Are Women really like Puzzles with missing pieces. ?
That's what a Man said !
I'm familiar with that partial quote. How this particular guy meant it, would require a lot more detail about him than I care to know.
My first reaction to it, is that he's like too many people I've known, who grab things like pithy phrases, deep-sounding quotes from alleged "smart people," or some "meme" that they read online somewhere, and then toss them all into an unsorted mess in the back of their minds, and label that bin "my personal philosophy."
The short way of saying all that, is that more often than not, someone who says something like that, is just spewing something that sounded clever to them when THEY heard it, and seemed to shut other people up, so they repeat it whenever THEY want someone to shut up.
The biggest problem with this particular gem, is that it was always designed to SOUND deep and meaningful, without actually providing anything "actionable." That is, like most WISECRACKS (as opposed to real Wise Sayings), this phrase doesn't tell you anything you can use to make good decisions about anything or anyone, it just makes the speaker feel "clever."
Just for the record, I DESPISE "clever."
Characterizing ANY large and obviously varied group of people with a single short phrase like that, isn't going to accomplish anything positive, even if the observation is occasionally accurate about a particular individual.
Anyone want an altered version of this idea, that might ACTUALLY be helpful? I'll take a shot here.
It MIGHT be true or accurate to say, that "men and women, engaged in trying to understand each other, using only what they know of themselves, CAN be like trying to complete a complex picture puzzle, without realizing that half the pieces are missing, or belong to other picture puzzles entirely."