“But…what about the water jug moment?!”

Being the grand old age of 27 I would like to say that I’ve figured men out. But of course I haven’t and probably never will.

What I think I can safely say is that they are creatures very unlike us. They think differently, act differently and of course date differently.

Talking to male friends they usually say exactly the same about us, “Just when I feel like I have them sussed – they go and do something which completely confuses the hell out of me,” one poor soul complained to me recently.

I had, up until now, had quite a smooth ride when it came to dating and men. But it seems I had been living in dating fairyland – where men called me if they liked me, guys who had girlfriends didn’t flirt and attempt to date me and game playing was something which had existed at school, not in the confines of my dating sphere.

Since the start of my newly single life I have encountered not so much a fairytale, more of a disaster movie of potential suitors.

My latest possibility seemed great on the surface but to quote Katy Perry: “You’re hot and you’re cold, you’re up and you’re down….” if this song wasn’t written about him then I’d be gob smacked.

Even the stupidest dating books have got it right when they say if he’s not communicating with you – then he’s just not into you. Those rules were completely blown out of the window with Mr ‘Indecisive’ – one minute he was hoping I wasn’t dating other guys, the next he had disappeared off the face of the planet, and then he resurfaces and ‘can’t wait to see me again’.

Dating can always be a bit hit and miss - 'do they like me? Should I call them? Why haven’t they text me back?' But when game playing or just plain arrogance is mixed into the equation it can just get messy. So sorry, but mixed signals confuse me – if you like me - date me, if you don’t then STOP calling me!

And it’s not just dating where men and women get their wires crossed. Even when we’re in a relationship we still come across the what ifs, mixed signals and conclusion jumping – that our men just don’t get.

A close friend of mine wants marriage, kids, the whole works. And she wants it with her current boyfriend. Being a man, of course, he doesn’t know what he wants. So like most girls any signal towards a potential future with him is not taken lightly.

She recently recalled a conversation about a water jug with him. “Do we really need two water jugs? We have no need for them,” he said. She agreed but then he went on to say, “but I suppose if we get a bigger place we might need two.”

Her heart nearly stopped – what did he mean by that? Was he thinking about their future? Was he proposing? Should she start thinking about baby names? And the list goes on…..

But her ‘water jug’ moment is not uncommon. Because when we like someone we women see the little things as potentially life changing moments.

If a man introduces us to his family we assume he thinks we’re a keeper, if he tells us to leave our toothbrush at his we think he’s planning a joint mortgage and if he so much as talks about the colour white and churches in the same sentence we’re hoping he’ll get down on one knee any day.

So if he dumps us two weeks after meeting his family, a mortgage agreement fails to materialise and the word marriage doesn’t even exist in his vocabulary we wonder where it all went wrong.

Of course the water jug moment won’t be remembered by my friend’s boyfriend. If she started casually looking for ‘family sized houses’ he would get all hot under the collar and wonder why she was jumping to ‘further commitment’ conclusions. “But what about the water jugs?” she would proclaim, and he would wonder what the hell in gods name she was talking about.

I suppose if men and women were the same it would be a very boring existence. If men ‘got’ everything we said or did then we’d be at a loss. And most importantly - what would we have to moan about over a cocktail or two??