Sick men - i mean boys, because there is no such thing as a man who acts the way i am about to describe while sick.

 

Now given, I have never had this experience personally, but lately it is all I ever hear about from married friends, and those in relationships, even the DJs on the radio here in Texas. 

 

So, stereotypically men are thought of as not able to take as much pain as woman - hence women take the pain of childbirth.  I honestly never believed this stereotype because pain in itself is subjective and relative to what you have felt in the past.

 

However, now im starting to see differences in men and women as I hear women at work talk, see the guys in my family, hear from friends (both guys and girls).  Why is it we are so incredibly different? Obviously a question with too many answers and theories etc.

 

Here is one point where we seem to differ.  There were three DJs on the radio one cold Dec morning a few days ago.  They were talking about being sick.  One of the guy DJs had been sick on a Sat.  Given it is holiday shopping season, his wife decided to go out and get gifts.  They had two daughters. So the wife took one daughter to the mall and left the other at home with the husband. Now - the husband had a cold - not even a temperature. 

 

The wife was gone the majority of the day, while at home sat a very pissed off husband. He was left with his younger daughter for 8 hours while trying to sleep off his cold.  His wife came home and all hell broke loose according to him.  The wife was pissed he couldn't even get up to make his own soup and instead had enough energy to yell at her.  Microwaveable soup is not a big deal - 2 min and ure done.  The husband was pissed because he could not get any sleep and get better and the wife was gone all day.  He said he wanted to be pampered. So they remained mad at each other.

 

Monday morning the DJ comes in whining about how his wife didn't "pamper" him enough.  He said "why couldn't she just give me the soup, and why did she have to go to the store?"  The female DJ was mad - her response was its not that hard to make soup and its not like you were dying - you had a cold.  The third DJ, A guy, completely agreed with the other guy DJ about wanting to be pampered.

 

Women were calling into the station left and right to call the guy DJ a wimp (worse words were used like the "P" word).  It got me to thinking. I mean my dad pampers me and my mom when we are sick. And I have had a few guys I have dated be better than me at pampering me while im sick.  So i mean obviously not all guys are bad - but maybe im just lucky?

 

So I went to work and talked to the gals I work with.  They all had the same story.  Man gets sick and becomes a boy and expects to be pampered.  This transcends race apparently too because I was listening to a country station (all white folk) and the women at work are from all over India with one woman being like me, for lack of better description - an abcd.  A few of them had the Mother-in-law stories where if the guy would get sick, his mom would be right there and the wife would not be so happy because it just encouraged the son or the mother-in-law would make the wife pamper the husband.  And these are all working women.  Sex in the City had an episode where Trey got sick just so his mom would take care of him.  There are a few guys I know who faked getting sick to be taken care of.  And the same story for all of the women was that they got diddly squat when they were sick...they still had to work and take care of the kids even though when the guy was sick and working he had neither to do. 

 

I always go to work unless i have a temperature - i would hate to be blamed for making other people sick.  However, my last bf would have a runny nose and stay home.  Didnt bother me - but i didnt live with him.

 

Granted I still think the whole pain thing is a stereotypes and given my sample size I cant make any conclusions - but stereotypes just don't come from anywhere.  They are not something that is made up from a one time incident. So i asked the women what they thought. Why was there a difference in perception of pain tolerance?

 

Ten women had on conclusive answer in common:  "After childbirth, having a runny nose and a cough is a walk in the park."

 

Like I said - It's all relative right?