DEFEATING DIVORCE

WHERE THE POWER STRUGGLE BEGINS AND HOW TO END IT

Understanding that a man will always want to solve a problem rather than talk about it and a woman will always want to talk it out in order to solve it is important. Women often complain men don’t want to listen to them talk about their problems, while their silent partners often wish that women would stop talking about the problem so they can solve it.

The design of the male brain is specialized to focus on one job at a time and to do that job well. The nervous system in his brain is “wired” so that he can see a problem, work out how to fix the problem and then to fix it. His brain provides a man with the ability to think analytically, to work well with numbers and generally to complete complex tasks.

Women on the other hand, have a brain that is “wired” to multitask well. Women tend to be able to do the washing, cook the dinner, and look after the children at the same time.

When a woman asks her husband to do something while his mind is preoccupied and his focus is elsewhere at the time, he is inclined to

forget her request, but this is completely unintentional on his part. He really did forget, not because he does not love her enough to carry out the request, but because his focus was in doing something else at the time, she made the request.

Understanding that there are important physiological differences (and hormonal ones) that drive the behavior of men and women is an important step in understanding that our partners failure to meet our expectations are often unintentional. Once we can accept that, we can view the actions of our partners from another perspective.

For Your Journals

Discuss a recent misunderstanding you and your partner had with each other. Write about the differences between men and women and think about how your partner’s actions in that situation that upset you may have been typical of the differences between genders rather than something personal they are “doing wrong”.