A Real Man Values Marriage - II
Understanding the Brains of Men and Women
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In my book, What is a Man, I call men up to be responsible initiators in their relationships and to work to understand their wives. This is not easy work. This 3-part series is just my observations of ideas that many men don’t understand about women and what has worked in relationships. This series involves love languages (love them or hate them, they can be helpful), male and female differences in neuroscience, and a simplistic breakdown of the Four Horsemen laid out by John Gottman (again, love him or hate him, John Gottman has contributed significantly to the field of understanding relationships).
Boxes
Let me be abundantly clear on two things: A) I don’t claim to have the answers on how to read a woman’s brain. This is a mystery that will never be solved. B) This analogy is not mine. I once heard someone share this. Before I do, one thing to note about male/female differences in the brain; the hemispheres in the female brain have more neuronal activity than the male brain. This becomes significant when you realize that emotion and language are in different hemispheres.1
His Brain
If you view men’s and women’s brains in terms of boxes, it helps. Men’s brains have several separate boxes that never touch. We have a box for work, wife, home, sports, etc. So when the wife comes to us while we are watching sports and says, “Did you stop by and get the prescription on the way home?”, you freeze because you cannot fully understand what she just said… because you were in the wrong box. So you get out of the sports box, close that up and get into the home box. She asks again because she thinks you’re crazy, then you say, “Oh yeah, I did. I left it in the car. I’ll go get it.”
The other issue is that we have a “nothing” box. We can literally be sitting and thinking of absolutely nothing and enjoy it! The problem is that women cannot comprehend the nothing box. So, she’ll ask, “What are you thinking about?” with a big smile like you two are about to connect on a deep, emotional and spiritual level. And it goes something like this:
M: Nothing.
W: You can tell me, I’m your wife.
M: No really, I’m not thinking about anything.
W: You can tell me honey, I’m a safe place. I won’t judge you at all!
M: I’m really not thinking about anything.
W: Well if you can’t tell me, who can you tell? Who are you talking to about these things?!
Her Brain
She just doesn’t understand how our brains can just stop working and think about absolutely nothing. This is because she has ONE BOX! Everything is connected to everything. Every emotion is connected to unrelated events earlier in the day. And there is never a moment when her brain isn’t thinking of something. This explains how you can ask her, “Why are you crying?” and she replies, “I don’t know.” And now your brain is baffled. How in the world can she be crying but not know how she got there? This is because she could be crying about something that happened at 11AM and here we are at 6PM and she’s just now processing this and hasn’t made the connection yet, but she just knows she’s upset. But doesn’t know why. I know, super weird!
All of this is very important to a successful marriage. We must work (it is work) to love our wives in their language, not ours. The reward is exponential. We must learn to at least understand the basic tenets of how her brain works. And help her understand how ours work. This isn’t the end though.
Not only do we have to work to understand each other, we must learn to appreciate the differences in each other. My wife is a button-pusher. When we were first married, that kept me frustrated. She would accomplish something but have no idea how she did it, so it couldn’t be replicated. That bugged me to no end. One day, the button-pushing came in handy because we needed something done fast. That’s when I realized that it was not enough to learn to understand her, I also had to appreciate her.
Harboring resentment for any reason will build a wedge between you two. The things that bug you about her also make her awesome at the same time. My wife, the button-pusher, gets things done. Learn to find the good in what bugs you and it won’t frustrate you anymore. Peace in your marriage follows. Studies have shown that learning to appreciate your spouse’s differences through tolerance leads to high levels of marital satisfaction.2 You got this.
Stay Classy GP!
Grainger
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Related Articles:
Rabinowicz, T., Dean, D. E., Petetot, J. M., & de Courten-Myers, G. M. (1999). Gender differences in the human cerebral cortex: More neurons in males; more processes in females. Journal of Child Neurology, 14(2), 98–107. https://doi.org/10.1177/088307389901400206
Shahid, H., & Shahid, W. (2016). A study on tolerance role in marital satisfaction. International Journal for Social Studies, 2(6), 13-26.
This article comes at the perfect time. What if considering brain hemisphere activity as distinct processing untis could optimize our relationship communication? Very insightful.