There’s this online blog of a family friend that I occasionally read, though without the blogger’s notice. She’s a few years older than me and graduating from Psychology this year I think. The most interesting thing is that in almost every single entry, she’d talk about men. Not in admiration though, the vast majority of it was about how she’s so critical of the relationships her friends go through when they complain to her about their relationship problems. She’d almost always talk about a guy, then about how unattractive he is, or generalise about men and the perceived flaws they all have. Now the interesting thing is, she’s never dated before. She’d usually accompany said criticism with statements such as “I’m so glad I’m not dating” or “I never want to date, men are stupid, I might as well be a lesbian lol”.

And that just strikes me as being such a remarkably concrete example of cognitive dissonance. It’s just my theory here, but the way she is so preoccupied with men might be because she actually is just insecure about never being a relationship before and she feels she should be. So she might be putting down actual relationships and the other sex so to make her position seem justified. She’s also constantly putting down her own appearance (in a kind of “yeah, I know I’m ugly lol” kinda way) too. If I knew her at all I’d try to somehow convince her that she doesn’t need to dislike half the population, it’s simply perfectly okay to be single and doing your own thing, especially when so young and with years and years in front of her to persue her happiness.

She’s a psychology student so she must know what cognitive dissonance is… I wonder if she’s able to pick up on her behaviour? Which makes me a little paranoid… do I, unbeknownst to myself, behave in a certain way that belie what my true (though unconscious) feelings may be, but which might be really obvious to other people?

While I’m on the topic of relationships, here are two links that I absolutely ADORE and need to be linked for future reference:

  • Hating Stuff to Make Yourself Look Interesting Is Not Interesting - I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture. It’s a spot-on response to the ubiquitous “boys are stupid throw rocks at them” image. It’s just… wow, the Natalie Dee parody is so clever and zing-ful on so many levels that… I don’t think I have the words to describe how awesome it is.
  • No More Mr. Nice Guy - Dee linked this on Snark and even though it’s a long entry, I thought it’s quite insightful. The writer makes a distinction between nice guys and Nice Guys that I’ve never considered before. I think most people kinda know of this on an intuitive level, but without it articulated, might lump nice guys with the more bitter/defensive ones. Now we know better!