedora one day, it's probably best to show him the door posthaste. Better safe than sorry.

What causes the ick?


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

It's usually brought on by things that, on the surface, seem pretty unimportant. We're not talking about cheating, emotional abuse, or being a bad person. It's much subtler than that. The researchers use lots of examples from TV to make their point:

"In Seinfeld ... Jerry is disgusted by his date's 'manly' hands; and in Sex and the City ... Carrie is revolted by a lover after learning he wrote her a love song."

But where the actual studying part of the study comes in is that the authors began inhaling TikTok videos where users discussed their experiences getting the ick, and they began rigorously categorizing the responses.

The real-life examples are even more nit-picky, like someone who licks their fingers before turning a page. Girls "tripping in public." A guy wearing jorts, or bending over too far and accidentally showing his butt crack. Or, in Adam Brody's case, wearing a sports coat. In many cases these simple (and hilarious!) things are death knells for a relationship once the ick sets in.

The researchers broke ick-inducing behaviors down into a few buckets: Gender incongruence, public embarrassment, or physical appearance. Believe it or not, physical appearance was not the most common! Gender incongruence — guys doing girly things, girls doing manly things — was the biggest category of ick-driving behavior. One girl said the guy she was dating gave her "the ick" when he laid his head on her shoulder affectionately.

Wow...

What getting "the ick" might say about you

disgust, inside out, the ick, dating, relationships, break ups, studies, scientific researchPrime candidate for The IckGiphy

The next part of the study involved recruiting participants who were willing to answer questions about their own experiences with this phenomenon. After thorough interviews, researchers narrowed down three traits that seem to indicate people are more likely to get "the ick,":

Narcissism. People who like to be the center of attention or otherwise display narcissistic tendencies were highly correlated in this study.

Perfectionism. Not perfectionism of the self, mind you! But people who scored highly on questions related to holding the people around them to exceptionally high standards were more prone to "the ick."

Disgust sensitivity. People were more likely to have experienced "the ick" if they answered strongly on questions relating to feeling disgust even outside of a dating or interpersonal sense. People who get exceptionally grossed out by disgusting things are more likely to experience revulsion at minor behaviors in a romantic partner.

Any of those things sound like you? If you're feeling judged, don't. Remember, getting icked-out by a partner isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could be an evolutionary response trying to protect you from making a bad choice (like having a baby with a weirdo). Though it's also important to remember this biological strategy also discards a lot of potentially great partners, so listen to your ick wisely — you might just want to give fedora guy another chance, after all.

From Your Site Articles
dating
Health

People rally behind man who walked out on his first date after getting yelled at

"Just because you can handle something doesn't mean you have to."

@solodolobcyolo/TikTok

A man recalls leaving a first date after getting yelled at.

When going out on a first date, we generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt. However, it can be pretty clear early on when someone just isn’t a right fit. At that point, do we continue on with said date, or do we let politeness be damned and move on with our lives then and there?

For an artist who goes by the name of Solo Dolo, the choice was a no-brainer.

Solo, who regularly posts content about relationships, recalled a recent brunch date he had been on, with a person who asked him to describe his "ideal partner.”

"In my experience, I think people try to fit the mold of what I'm looking for and make themselves seem ideal, and that has led to toxic relationships or just discomfort,” he said in the video. So his response to them was, “I'm looking for someone who is happy with who they are. If it works, it works. If not, that's okay."

@solodolobcyolo Like I’ll just go. Doesn’t matter who. Doesn’t matter when. If you’re doin this, I’m gunna let you do it by yourself lol
♬ original sound - SoloDoloBcYolo

That, apparently, was reason enough for his date to slam the table with their fist and exclaim “NOT EVERYONE IS MANIPULATIVE.”

Immediately, Solo knew this date (and the potential relationship) was “not gonna be effective,” because “if that’s the way you’re gonna express yourself as an adult, in public, nothing good is about to happen.” So once the “tantrum” was over, he politely told his date that he would be leaving. This was all before he was able to order a cup of coffee.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Solo shared that his video was not meant to be mean-spirited, but rather encourage others to act when they see red flags.

"I made the TikTok video not to judge that person but more so to say if you're ever in a situation that you're not comfortable in, just remember you don't have to be there. You just don't. Just because you can handle something doesn't mean you have to, like life is too short. You don't have to be there if you don't want to be," he said.

@solodolobcyolo I think im realizing that there are more people who are kinda disorganized and reactive than those who are organized and proactive (like me lol)
♬ original sound - SoloDoloBcYolo

Viewers unanimously agreed that Solo did in fact make the right decision, and were on board with his stance overall.

“Normalize leaving at the first sign of a red flag,” one person wrote.

Another said, “If they’re yelling at you in a restaurant on a first date, imagine what a nightmare they are in private after a few years when the real conflict arises."

There are plenty of scenarios in which a meh, or even bad date can turn into a worthy romance. But on the flipside, as in this case, when there is a clear, distinctive omen that something’s not right, people have every right to maintain their wellbeing…even if that means removing themselves from a situation entirely. Let’s not keep ourselves stuck in something that doesn’t serve us.

bad first dates, red flags, dating, bumble, hinge, tinder"Living a peaceful life, ironically, is really hard."Photo credit: Canva

As Solo told PEOPLE,, "My favorite thing to say right now is, 'Living a peaceful life, ironically, is really hard.'…It's so intentional. Every day, every moment you're challenged, you have to choose peace. It's really hard."

From Your Site Articles
relationships
Trending Stories