I have a theory.

Women and Men have a hard time with cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance etc.

For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition).

Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and beliefs in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). Some people use this to their advantage, like advertising or marketing gurus.

At the risk of putting forth an idea from a man, in the midst of all the bad feelings and fear, and PTSD triggers going on right now…

Imagine this:

Men and women have similar AND conflicting genetic drives and programmed sub-routines running all the time in the background and these “urges” are designed for one purpose, the survival of the race. Mating is a primary need that when not met creates in us a deep rooted feeling of Cognitive dissonance.

The Woman’s approach to mating is very different from the Man’s approach and in current society these approaches are supposed to match somehow, but the rule book is changing if it ever was agreed on in the first place. In some ways we are all still just naked apes. I do agree that some of us are more criminal than others, but we are currently as a society financially rewarding men and women for unethical behaviour.

Now lay over that, all of the complex and ever-changing rules of societies and civilations that are crashing in around us all the time, and it is a veritable recipe for cognitive dissonance.

This is not in any way an excuse for a woman to try to manipulate a man or another woman to go to bed with her, even if it is an accepted seduction amongst all parties, AND it certainly is not an excuse for a man to take a member of the opposite sex who is weaker either physically or financially and do what he wants, BUT it IS, IMHO an explanation of what the hell is going on in this crazy mixed up world we live in… and from that we might see our way to a solution. Stop reading here!

BTW, have you ever noticed how an advance from one person might feel revolting but the same advance from another who is more chemically compatible feels fabulous? Wait, I am NOT suggesting that having the Donald grab my genitals would ever feel less than revolting but if he were the POTUS I guess I might think twice about kicking him in the nuts. Could get me disappeared right? And isn’t that the most frustrating thing about power? We give them too much power and when they have too much power it feels like it’s too late right?

The best way to take back power is to give yourself more power. Never take always give, to yourself.