Everyone man has wondered how to understand women at one point or another. Almost as many have given up trying. Make no mistake about it, though, you can understand women — it’s not a fool’s errand. Here are five tips on how to understand women in your life better, as well as the women that you meet when you head out to bars and clubs.

Step 1: Understand That All Women Are Different

The first thing that you need to understand in learning how to understand women is that not all women are the same. Sure, there are some things that many of them have in common, but each woman is an individual. If you try and judge one woman by the behavior of another, you’re going to have a bad time. Since we want to have a good time, it’s important to try and understand each woman in her own way.

Step 2: Understand That Women Are Not Men

Another thing that you need to understand is that you will not understand women that you are interested in in the same way that you understand men that you are friends with. Men and women are different creatures — socially, biologically and in other ways. If you try to interact with her like she’s a man in a dress, it’s not going to work out for you and you’re never going to understand her.

Step 3: Pay Attention to Her Words

So how are you going to understand her? Well, the first way toward how to understand women is by listening to what she has to say. All too often men talk and wait for their turn to speak rather than really listening. What you need to do to understand her is pay attention to her. Not only will she tell you a lot about herself, but the things that she chooses to speak about will also tell you a lot about her.

Step 4: Pay Attention to Her Actions

It’s an old but very true expression: Actions speak louder than words. If you really want to understand who a woman is rather than who she wants you to think that she is, you need to watch what she does. In any point that there’s a discrepancy between the things that she says and the things that she does, you need to trust her actions more than her words.

Step 5: Ask Her Questions

And, of course, asking her a lot of questions is one of the best ways to understand her. Any time that you have trouble understanding something about her, that’s the time to ask her questions. It doesn’t have to be because you’re confused about something she’s already said or done: It can just be an area of her life that you want to understand better and learn more about.