Women are complicated beings. We have surging emotions and play complex games that can drive even ourselves crazy. If there isn't a fight, we craft one, and as crazy as it seems, we rationalize our manipulative and convoluted ways.
I am most certainly aware that our behavior comes across as irrational and "crazy," but there is considerable evidence suggesting that our madness might be justified. Stories always surface about those crazy girls who stalked a guy's e-mail or had an emotional outburst, but what is always left out is that crucial detail: the circumstances that provoked the extreme response. Vital factors can explain extreme thoughts and behavior.
Kara was frequently hooking up with a gentleman until the pattern became so repetitive that "the talk" became inevitable. After careful consideration, she chose to value her single status over a committed relationship. But after days of separation, she tried contacting him after a night of drinking. When he made it clear that he wasn't interested in seeing her, she contacted their mutual friends to find out where he was. After tracking him down at a frat, she marched inside hysterically crying. As he took her outside, she fell to the ground pleading for him to be with her.
Kara had a long history of abandonment and depression. It wasn't the longing to be with him but his lack of need for her. While her tactics to express her fear of change were dramatic, she was only acting out on her history of loneliness and desertion.
Susan was in a committed relationship for a year and began to notice a change in her significant other's behavior. After he expressed interest in spending time apart, "forgot" to call her after a night of drinking, and failed to put in the effort she had grown accustomed to, Susan knew that she had to do her own investigative work. For weeks, she pried through his Gmail account, his Facebook and his text messages, trying to link dates, times and events. After weeks of searching, she came across the evidence she was eagerly looking for.
Women have an unbelievable intuition and are incredibly receptive to change in behavior. We find no reason to insistently pry through personal information without a belief that something is missing. Consider our minds working like a jigsaw puzzle: We are constantly piecing things together, and when the 999th piece is missing, we are determined to find the missing link.
There is also love addiction -- a dangerously complex condition that creates a chemical dependency on a significant other. Julie was with a guy for over two years, and after months of fighting and unhappiness, he left her. He understood that she loved him, but he couldn't take the phone calls and e-mails that Julie continuously sent. Each expressed a need for him, suicide threats and a concern that her health and well-being were in jeopardy.
Julie was experiencing relationship rehab that included severe physical and psychological pain. She wasn't eating, she contemplated her reasons to live, and she was extremely depressed. Her ex was frightened by her extreme change in behavior and was unable to understand why she had developed what seemed to be irrational thoughts.
Julie's behaviors were a result of an unsafe infatuation with love, a chemical dependency that develops in the same region of the brain as drug dependency. A person with this condition is capable of becoming reliant on a partner for happiness, sanity and his or her will to live.
It is all too often that women are labeled irrational, crazy and manipulative. Our behaviors, however, result from complex issues and motives. Many relationships end as a result of men's inabilities to communicate and understand a woman's thought process. Although the explanation for extreme behaviors may not be easily detected, a woman's reason behind acting out is a need for understanding.
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Logan Crane is a junior majoring in political science. She can be reached at Logan.Crane@tufts.edu.
