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Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

I think this is more an anecdote than anything else. My wife leaves all sorts of stuff open, and it's really because she's not paying attention, i.e. most of the time she's not fully present.

I'm glad to have read this, it gives me a little comfort to see that other people deal with same issues. Sometimes I just close the door for her when she's in the restroom.

I feel like a lot of these habits come from having lived alone for a while after leaving home. I have a lot of habits that I'm 100% certain I didn't do growing up because my mom would tell me not to. I would probably have kept them if I had started living with other people later. My mom on the other hand now does the things she used to tell me not to and I can't help but think that it is related to not caring anymore after living in solitude for decades.

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My wife leaves the toilet door open when she's in there, which annoys me. One day I asked her why and she told me she used to do it deliberately when the children were little so she could hear what they were up to, and talk to them if they needed it. It's now just a habit. Makes sense now I know.

Everything, literally everything from the root of this thread until the parent comment applies to my wife too. I am so relieved that I can stop worrying about it now.

I'm getting older and one of the things I started to notice is that men are just there, doing things that are generally... straightforward. I mean I guess posting on hacker news is probably pretty strange to a lot of people - so ignore that.

Anyway, women however, I feel like they build these neurotic behaviors - like learned things that just stick with them forever. Like ouch, the pan was hot, don't do that again, but for EVERYTHING. So by the time they are old, just nothing they do makes any sense, to anyone, even other women.

Reminds me of the stereotype that women will tell you something that happened in the most expansive way possible with all this context that doesn't really matter while guys will just tell you what happened.

I've heard the explanation that men just tend to prefer to think in more concrete terms. "What happened" is sometimes met with a detailed social analysis filled with motivations and states-of-mind about the story that unfolded and sometimes met with some cold facts about precisely what events occurred without any speculation as to why or what impact it had on people, and this tends to split along gender lines. The classic "what are you thinking about" works the same way. Women tend to be thinking about conceptual things like their ambitions or happiness or relationships, whereas men tend to be thinking about concrete things like that one cabinet with the loose hinges in the bathroom.

This is, of course, not a universal rule. It's just an observation about tendencies.

Actually this might rather be coming from an autism spectrum. This work mate, a very fine programmer I must say, starts any point he might have with a few minutes long background presentation. I can't say that I get much value from that intro, but that's his way so I say let him have it. And we're never under that time pressure to need to interrupt him anyway.

you're a good team player

sounds like me, but I have ADHD :D

Where's that stereotype from? I always thought this is a basic cultural difference between people from Germanic countries vs. North America.

I find that everyone has these quirks, regardless of gender. Sometimes it makes the world a more interesting place. Sometimes it's utterly baffling. Like my friend who refuses to use tissues because his parents taught him to blow his nose with a paper towel instead. Maybe we're the weird ones for believing Big Kleenex's ads though!

One gender difference is that when these quirks are presented to men, they're a bit more likely to change to a more sensible method. Women tend to get annoyed about the male tendency to suggest solutions to everything. Annoyance can motivate stubbornness.

Compare https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161011-do-men-and-women...

Have you looked into an ADHD diagnosis?

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