WHY
WOMEN LIKE TALKING & MEN PREFER ACTIVITES:
GOD DID IT
Have you ever thought that the
man or woman with whom you are closest has rocks in the head? You can’t believe what he said or that she
did something so mind-boggling. There’s
a good explanation and it’s that men and women rarely think alike – and they
can’t help that they don’t.
Women and men think
differently because they have unique experiences, and numerous research
findings now reveal physical differences in brain anatomy and the hormones
produced. These dictate the different
ways that men and women behave in both physical and emotional ways. They provide new ways of thinking about
relationships and provide understanding of why men and women act so
differently.
Men have larger brains and
more gray matter which tends to have them excelling in local processing, like
mathematics. Women have considerably
more white matter and integrate information for making connections like
communication requires. Therefore, talking
is more natural for women.
A woman tends to be
comfortable being vulnerably open, and can tell you what she believes, thinks,
and feels in one brief sentence without stopping to inhale. Men share the same emotions as women but
express them differently. Men rarely
know what they feel about anything, without consciously thinking for a
while. As John Coleman, author of The Lazy Husband explains, men
compartmentalize and intellectualize their feelings and often have to work to
identify what they are feeling. It’s
like a man has a group of boxes inside his head, and he catalogs each activity and
person in their own separate, unique box. Rarely do these boxes overlap. A woman’s brain operates more like a mass of
interconnected wires, with each activity and person in her life connected to
all others. Each project a woman
undertakes is related to her prior task and she is already planning another or
two. This lets her tackle multiple activities
at once, while a man prefers focusing exclusively on a single project. For example, if she is trying to memorize a
list, halfway in her study she can stop and share something that happened last
night, and then resume studying as if there had been no break. However, if a man is interrupted while memorizing
a list, he will likely have to begin again at the top and re-study everything. Only now he’s also annoyed.
A woman bonds by sharing
feelings. The more private details she
shares with another, the closer she feels to that person. Men discuss more facts, data, and activities
which keep the focus off themselves.
When a man shares how many inches it rained yesterday, a woman doesn’t
consider it intimate, but he may, because he’s sharing what’s important to
him. She tends to talk about people and
can repeat how another hurt her multiple times, which baffles him. Because it’s something she’s unlikely to tell
others, she thinks it’s intimacy.
She loves talking; he cherishes activities. She feels close after long, private
discussions; he feels close after
physical touching, like hand holding, back rubs, and kissing. When she likes a man, she tends to want to
tell him how she feels about everything in her life and do something special for
him, like bake his favorite cake. When
he likes a woman, he tells her how he feels without using words. Instead, he does things for her that he
thinks she will appreciate and find helpful, like bring her coffee while she
reading or stacking dirty dishes. The
challenge is to learn what each other means when they behave differently,
especially when it isn’t exactly what we wish they would say or do.
Scientist stress that neither
pattern is superior and suggest that the sexes are equivalent in overall
performance and intelligent behavior. While
differences are not as noticeable when comparing individuals, they become
significant when comparing groups of men to groups of women. You may differ or know another who does, but
exceptions do not invalidate generalizations.
More men fit the male-type pattern and more women the female-type.
My husband, Rod, and I
definitely fit the normal distribution of gender brain patterns. I read cooking and relationship books; he reads sports and politics. Rod buys my Christmas gift the week of
Christmas; I finish shopping by
Thanksgiving. Rod has five pairs of
shoes and won’t buy another until he discards a pair. I probably own 50 pair and can’t pass a shoe
display without glaring. He uses two
hanging bars in our closet. I have
five. I prefer flying when we vacation
so we have longer where we are going, and Rod likes driving and seeing the
scenery along the way. I tend to tackle
three projects at the same time. Rod
focuses on one task until it is completed and is annoyed if I interrupt with a
question about an unrelated topic. I
love the automatic parking feature on our car and he won’t use it no matter how
tight the space.
During my years of counseling
couples, I discovered that when a man prefers the more typical female
involvements like cooking and child care, he tends to marry a woman who enjoys
the more competitive, analytical male brain activities like ballgames and
accounting. In fact, my own parents
shared opposite patterns. Mother told
stories of playing basketball with the boys at recess throughout her school
years, and she played with league teams for years after I was born. During her Saturday basketball games, Daddy
and I shared popcorn at movies. Mother
was concerned with money management, while Daddy often over-extended to help
someone. Mother was a stern
disciplinarian, but Daddy could be talked into anything. When my sister was born, Daddy fed her the
2:00 a.m. bottle. Mother took charge of
shrubs and landscaping. It appears that
we are often attracted to someone who will extend our brain patterns and our strengths.
While it might be nice if we could
respond like each other wants, it would also become boring. Men and women just use their brains in unique
ways, and while they rarely say or act like the other wants, their different
ways carry no intent of causing each other hurt. A woman wasn’t designed to act like one of his
boyfriends, and he can’t respond like her girlfriend would. And
neither can help that they can’t. It’s
not how God wired them. Remember, Eve
came from Adam’s rib, not one of his brain cells.
