I was having one of "he can't connect emotionally" conversations. A friend was telling me about her relationship angst over his inability to understand her needs and to talk about his. Even though I'm in research and not therapy, as a psychologist, I get that a lot.
As I listened, a question occurred to me: is she confusing love with the expression of love? In so doing, was she subjecting her perfectly warm and loving significant other to a test he was bound to fail?
Maybe ... men just love differently. To jigger the famous line from Sex and The City; it's not that he's not into you, it's just that the expression gets hung up in the netting of a woman's expectations of expression as proof of existence.
Current research confuses the issue -- particularly the study by Rutgers University biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, whose study of 5,000 American adults found that men are becoming more interested in commitment and attachment, and women are more interested in relationships that allow them a degree of independence.
One might assume that a shift toward commitment and attachment might create a slipstream that would pull along more open and demonstrative emotional communication.
It's an assumption that runs into some formidable limitations imposed by biology. There is more at work here than too many Clint Eastwood movies.
University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Dr. Ruben Gur says that the same way men and women have different bodies, they have different brains -- with eons of evolution creating distinct wiring. It goes well beyond the formative impact of testosterone and estrogen.
It's a matter of how we're built, he says, not what we learn. And he has the brain imaging to prove it.
Other studies elaborate on the biological link to male-female communication styles. Men are wired to act during times of high emotion, since emotion can lead to violence; there is a shut-off mechanism. He stops talking -- just when women, wired entirely differently, want to talk.
As reported on the Web site Uncommon Knowledge, there may actually even be survival instinct at work. It takes longer for a man's blood pressure and immune system to return to normal after high emotion than it does for a woman.
Research, the site reported, also found that boys were faster to turn off a recording of a baby crying than girls. Simple insensitivity and impatience? Actually, the boys reacted to the crying with a higher release of stress hormones. Boys are more fragile than girls medically and emotionally. Boys are more susceptible to birth defects and developmental disabilities; they are more vulnerable in the womb, with more fetuses lost in miscarriage. As children, they are more easily stressed, which means they cry more when they are upset and have a harder time calming down. And they are more emotionally vulnerable to the ill effects of extreme lack of affection.
Then, too, there is the documented fact that elderly men are much more likely to die after losing a partner than are elderly women.
Such findings point to some serious irony. All these insensitive men are actually more reactive to emotion than women, so they are genetically programmed to avoid it.
This biological Venus-Mars dynamic -- and confusion -- extends beyond the precincts of romantic love.
In my research for my recent book, I found that this confusion extends beyond romantic love. A number of women said they had worked hard to create an emotional connection with their fathers, but failed. Yet, when they described the relationship and the level of interaction, it is clear their fathers cared about them very much.
All of that begs the question "Can't we all just get along?" If we have an appreciation that we are products of our wiring, it should be possible to logically override the programming, and simply give each other what we need.
Psychotherapists know well it's not that easy. One of the many challenges in couple's therapy is that both halves of the couple want "validation" that each partner experiences the other's emotional state, and sees value in the experience. The problem is that means taking an excursion into the head of the other person. Women are often fine with that -- welcome it. Men often don't want their deepest feelings valued -- much less experienced -- by anybody. If knowledge is power, what could be more powerful than knowing somebody's innermost feelings?
For women hungry for the emotional growth of their partners as measured by communication of feelings, it could be an uphill journey, pushing against the great big boulder of biology. When the other signs are good -- reliability, kindness, attentiveness and the rest -- it might mean coming to terms with the fact the love is there, it's just expressed in ways that will be clouded by the mysteries of the male gender.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
At the sight of the first woman he has ever seen, Siegfried at last experiences fear. In desperation, he kisses Brünnhilde, waking her from her magic sleep. ... Brünnhilde is won over by Siegfried's love, and renounces the world of the gods" From Wikipedia
Why is that so many, when they disagree with a comment or premise, feel that rather than directly refuting that comment or premise, that attempts to undermine credibility ("you've been burned and it's coloring your judgment" for example).
The evidence about women cheating relates only to marriage. Men still outcheat women in relationships. And what the evidence says is that some men are serial cheaters, and they drive up the numbers as they cheat on spouse after spouse. With women, the cheaters come from all walks of life and occurs across the board. Many of the women have just one affair, which again may explain why it appears that men cheat more.
There is also a much greater element of emotional attachment in women's affairs. It truly can be "just sex" for the man (no, I'm not justifying it - it is still wrong) while a woman will likely never reconnect with a husband she has cheated on.
Which is more destructive to the family? I guess one could romanticize the "cheating for love" notion, but that is wrong too. Get divorced first rather than acting like a hormone-driven animal.
dr Drexel
this is the basis of almost, if not all religions, faiths, philosophies,
that lead to enlightenment of the mind.
we must and can get along with our own thoughts and with one another, and nature.
Well it all boils down to recognizing we are all different, some are big factors such as gender. Men have frustrations with communications with women as well. We all need to understand relationships are hard work to make them good for all parties. Do that hard work and most times you will be rewarded. Do not condemn people with broad notions and generalities.
I like/love females (wife and 2 young adults in my family), but I really do not understand women all that much better and have to be educated all the time. But I have grown in patience.
Times are changing. Time to adjust.
"Can we therefore dignify the leaders of the world with subject matter that means something rather than more vaginal politics?"
Get used to vaginal politics. It would be in your own best interest.
I suspect JB's illustrious entry into the HP world is a satire, if only because it is hard to fathom that anyone would write this with a straight face ("protecting and maintaining women," really).
Then again, I suppose it is possible -- I had no idea how much (some) men hate (and fear) women until I started reading HP (and not only) comments.
Vaginal politics is like a house of cards.
You say that "women are not qualified to psychoanalÂyze men without even understandÂing themselves" because "many women admit that they feel that they understand men better than they understand themselves.Â"
If "many" women do not understand themselves, it probably does not mean that all women do not understand themselves; therefore making a leap from "many" who don't, to a generalization that (presumably) all women are "not qualified" would seem logically (and vaginally) unjustified.
Additionally, if you maintain that understanding herself is a necessary condition, for a woman, to understand a man, then it makes no sense (to this unformidable vaginal creature) to posit -- and especially to believe -- that "many women admit they understand men better than they do themselves."
BTW, do you have any evidence to support your contention that women do not understand themselves?
I'd press with more questions, but I understand that the leaders of the world likely will not have the time to respond to an unformidable vaginal creature. (Those questions would include, but not be limited to: Do men understand themselves? Do they understand women? Are they qualified, in any capacity, to "psychoanalyze" women? Are we at all qualified to "analyze" and understand each other? Etc.)
Go vagina monologues !
I hop she mean to add "more likely to die SOON" as I have yet to read of immortal widowers
OK, this is just a stab in the dark, but is it because they're MEN? *Wink, wink, nudge, nudge*
Bwahahahaha
but its not always expressed in the same language, same body language,
speech,
dialect, emotions, touch etc etc.
that is our fault,
we havent mastered how to express ,in many more ways,
one language is hopelessly inadequate.