The obsessive/completist gene

I'm not one for sweeping generalisations about the difference between men and women. Maybe its something to do with the fact that I've got quite a few female qualities and w2b has quite a few male ones.

Woooah there! Let me just expand on that a little. What I mean by that is not that I walk around in a dress or am in any way camp. I certainly don't mean that w2b is some kind of hod carrying, short haired, comfortable shoe wearer. But the way we divide things between ourselves and the way we react to things is often against type. W2b throws herself into manual labour with a passion and has a disturbing love of power tools. I get choked up at sentimental reality tv shows and am very good at cleaning kitchens and bathrooms.

But there is one personality trait that is very, very male. Most men seem to have it to a greater or lesser extent and it only presents itself in small amounts in women. This trait is what I like to think of as the obsessive/completist gene.

We collect things almost purely for the sake of completeness. Its what leads men I think into things such as train spotting and the twitching type of bird spotting. When we find something we like doing we do it obsessively and repetitively, to the exclusion of everything else and almost to the point of not actually enjoying it anymore - just as long as we're still doing it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think these tendencies are wholly negative. When channeled correctly and with a useful outlet, men with these tendencies can still be productive members of society. Its one of the reasons (coupled with a love of abstractions and a world dependent on logic) that leads so many men to working in IT. It also allows us to overcome our lack of ability when confronting household tasks like DIY and get the job done no matter what (and no matter how frustrated we get when doing it).

But when channeled wrongly they can turn us into rather stupid, unproductive animals. Take Games Consoles for example.

Usually my XBox playing is cleverly controlled by w2b. Either she will suggest things that we can do together or she will ensure that I have a set number of tasks to complete prior to switching it on. Unfortunately, with no real value to be gained from cleaning the kitchen or bathroom, no decent environment for us to watch a movie, no dogs to look after, no handy, small jobs for me to do and crappy weather outside the safeties were off today. So I ended up getting sucked in and the gene took over. To the extent that by half past two, when w2b returned from her horse riding lesson I had only just got properly dressed, had skipped lunch and by consequence had a headache developing.

It was time for an intervention. A haircut, furniture shopping and Nando's later I was back in the land of the living. But it was touch and go for a while.

W2b has seen the error of her ways - tomorrow we are stripping wallpaper.

My name is MyMateSid and I'm a Morrowind-aholic.