THE AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR OF WOMEN

(and myself in particular)

My mornings are quite sacred to me and I have my ways and rituals to bridge the time between bed and office. A large part of that time is spent cycling, door to door it takes half an hour and during the bike ride I listen to bad hip hop, R&B, and top 40 hits from the ’90s. It's really a party, I like to pretend I'm a pop star myself and while I cycle completely on autopilot, I imagine I'm giving an amazing performance on a huge stage in front of thousands of fans.

But I digress. The thing is, when I'm interrupted in that performance, my whole ritual is thrown off and I'm not enjoyable. I don't feel like small talk in the morning, no desire for obligatory non-conversations about things that only interest me medium. So when someone calls me during my bike ride, I only answer in exceptional cases, and when I encounter someone, yes, that's a problem.

It sometimes happens that I see someone cycling a few meters ahead of me whom I really don't want to see. In recent months, this has consistently happened with someone who works on the same street as I do, so I know I have to keep cycling behind him, but suppose he looks back once, sees me, then it's also mega awkward. On top of that, I always cycle quite fast, and this person quite slowly, so then I have to cycle slower than I want and argh it's a hassle. The solution is often to, as heroic as I am, put the bike on the sidewalk and create a 5-minute distance between us. Seriously, yes.

The solution is often to, as heroic as I am, put the bike on the sidewalk and create a 5-minute distance between us.

When I'm standing there waiting I always feel like such a huge jerk. What am I doing standing there unnecessarily making it difficult? Nevertheless, it's been like this for weeks and I'm considering looking for another (and longer) bike route because this makes no sense.

This week I was cycling to the office again and I was just performing my mega hit Single Ladies on the stage of the MTV Awards. The road ahead of me was clear, there was no one I had to avoid. Until that guy suddenly cycled next to me, waved cheerfully, shouted, “hi Liesbeth!” and then stubbornly continued cycling. That’s it! He just kept cycling! Really, I was dumbfounded and felt like such a silly woman that I hadn't just done the same. There I was, a bit panicky, half hiding behind cars just to avoid having to engage in a conversation while this guy probably had exactly the same problem but solved it by simply cycling past the problem.

It's a woman thing, women avoid confrontation, go out of their way to avoid it at all costs, especially at their own expense. Men don't make such a fuss about it, they don't make the problem bigger than it is and solve it by simply not avoiding it. So I still have a lot to learn from that and during my next sold-out concert, I will replay this situation over and over so that in the future I can heroically avoid all my obligatory non-conversations by cheerfully waving and then cycling a gear higher. Already looking forward to it.