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Author Biography
Born in Croatia and immigrating to Australia
with her parents and brother, when she was six months old, Sandra Stergiou now
lives in Melbourne Victoria, with her husband and two children
Leaving school at 17 she went on to study
and work as a dental nurse for 10 years. She left that profession to move into
Information Technology, which she is currently still doing.
Sandra has been fascinated by Feng Shui for
many years and has been studying it for the past two years. Her passions are
writing and Feng Shui. Her loves are her children, husband and family. Why
Women Think, ‘Men Don’t Get It’ is Sandra’s first published novel.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever found yourself wondering if you were the nastiest wife out there?
Have you ever asked yourself, “Is my acid tongue and short fuse unique? Is my
partner alone in his suffering with a deranged wife?”
As a thirty-something mother of two trying to juggle part-time work, part-time
study and full-time motherhood, I often found myself wondering exactly this. To
add to my concerns, I also questioned if I was qualified to be a mum or a wife.
Hell, I sometimes even wondered whether or not I needed to be committed.
But… I have, after many years, come to the realisation that I am not alone. All
of us (men and women alike) need an outlet. Unfortunately, (for the men out
there) most women seem to be better than men at expressing themselves. However,
there is no need to feel you are alone. We are all members of a very, very big
club. All women, irrespective of age, race or religion, bitch, nag and carry on.
Some are just better at it than others.
I
got the inspiration for this book one Friday afternoon when I had the rare
opportunity to sit with some friends and chat over coffee. On this particular
day, the conversation had turned to the annoying habits our partners have and
the sometimes irritating things they do.
It was while I was sitting there, chatting with my friends, that I made a
profound discovery, (well it was to me anyway). Here were a handful of the most
well-adjusted and grounded women I knew, but… lo and behold, their reactions to
the day-to-day annoyances of marriage were basically the same as mine. I
thought, “I’m not alone! My partner is not alone! There IS hope for
our relationship.” From that moment, I found myself consumed with wanting to
write a book that would highlight the differences between men and women. I
wanted to show how we react differently to the same situations, and that we can
sometimes hear completely different things in the same sentence.
Armed with this knowledge, I hope that this book can in some small way, make us
all more tolerant and understanding of the reasons our partners sometimes:
·
Speak to us the way they
do
·
React to particular
things we say the way they do
·
And why they deal with
certain situations they way they do
Will this understanding stop women from blowing their stack? Or a man from
switching off each time his partner opens her mouth?
Hell no! But when we calm down, at least we will have an idea of what our
partner may have been trying to say, had we given him a chance. In turn, our
partner may be able to piece together why we went off the handle for a seemingly
unimportant thing he said or did, in the first place.
One thing that you need to understand is that I am not a marriage counsellor,
nor am I professing that this book is a relationship repair manual. What I am is
a female, a wife and mother. What I have done is to list the observations I have
made after 10 years of being in the same relationship and after interacting with
hundreds of different females in that time. A Web-based survey I conducted over
several months was where I got the information to write about the male’s
perspective on the same issues.
I
would like to mention that it would have been impossible for me to list the
different variations in the day-to-day situations that I have written about.
What I have hoped to do is give a general view of a common situation from the
males’ and females’ perspective and the differences in how we react. Because we
are all individuals, the circumstances for each person that reads this book may
vary. This is something I could not avoid. If you find yourself not being able
to relate to a situation in the book, all you need to do is modify the storyline
to fit in with your life pattern. Either way, I’m sure most of the scenarios
will seem very familiar to you.
Read on and enjoy.
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