In almost every case, the men found it necessary to defend some imaginary principle, while the women were content to take the path of least resistance and get on with it.
I recently asked a group of male friends to provide examples of things they could not let go of. I did this because I felt that such a reproof would deter her from subsequently asking, "Was that a young Billy Crystal playing Sonny Corleone in The Godfather?" But this approach never works, because my wife does not care about being wrong, especially when it involves somebody named Billy. I once forced my wife to watch the closing credits of the tearjerker Brief Encounter just to prove that it was not Raymond Massey playing Trevor Howard's best friend - that the very suggestion was ridiculous. Men are particularly implacable when the argument involves something unimportant. She thinks he should have just let it go. My daughter's boyfriend once returned a rental truck to a dangerous neighborhood in the Bronx at 11 o'clock at night just because he was furious that the company had lied about being able to drop it off in a safe neighborhood in Manhattan without paying an overnight rental fee. Men are forever willing to risk life, limb, and ridicule in defense of a dubious principle. Men want women to admit that recycling newsprint makes no economic sense, that Alan Alda is a dink, that True Romance is one of the 10 greatest movies of all time, that the infield fly rule is not impossible to understand. Men want women to admit that getting off I-84 and taking local roads to Boston is a stupid error in judgment, an error compounded when she later takes 295 instead of I-95 to Philly. While men may not dredge up the past as women do, we often refuse to let an argument go until our position is vindicated. The only way to prevent these failings from reappearing in the future is to continually remind the man of his crimes in the past. When women refuse to let it go, it's usually because the offending party - a spouse, a boyfriend - is guilty of a crime suggesting a serious flaw in moral character. They're famous for exhuming old arguments, for reviving debates that their male counterparts thought were dead and buried years ago. Women remember missed anniversaries, insensitive comments, personal slights, appalling gifts, dreary vacations. They have a hard time letting go of things in the past, while men have a hard time letting go of things in the present. Women have a different relationship with grudges than men do. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play
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