We're really very different. But we make a great team -- as long as we work with each other's strengths.
“He never tells me what he feels.” “He’s meant to do his share of the housework, but he always skips things.” “They’re all just big boys.” “He just doesn’t listen.” “I can multi-task … why can’t he?“ I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard complaints like these … and you probably have too. And men, of course, have their typical complaints about women.
There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when it was politically correct to think that men and women were the same. It was just upbringing which made them different. Some people still believe this … but not scientists (or mothers who’ve tried to get their small boys interested in dolls!). Because research confirms what we’ve all known in our hearts all along. Men and women (or rather, the average man and the average woman) have evolved to be profoundly different in many ways.
For the first six weeks of pregnancy, the unborn baby has a neutral brain. Left alone, the brain will become female, forming rich interconnections and powerful senses -- needed for the female ability to bring up a family and hold together a social group. But if it’s a boy, the mother starts flooding it with testosterone. This stops the brain developing in female ways and fits it for the male role: to compete with other men for a mate and status, to protect and defend his family and group, to explore, take risks and push the boundaries, to withstand pain, persevere and get things done.
Too much sensitivity and concern for others’ feelings, more caution and awareness of danger … these and many other female qualities would really get in the way. Men‘s brains are freed up to specialise, compartmentalise and focus. As biochemist Anne Moir says in her book Why Men Don’t Iron, ‘Women have a floodlight. Men have a spotlight.’
So, the cheap jokes and putdowns traded between the sexes often just arise from ignorance. And there are some real flashpoints, rows and issues which most of us have had -- which a little information might help calm down:
• Ever struggled with a map, maybe turning it upside down to try to work it out -- then told your partner he should turn left when in fact the map says, and you mean, turn right? Well, about half of all women have trouble telling right from left, and most also have trouble with directions like north and south. But brain scans show that most men (and other male animals) have got a built-in deep-brain Satnav. As they move north, say, a line of brain cells is actually firing in a northerly direction. No wonder people with this piece of internal kit (which of course some women have too, nothing is absolute) are baffled and irritated by those without it. However, women find their way round by using landmarks … Right at the pub with geraniums, next left after the postbox … much more easily than men.
• Why can’t men find things when they’re staring them in the face? When he can’t find his socks, or see the butter in the fridge or the dust on the shelf, he’s not doing it on purpose. He just doesn’t have the memory for objects and places that we do. He also has a narrower field of view -- it’s as if he’s wearing blinkers. And he’s hampered by the fact that he doesn’t have nearly as good a memory for detail, either for where things are now, or of past events.
• Ever said: “He doesn’t care how I feel, he can see how upset that makes me but he still does it, he must realise I’m fed up“? Actually the signs that you’re stressed or distressed can be too subtle for him to spot, till you start shouting or burst into tears. The average man literally can’t see or hear as well as most women. He doesn’t have anything like the female ability to ‘read’ body language, expression and tone of voice.
• Why can he get so irritated when you’re choosing paint? He can’t distinguish as many shades of colour! Paint samples which won’t harmonise for you might look OK to him.
• Doesn’t he like parties? On top of men’s less acute hearing they also find it harder than women to keep track of one conversation when there are others going on all round them.
• Why does he want steak? Making male hormones uses lots of zinc and iron… and the best source of zinc is red meat. Does he refuse wholemeal bread? Whole cereals contain phytates, which make absorbing crucial minerals more difficult. Does he rebel against those ‘healthy’ soya-based foods? Soya can promote female hormones … and the only body he wants those in is yours, not his! His instincts are right.
• When your man competes and wins, he soars on a cloud of pure euphoria. Just watching his team score floods him with testosterone and the reward chemical, dopamine. Men thrive on competition. They need it. Risk and challenge brings them alive. Whereas what tends to give women - even professional sportswomen - the best feeling is not that they’ve won but that they played well.
• Dieting’s often easier for men. Women can get distracted by the emotional aspects of food -- comfort eating, eating to reward yourself, pamper yourself, console yourself, or eating as part of the currency of love, sharing and caring. Once a man’s decided to get fit, it’s easier for him to go about the business unemotionally, picking food types and counting calories, or whatever’s needed, without all that emotional baggage.
• There’s a classic male-female row, marriage researcher John Gottman has found after 30 years research. It’s sparked off by the fact that men don’t read emotional situations very well. It starts when the woman raises an issue. Maybe an emotional issue, maybe just something he experiences as a criticism or demand. Most men are far more stressed in this situation than women, so his pulse rate shoots up and he can’t think straight. Emotion, as we all know, makes us stupid. So he gets defensive, or turns off altogether -- ignores you, trivialises you or just goes away. Now you feel you’re not being listened to or understood and your pulse rate shoots up! Sensible discussion has become impossible and it’s best to take time out -- walking away from the situation. But a woman can often avoid this escalation and get listened to if she just raises subjects gently, picking her moment, so he can stay calm.
• Men can read one emotional mood as well as women .. and that’s hostility or anger. If it’s another man, he’s prime to lash out -- or run. If it’s a woman, that creates a conflict. It makes him need space … he just wants to get away from the situation. However maddening your partner may, getting angry is just not the way forward!
• Do you sometimes feel he can see when someone else is upset -- but not when you are? It’s not that he doesn’t pay attention to you -- it’s because he cares about you. In fact, the more emotionally involved he is, the less well he can read your expression and body language.
• If you sometimes feel you’re worrying for both of you … you probably are. Women remember more detail little things. We’re disposed by nature to ‘sweat the small stuff’, as the American expression has it. And women dwell on negatives more. As a man, your partner is probably much more keen to try new things and take risks and his impulses are less well controlled. So he can think you’re timid and pointlessly worrying. You can think he’s just a big boy. But when you focus on each other’s strengths, not weaknesses -- when you team up a man’s enthusiasm and courage with a woman’s commonsense, awareness of problems and attention to detail -- you have a great team.
• If your partner doesn’t remember birthdays, can’t recall what you did on a first date, seems to have forgotten all about who said and did what in that big family row … men can’t remember these emotionally-charged, interpersonal details nearly as well as women. So don’t take it personally or think he doesn’t care. It’s just his brain excels at remembering facts, ways to do things and how things work.
• You’re infuriated by the way he leaps in with advice when you’ve hardly even begun talking through something. He thinks you’re scatterbrained, dithering, keep getting off the point. His brain is highly focussed, designed to think of one thing at a time and find solutions. A woman’s brain is much better at multitasking and thinking through various possibilities. Again, a great team … once you work with each other’s strengths instead of getting sidetracked and irritated by each other’s weaknesses.
• Girls value closeness over competition. When kids choose teams at school, the girls choose people they like. The boys choose ones who’ll play well. So his teams will usually be more effective ...
• We all have an inbuilt alarm system, but men’s is less sensitive. Which makes them readier to take risks and cope with danger but more likely to sleep through your baby’s nightly waking. He’s not necessarily trying to get out of doing his share!
• If you think he’s not telling you what he feels … well, in most men the emotional brain is just not well connected to the part where language is. He may react to feelings without being able to talk about them, or even consciously knowing what they are.
• And he may not be feeling anything anyway. Fears, worries, misery and mental pains -- women’s brains make them far more vulnerable to these.
• Why are his colds more serious than yours? Though men feel pain much less when focussed on a task, they feel it MORE when they aren't. And why do you fuss over him when he’s ill more than he does over you? When women see someone they care for in pain, the pain areas in their own brains light up. You literally feel for them. This doesn’t happen for men.
• Do you have a problem with maths? At the very top of fields like maths, physics, engineering, there are a dozen times as many men than woman. This isn’t because of upbringing. It’s because men can focus a whole specialist brain area. Whereas women, with our more interconnected brains, can’t.
• The well-known lifesaving fight or flight response to stress or danger isn't much good when (a) men can easily outfight you, being 50% stronger, and (b) you're clutching a baby and dragging a toddler as you try and run away. So an inbuilt female response is rather 'tend and befriend'. Nurture children and the weak and form a strong female alliance against the threat. Or make chicken soup and ring your girlfriends … Caring for others lowers a woman’s stress just as hitting out can lower a man’s.
Put a man and a woman together, and you can have a great team, each using their own strengths and filling in for each other’s weaknesses. As long as we’re aware of our differences and respect them...
