At all.

We want to. We wish we did. But we don't.

I've always told my students that they're as smart as they're ever going to get because one of the truths in life is that the older you get, the more ignorant you realize you are. This applies to man's knowledge and understanding of women as well. The older we get, the more baffled we become. Conversations about women come up often when I'm at my favorite watering hole, sharing an adult beverage or two with my male friends.

The other day one of the guys was talking about how women can say one thing and do something entirely different. On this particular occasion, the four guys involved in the conversation had recently had their hearts broken by women who said one thing and did something else and we decided to each share our stories to look for commonalities. There were many.

One girl talked for over two hours on the phone one afternoon without mentioning to the guy she was talking to that she was marrying someone else that evening.

Another girl told a guy that, in addition to being the love of her life, he was also her very best friend and that she would go to the grave loving him. A week later she broke it off with him.

One girl told a guy she couldn't imagine her life without him in it just a few days before giving him his walking papers.

A different girl told a guy she had been looking for someone like him her whole life and that she finally knew what true love meant. A few days later, the guy walks into a local bar only to find the girl there with another man.

Another girl, known for her flirtatious ways, broke it off with a guy because other girls flirted with him.

And a girl who became extremely jealous when she thought other girls were "coming on" to her guy, ended the relationship because he was jealous of other guys coming on to her.

These are only a few of the stories told that day but these little short excerpts speak volumes about the slings and arrows of romantic relationships. It's no wonder the divorce rate in this country is over fifty percent.

If you don't understand your job, you're going to fail. If you don't understand your subject in school, you're going to fail. If you don't understand the offense or defense the other team is running, you're going to fail. And if you don't understand the people you're trying to develop meaningful, long-term relationships with, the odds are excellent you're going to fail in that endeavor as well.

I've reported in this column before that men don't handle breakups nearly as well as women do. After a breakup, men have higher suicide rates, they're more likely to get fired from their job, and they're more likely to need counseling or therapy. The reason for that is that most breakups are female initiated.

The reason for that is primarily social and cultural, rather than biological. Men are taught literally from the crib not to be quitters. We've all heard the lecture about finishing any job that we start, regardless of how unpleasant or distasteful it is. It's pounded into our heads throughout our lives that winners never quit and quitters never win. In fact, a national personality who happens to be a man is famous for saying that he never gives up on anything until it gives up on him. Consequently, women are more likely to file for divorce or end a relationship than men are.

And because women don't understand us either, they don't know how to do it in a way that the men could at least endure. Because they don't, men are left broken and battered not understanding at all what had happened to them or why it happened.

So we (men) don't understand women and women don't understand us and because we don't, we're often on two different playing fields with two different sets of rules and expectations when we've been led to believe just the opposite. No wonder it's so hard for these two different mind sets to find common ground. When it happens it's wonderful, but it doesn't happen very often.

And we men hurt deeper and longer than you women would ever believe possible.