I know a fair bit about men. After all, I’ve been married to one for over eleven years. More importantly, though, I have female friends. Most of these friends are married to men. And all of these friends like to talk about their relationships.  

Women talk about men. That’s what we do. This is why I know that P’s husband likes it in the middle of the night and that M’s husband always sides with his mother. Men, on the other hand, do not talk about their wives, which is why neither P’s husband nor D’s husband know a thing about me.

Now, in certain ways, my own husband is outside the mainstream. Unlike many of my friends’ partners, who are typical Aussie ‘blokes’, my husband is more of what you would call a metrosexual. He pines for designer watches like I pine for handbags. He prefers cooking shows to football games. He drinks fancy cocktails with names like ‘Summer Sunset and ‘Midori Pash’ (which admittedly is leaning less towards metrosexual and more towards disturbing).

And yet at a fundamental level, he is the same as every other man. And all men are different to women.

My husband, for example, isn’t the only intelligent man with perfect vision who is unable to locate items in the fridge, cupboard or car. This is a difficult task for males, as they don’t understand that objects – shoes, plane tickets, biscuits and the like - may be temporarily hidden behind something else. A woman appreciates that things exist even if they are not immediately visible. A man believes – no, knows – that if it not within his direct eye line, then it must be lost.  

Most men, like my husband, are also are selectively deaf, or at least become so at the onset of relationships. In the car, travel directions are strangely inaudible; during sporting events or broadcasts women’s voices are inaudible; and when taking a nap, everything is inaudible. This latter phenomenon is particularly fascinating. Though we women can hear our children through two closed doors and industrial strength earplugs (which we use to block out the sounds of our husbands snoring), men can sleep soundly not only through babies crying, but through children’s birthday parties, toddler tantrums, and visits from the in-laws.

And virtually every man I know holds a decidedly more relaxed attitude towards his body than his wife does towards hers. Males are freakishly able to eat a bar of chocolate without noting how many kilojoules it contains, or feeling the fat rushing immediately to their thighs. And – unlike us - they have no qualms about appearing in public semi-nude, no matter what kind of shape they’re in.

This was demonstrated on a recent holiday my husband and I took with several friends. Before the trip, my female friends and I groomed ourselves for a week in the sun. We waxed, we fake-tanned, we did last minute exercise (well, in my case I thought about doing last minute exercise) and we desperately sought swimwear to minimise our problem areas. Our husbands, on the other hand, felt no need for such preparation. They grabbed their three year old Speedos from the drawer, threw their disposable razors in the bin, and spent the rest of the time eating chips in front of the TV.

The holiday threw up some other fascinating observations. All the men, for example, took a very laissez faire approach to packing, despite the fact that we were going to be away for an entire week. We women (quite sensibly) drew up comprehensive lists in the days before the trip, and then packed the day prior to departure in a systematic and orderly fashion. The men on the other hand, watched TV until fifteen minutes before leaving, then threw their stuff haphazardly into a bag.

Then there was the grocery shopping. We women see supermarket shopping as a chore; we do it all the time, and there’s only so much excitement one can muster for aisles of personal hygiene products and gluten free crackers. Many men, however, enter supermarkets only on holidays, and view them as vast adventure lands with lots of thrilling new things to try. My husband and I went in for barbecue supplies and came out with chocolate waffle mix, Wasabi peas and carbonated lychee drink. My friend’s husband returned with several bars of chocolate, a variety of biscuits, and peach flavoured instant tea. Novel, yes, but hardly the basic fare to feed a family of five.

But of course it was at the good old Aussie barbecue that the line between the sexes was definitively drawn.

Though women are trusted to cook meat in an oven or on a stove, we are not permitted near a barbecue. Clearly when it comes to open flames, women must be protected at all costs (or perhaps it is the flames that must be protected from the women?). Women are allowed to marinate the meat, but once the steak and chops leave the safety of the basting tray they are out of bounds to anyone without a Y chromosome. Women make salads, men make fire. It is how it has always been.

Now, given my extensive knowledge of the male species, I did not expect to be surprised about any of their behaviour. At the barbecue, however, I learned that one of my previously held beliefs had been very wrong.  

It has often been said – and I have always assumed – that women can multi-task whereas men can’t. Ours is a skill born of necessity, learning to cook a casserole whilst feeding the baby with one hand and answering the phone with the other, all the while supervising homework, prising glassware out of toddlers’ hands, and making mental notes of what needs to be done the following day.

Men, on the other hand, are only required to perform one task at a time. They work, they play, or they relax. Easy.

Well, it’s certainly true that on our holiday the women’s multitasking continued. We sat in the sun reading books in five second grabs whilst juggling our babies on our knees, supervising the little kids in the pool, refereeing fights between the older kids, reapplying sunscreen to all offspring, procuring drinks and refreshments, and asking our snoring husbands for the fifth time to get some towels.

However, I misjudged the men. Turns out they can multitask too. They were perfectly capable of turning snags on the barbie while drinking beer (or, in my husband’s case, Midori Pash) and talking about cricket.

Who says men and women are different?