Cavedweller

My husband has gone into his cave.

For those of you who are newly married, or not yet married to the most confusing species on the planet, let me tell you that caves are where men go to think.  Why they do this is a mystery to those of us who talk out our problems. 

I discovered this truth when I first married The Man Who Puts Up With Me a hundred years ago.  We had our first argument, and I walked out to take a drive.  I didn't know that he was worrying about whether or not I would come back or where I was.  I suppose in hindsight, when you live in a suburb of Los Angeles, and are not native to the area, there was cause for worry.  I drove to a nearby mall to browse, and found myself in a bookstore. 

Ninety minutes after I had left, I walked back into the house beaming.  "Good news!" I said, waving around my acquisition. "I bought a husband manual."

He laughed, more out of relieft that I had come back, I guess.  "Hm.  Men and From Mars, Women are From Venus," he read. 

I found out that night that he doesn't read self help books. His idea of self-help is to go for a walk on the tundra.  But he listens to me talk about them.

"Wow!" I said, wide-eyed as I read.

"What?" he asked.  This had been my ninth or tenth noise of amazement.

"It says here that when men need to think, they go into a cave."

He pondered for a moment. "Yeah, that's about right."

"What on earth for?" I asked, astonished.  "Why wouldn't you just talk about your problems?"

"What a dumb way to figure out what's wrong!" he cried.

We stared at each other for a moment.  And that's when I realized that I had married an entirely different species.  Mothers never tell you this lest girls never give them weddings and grandchildren. 

'Women don't go into caves." I explained.  "We talk about our problems." 

"I know," he said, and I couldn't tell if he said it with a sigh or a knowing tone of voice.  It might have been both, which is a sound that is hard to do.

Over the years I have learned some things about this odd creature that I have married. 

1. If I want to go in my cave, he follows me in and talks until I come out.  We both are probably better for it, but the double standard is annoying.

2.  If he goes in his cave, he can be in there for days.  I need to just deal with it and if I don't like that, too bad.

3.  While he is in his cave, he will often ponder problems that are either so big that no one will be able to solve them, or so small that I wonder why he went into his cave at all!

4.  When a man goes into a cave, a woman can go nuts trying to figure out what is wrong. Most of the time, she will assume it is something that she has done. Men feel it is odd that a woman might think she has done something wrong, or that he has grown tired of her. In fact, The Man Who Puts Up With Me insists that I think the world revolves around me, a theory I am coming to accept and make my own.  Cave dwelling may be important for him to work out an issue, but it is hell on women.

And so I am waiting as The Man Who Puts Up With Me is going through his brain to work out an issue. It may drive me nuts with curiosity while I wait, but I must be patient.  There are times he won't even tell me what he has worked out in his head, something that is probably all right in the long run.  I'm sure there is another self-help book out there just waiting for me to explore.