3 Things Men Don't Like (But Women Seem To Love)

Stop me if you've heard this one: men seem to be from one planet while women are from another planet altogether. While making sweeping gender generalizations borders on insulting, there are some Martian tendencies on our part and Venusian on y'all's part (aw, crap, now I've done it). Read:10 Simple Things Women Want

1. Flowers. Our homeys at The Frisky bumped into a major Mars-Venus issue: Flowers. Their resident dude writer, John DeVore, backs the floral industry and makes several salient points as to why flowers are important...a good read. While I agree with him, I can see why "other" dudes just aren't that into cut flowers. Read: Why Do Flowers Make Us Swoon?

They don't do anything funny or weird—they just sit there. Even with maximum upkeep they don't last terribly long, and you always have the distinct feeling you're being ripped off when you buy them. Women, on the other hand, have a keener sense of smell and smaller likelihood of color blindness.

While the sentimentality of flowers ("ohh, he was thinking of me") isn't 100 percent lost on us, we generally only get sentimental when something happens to a sports legend from our youth or when the song "Cat's In The Cradle" comes on the radio. Read: Pointlessness of Poinsettias And Flower Power

2. Talking on the phone. Guys generally don't like talking on the phone. Why? Well, Em & Lo ( EmAndLo.com) asked their man panel why guys don't dig gabbing on the mobile (it's not practical, men don't like to share emotions) and I'd like to add a bit.

When dudes are on the telephone for long stretches, we have a hard time doing anything else worthwhile. This is fine if you're having "the talk" (or any important discussion), but we have a hard time chatting just for fun. Women seem to be different in this regard. There's a good chance that a knitting, resume-updating or nail-painting operation could be going down on the other end of the line, while our powers of conversation are being stretched to their limits just listening and formulating reasonable responses.

It should be noted that phone sex is one area in which we can basically keep up two jobs at once. (And the boys from Entourage seem to be able to have actual sex and handle a phone call at the same time. Read: 11 Love Lessons From Entourage)

3. Shopping. To be fair, dudes do like shopping, but dude shopping is generally broken into two categories: 1) necessity shopping and 2) aspiration shopping. The former involves going to a specific store for a specific thing and nailing it, irrespective of price. The latter is sometimes called looking—checking out that new SLR camera about 200 times before pulling the trigger—but it still involves a specific item.

Women, on the other hand, seem to enjoy wandering around stores just to see what's for sale. They don't necessarily have a purchase or even a specific store in mind. They don't have a time limit, because browsing is the end-game, not the purchase. This is fine, but it's not fun for men —unless you're shopping for this. It takes all kinds of shopping to keep the economy going but some retail habits just baffle us. Read: study: 40% Of Women Prefer Shopping To Sex

Obviously, this is an exaggeration of already gross stereotypes: some ladies hate flowers, some dudes love to meander through Bloomindales for hours while blathering into ther phone, but maybe we touched on a couple of truisms? Maybe? No? OK, sorry then, I was really just browsing.