Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improve Your Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress. John Gray
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to accomplish a task. A woman’s brain is more diffuse, using both hemispheres for many tasks. This neurological difference allows men to focus and to block out distractions for long periods of time. On the other hand, women tend to see things in a broader context, from a larger vantage point.
Men tend to do one thing at a time in their brains and in life. When a man is under stress, he can easily forget his partner and her needs. He may be focusing on how to get that promotion, so he forgets to bring home the milk. A woman can easily misinterpret his forgetful behavior as uncaring. After she has misunderstood his behavior in this manner, it is even harder for her to risk asking him for more support.
This insight can help a woman not to take it personally when he is at his computer and seems annoyed when she asks him a question. For her, it is a simple task to shift her attention when she is interrupted, but for him it is much more difficult. If he seems annoyed, she can remember that it is much more difficult for him to shift gears rather than take it personally.
In a similar manner, women become annoyed when a man tries to narrow down the focus of her conversation to a single point. He may interrupt her and ask her to get to the point, or ask what she wants him to do when she is still just connecting all the dots of what she is talking about. Quite commonly men will say, “I understand,” but a woman hears that he wants her to finish talking.
He feels she doesn’t have to continue, because he understands. Since she is still in the process of discovering what it is she wants to say, she knows he cannot fully understand. There is not just one point when she is expressing herself. By taking more time to listen to her many details, a man helps his partner to come back to a more centered and stress-free perspective.
Likewise, when a woman minimizes her interruptions of a man’s focused activities, she helps him to keep his stress levels down. Leaving a man alone and ignoring him is sometimes the best way to support him. Understanding that these tendencies are based on our brain differences frees us from taking things personally and reveals practical ways to support our partners in coping better with their stresses.
Leaving a man alone and ignoring him is sometimes the best way to support him.
Men separate information, emotions, and perceptions into separate compartments in their brains, while women tend to link their experiences together, reacting to multiple issues with their whole brain. This is one of the reasons a woman has a greater tendency to become overwhelmed with too much to do when she is under stress. While women tend to reach out to take in more information, under stress men tend to focus on the most important thing to do.
While women tend to reach out to take in more information, under stress men tend to focus on determining the most important thing to do.
This difference in brain structure between men and women has another important effect on stress relief. A man can more easily disengage from his serious, responsible left brain and allow it to rest and regenerate. When a man is stressed, he can simply change his focus to a hobby or watching TV and he begins to relax. He shifts from using his left brain, which is logical, practical, and reality-based, to his right brain, which is feeling, risk-taking, and fantasy-based. By making this shift, he automatically disconnects from the stress of his responsibilities. In this manner, a man can shift gears and disengage from everyday worries with greater ease.
A woman does not have this luxury, since the connective tissue between the two hemispheres of her brain won’t allow her to disengage as easily. When she is on the right side of her brain, trying to relax or have a fun time, she is still connected to her analytical and rational left brain.
On a practical note, understanding this difference helps men to recognize the futility of making comments to a woman like “Just forget it” or “Don’t worry about it.” She can’t make this shift the way a man does, but she can talk about what is bothering her. On Mars, if a man can’t solve a problem, his way of coping is to forget about it until he can do something about it. On Venus, if a woman can’t solve a problem, then she feels, “At least we can talk about it.” Talking with someone who cares about her well-being has the power to stimulate the neurotransmitters needed to reduce stress levels in a woman’s brain. By remembering her problems, a woman can actually free herself from their gripping hold on her and her mood.
White Matter vs. Gray Matter
Men and women possess two different types of brains, designed equally for intelligent behavior. Men have approximately 6.5 times as much gray matter as women. Women have almost 10 times the white matter that men do. Information-processing centers are located in gray matter. The connections or networks among these processing centers are composed of white matter. These differences explain why men tend to excel in tasks involving gray matter local processing— like mathematics—while women excel at integrating and assimilating information from gray matter regions, required for language skills, because of their abundance of connecting white matter.
This physical difference in our brain composition helps explain why we communicate so differently. A woman’s brain is busy connecting everything. The more she cares about something, the more she connects it to other things going on in her brain.
For example, when she sees a movie or visits a friend, she may have a lot to say about it. Meanwhile a guy may have nothing to say unless the movie happens to hit a particular area of interest. She assumes that he does not want to talk about the movie, but he actually has little to say. With this new insight, she can be assured that he is interested in hearing what she has to say, even though he has little to offer in return. When a woman gives up expecting her partner to talk more, not only does he appreciate her willingness to talk, but gradually he begins to share more.
When men have little to say, women often take it personally, as if he doesn’t want to share.
This same idea applies to asking a man about his day or a trip he has taken. When he has little to say, he is not intentionally hiding what happened; he just doesn’t think that much about it, and as a consequence he doesn’t remember much. She looks forward to explaining how everything connects. The process of communicating actually helps her brain reduce stress levels, while it has little benefit for him.
Why Talk Is Big on Venus
Two sections of the brain, Broca’s area in the frontal lobe and Wernicke’s area in the temporal lobe, are associated with language. These areas are larger in women, and that explains why women are so verbal. Researchers have located six or seven language centers in both hemispheres of a woman’s brain, but for men, language is only located in the left hemisphere. Since men have fewer language centers, it is not only harder for them to express what they experience, but they do not feel the need.
A man’s language centers are particularly activated when he is solving a problem. Some men will talk more at the beginning of the relationship, because at that time a man is primarily introducing himself, and talking is a way to “solve the problem” of letting her know about himself and how he feels for her. Once that problem is solved, his language centers are not easily activated. Likewise, his listening center is most active when he is solving a problem.
Women’s brains are constructed to communicate and express feelings. Compared to a man’s brain, a woman’s is much busier, always articulating reactions and perceptions. Many parts of her brain are fully engaged when she is talking. Men have a harder time connecting their emotions with their thoughts and articulating what they feel. This difference is a source of much friction in relationships. Understanding that a man is not withholding when he is silent can release a woman from the frustration of getting her partner to talk about his day in greater detail.
With practice, a man can learn to be a good listener, which is actually one of the most potent ways to help a woman lower her stress levels. A woman may like it when a man opens up and shares, but unless she first feels heard, it will not lower her stress. As men get better at listening to women and women get better at appreciating this step, men become more open and share more.
Math vs. Feelings
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