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Steve Santagati – relationship expert and author. According to Steve women don’t put in the right effort. He reckons that where so many go wrong is they have no idea about the things that men actually like.

Apparently after you sleep with a man he wants to know what else you have to offer, what you know about sport, fishing, men’s literature, finance, cars etc etc etc and whether or not you can cook. In a nut shell, men generally felt that women don’t take enough interest in their interests.

Here’s comes the crescendo of cries from all women who have felt abandoned by their men in favour of the rugby, the car racing and those interminable all day fishing trips. But girls wait.

We understand that the following comments are generalising to the max…but the thing about generalising is that it fits most people. Right?

Gripe 1. Women don’t want to watch sport. As much as you might dislike sitting on the couch all weekend watching sport he probably dislikes watching re-runs of chick flicks equally as much. So a little give and take is required in the sport/chick flick department. Learn a bit about his favourite sport, at least enough to make an informed comment about something happening in the game/contest – then see how quickly you’ll get his attention. This is by no means pandering to his ego, it’s about sharing the things that bring pleasure and taking an interest in our partners. If you understand his attraction you might just enjoy it a little better yourself. But remember there are limits for EVERYTHING.

Gripe 2. Women don’t have emotional intelligence. Ahhh...yeah! OK . What the hell does this even mean? According to the men who took the time to respond it means that women don’t know how to deal with the negative stuff appropriately. Women pretty much govern their lives by their emotions . So does this make us less ‘emotionally intelligent, or more ‘emotionally intelligent’? Men felt that the low EQ (the emotional equivalent of an IQ) rendered women almost incapable of dealing with a problem in an unemotionally manner. Researchers have failed to come up conclusive evidence that women have a lower EQ than men but have in fact established that around 90% of the world’s population is lacking significant EQ development. Hmmm, speaks volumes.

Gripe 3. Women can’t drive. Oh please. They just need to get over this one…seriously. For the majority of women driving is just a convenient way of getting from A to B, especially when it’s raining. But the whole act of driving for men almost harks back to the hunting for survival days, the faster, stronger, the get there bleedin’ first mentality so many men attach to driving is, quite frankly boring for most women. And again generalising to the max… a lot of women are happy for their men to do the driving. Then we can do our nails, read, text and we don’t have to reverse park. Pandering to a male ego…Nuh! Relaxing and making best use of our time I say. But understanding this basic frustration men experience with us is half the battle.

Gripe 4. A salad does not a meal make. Men like meat and men like women who like meat. Apparently if you order a steak on your first date you’re almost certainly going to get a phone call the next day. They way to a man's heart is truly through his stomach. That’s the world according to the boys.

Gripe 5. Women don’t like no-strings-attached-sex. Well there are some who do but most of us pretty much know all about this one. Fact. Women are genetically hardwired for relationships, emotionally and most importantly biologically. With this hardwiring come strings and expectations. You know what , the boys have to suck it up here.

Gripe 6. Stay out of the man-cave. Yes, the man-cave is a real place and real men like to retreat to it when things go wrong. Unlike us they don’t like talking about problems with their friends as a way of finding a solution for themselves, they want to crawl into the man-cave and pull the rock in behind them. Let them! Turn man-cave time into you time and enjoy his absence, he doesn’t want you in the man-cave, he doesn't want you try and help with the problem and he will come out eventually, especially when he’s hungry.