Why Single Women Need Puppies & Chocolate

Single women have to be work-focused, unless they’re living at home and their parents are providing for them but, that doesn’t seem to be the way in the Western world, anymore. Generally, women by their teens or early-twenties have moved out, maybe they got into a relationship and that didn’t work out, they didn’t go back home, Daddy’s not taking care of them financially, and so they work full time.

 

There are single women that have children and ones that do not, but it’s essentially the same for both: if a woman doesn’t have a man in her life that is substantially lightening the load substantially of the masculine activities – and by those I mean earning the money, getting things repaired, sorting out things to do with the car, driving, house maintenance… if there isn’t a man around doing at least 50/50 then it’s down to the woman to do all of that, and that is a lot for a female to take on.

 

And I know a lot of people will say, “Oh, there’s no difference between men and women, they’re exactly the same, there’s a book about this!” And that book you’re thinking of is nonsense. Hormones are a real thing and we know full well – scientific fact – that men’s hormones and women’s hormones are NOT the same – we’ve got different levels that are required for our health and, of course, men require different levels of hormones to each other, women also, but there’s a men’s ballpark and a women’s ballpark, and they’re very different.

 

There are activities that activate our hormones to either increase or decrease them, and they’re interlinked and it’s extremely complex. And I’m nowhere even close (!) to being an expert on hormones so I’m going to talk only about testosterone and oxytocin – even though there’s so much more to it! – in a very basic fashion that I hope helps to give you an ah-ha moment, if it’s news to you, and of course you’re welcome to do some research and personal observations for yourself to understand it better, but I’m going to give you the bones of what I know, which is not a great deal, but it’s something.

 

It’s what I’ve noticed in myself, and in other women and men around me, since I found out about this and started looking into it and observing others and how, when men are not doing enough masculine activity, and women are not doing enough feminine activity, they suffer – and so does everyone around them.

 

They become stressed. Men tend to become depressed or aggressive, caused by a lack of drive, function, purpose, and working hard toward something meaningful. But we’re talking about women, here, and of course you’ll have seen and heard of toxic femininity, what I call “extreme feminism” and it’s not that there aren’t some benefits to feminism, but I’m not a big fan of feminism and I realise that this is gonna make people angry because people are always really angry when I say I’m not into feminism (usually feminists who are easily angered because they’re women too far in their masculine, or guys without enough testosterone…) because, “Look what it’s given you, Lisa! It’s given you the ‘opportunity’ to have to work a job AND run the home, instead of a man shouldering the guy stuff!” So, yeah, thanks for that. Hashtag grateful for the stress.

 

A career – working for money, competing – is essentially masculine. Now, there are ways you can do different types of work that will mean it’s done in a more feminine way and that’s a whole other topic I could get into, but although generally men can go hell-for-leather the majority of the time, they can ‘push-push-push’, women can’t do that without it affecting them very quickly. So, in the same way that men can’t be cooking and nurturing all the time, without some kind of masculine activities involved to tip their hormones back into guy-land before their mood goes haywire, in the same way, women can’t be ‘push push, drive drive, earn money, compete’ all the time without it negatively affecting them.

 

We’ve all worked, maybe you still do, in an environment where there are those female bosses… you know what I’m talking about: we’ve all had a female boss that’s a right bitch, let’s be perfectly truthful and, what’s usually going on for that woman is that, maybe she’s not a narcissist after all, but that she’s stressed. This is what happens to women when they’re under too much pressure, when they’re too far into their “masculine”, in very simplistic terms, their testosterone rises too high, their oxytocin decreases, and they just become critical and angry and, well, quite nasty. We’ve all witnessed women like that, usually in the workplace.

 

 

It’s been scientifically proven that when you make positive eye contact with a dog it increases your – and the dog’s – oxytocin and, when that happens, it reduces testosterone. I think a lot of people feel this without recognising what’s actually going on: that euphoric feeling is a change in your hormone levels. And so when you’re connecting with an animal in a positive way, it increases oxytocin, which reduces testosterone and if a woman’s testosterone is too high – and her requirements change throughout her cycle, which further adds to the complexity and confusion of it all – the effect will be that it instantly reduces her stress.

 

And chocolate? Why do most women love that stuff? It’s because it increases our oxytocin, which helps to lower our testosterone and so, if the testosterone level is too high from overwork, the overall effect is that it can reduce our stress. Give an angry woman a bar of chocolate and after you’ve given it back to her after she’s thrown it at your head with rage, after she eats it, she’s likely to be a bit less stressed out. If you can get close enough to safely try it, let me know how it goes… 😉 

 

I remember being at a supermarket check-out last year, and the girl in front of me was buying sanitary wear and a few bars of chocolate and I thought, “This girl knows!” She knows that her moods change during her time of the month, whether she’s aware that it’s anything to do with her hormones or not, she’s noticed that if she eats chocolate she feels better – what a simple life-hack!

 

Of course there are other ways to balance your hormones and you can do a Google search to find them and, like I said earlier, hormones are really complex and there’s WAY more to it than just testosterone and oxytocin but basically, as a woman, if you find yourself stressed and angry and bitter and resentful and you’re shouting and snapping at everyone then, unless there’s something that you can really put your finger on that’s upsetting you to this degree, if you just seem to BE like that at the moment, then it probably means that you’re doing too much; your testosterone is too high and you need to reduce it.

 

And that’s why single women need puppies and chocolate.

 

I hope that helps.

 

Whether your male or female… If you feel that you need some work-life balance… If you feel that your job’s not working for you… If you feel angry at work… it could be that you need to change your job, or it could be that you need to change they way that you’re doing your job – often that’s the case. It could be that it’s something outside of your work, it could be the way that you DO your work that can be shifted in order for you to feel less stressed…

 

I’m Lisa Cherry Beaumont for LisaCherryBeaumont.com

 

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Disclaimer: Chocolate may make you fat; puppies will not.