No, blood shouldn't be involved until at least the third date.

-Blast, (aka Romeo of the Woods)

I grew up camping, backpacking, hiking, canoeing, etc... so it's natural for me. My husband did too so we're a great fit and are now sharing that with our kids.

I've got friends who are interested and some that aren't. But I've noticed the preparation mindset creeping in on those with little or no interest. A keyring flashlight here, a first aid kit there, a bit more food in the pantry...

Getting outdoors and roughing though, that's a different story!

LOL!! Great advice Blast!!

Can we talk about that?

But will quoting Blast's Rules do an offending guy any good?

I don't mean to be sexist here but it seems to me that women have a different shade of glasses on when they look at the world as compared to men.

As nursemike says "Women are as interested in survival issues as men are-they just see survival in a more realistic fashion. They tend to prepare for things that will be likely to kill you, like health and traffic-rather than things that are less likely to happen, but more fun to work on, like dog packs and civil unrest."

To that end I will paraphrase an article by a well-known female car enthusiast that holds up a real life example of the difference in the way men and women see cars.
http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=0e55fae1-452b-4f1a-8f23-e3dc5412e783
When a man sees the CHECK ENGINE light come on - he thinks, "Drat, the emissions control is on the blink again. I'll get it serviced next time I'm in for an oil change." When a woman sees the CHECK ENGINE light come on she thinks, "OH NO, the engine is about to die and leave me stranded on the side of the road!!!" The author also singled out North American auto makers (and specifically Ford) of being the most vague with it's idiot light. It sends out the wrong message. In reality, it just means that something in the emissions controls is a little out of sync and some anonymous error number pops up - hardly anything to panic about. And yet that's not how it is being interpreted.

That article blew my mind!!! I had absolutely no idea that it would be interpreted that way. I'm not a fan of idiot lights in the first place but I at least thought that most people thought along the same lines when the see them.

Therefore in order to get women interested in "survival" topics you have to speak in the language as they think in. I, however, am not a good interpreter of that language.

A wise woman once said "if it has tires or testicles, you are going to have trouble with it."

It is as silly to try to talk about things that are true of all women as it is to do so about all men. The variations within the genders are wide. I spent thirty years in a predominantly female profession, and have spent lots of time listening to women. If you wish to gain fluency in the language of women, you gotta listen to them. Not talk at them. Assume that they are wiser than you are in lots of respects (they usually are) and assume that they have spent much of their lives being talked at by men (they usually have). Their role in society is different than ours: we have to keep the house in good repair, they have to make it into a home. They are phenomenally good at what they do, and they are all very beautiful. Some more so than others, but they are all beautiful. AS RAH said, "they have so much of what we have none at all". God bless them all.

Albert Einstein got married and divorced. If the smartest man that ever lived can’t figure out woman, what makes you think any of us can????

I think the greatest bit of wisdom that I have come up with is this: Don't try.

Accept her for what she is, show her respect, and ignore those times when it's not returned.

Jeepers Mike. You can "suck up" with the best of them!
Sorry, but your response came across as a bit too flattering to women. I'll be the first to admit that women do a lot of things better than men and very specifically BETTER THAN ME! But there are a lot of things that men do better. But short of swapping out bodies, there is no way on earth that I will ever really understand women (the lovely creatures that they are) no matter how much time I spend with them.

I work in a traditional male dominated profession and yet I have 3 female bosses (Supervisor, Manager and President) that have very different priorities and ways of doing business than I do. Sometimes it's frustrating like beating my head against a brick wall.