Understanding Women

Understanding Women:

A Man’s Guide to Relationship Rocket Science

Clay Watkins, LMFT

Any guy who thinks he can read the mind of a woman is a guy who knows nothin’!

Robert Evans, producer of The Godfather

The following article is a work-in-progress meant to stimulate discussion between men and women. As such it is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there is much truth in it as well. Readers are encouraged to provide feedback to assist in increasing the accuracy of the descriptions of how women think, feel and behave. If your input is used in the author’s upcoming book, you may be cited as a contributor. Obviously any generalizations made are by definition not going to apply to some women, therefore please forgive the author if they do not apply to you. As country singer Tammy Wynette says in the song Stand By Your Man, “...after all he’s just a man.”

Women: The Ultimate Puzzle for Men

To us men, women are simultaneously frustrating and wonderful. We peer at a woman as a chimpanzee might peer at a computer; mesmerized by the pretty lights; simultaneously fearful and awed by the mystery of it all. But take heart, men. There is a method to women’s madness. To truly understand these amazing creatures, however, we must be willing to expand our perspective. We must be willing to defy principles of standard male logic. We must do that which does not come naturally. We must think like women.

First, forget all you heard about women as a kid. What we men pick up in childhood about the female mind—the guesses you got from your elementary school buddies—is useless drivel. This includes statements like “When a girl says ‘No’ she really means ‘Yes’”; crap like that.

Second, forget what you’ve been told about women by women. We men all know women don’t even understand themselves. How in heaven’s name are they going to explain it to us? They illustrate this with cryptic phrases like “I really like it when a man cries,” “I’d rather just cuddle,” and “If you don’t know by now, then I’m not going to tell you.”

The key is observation. Women are too complex to be fully understood by any one man. That’s a given. The best any of us can hope for is partial but significant understanding. Think of it as you might rocket science; with enough education, experience and elbow grease you can put together something that will get you into space. Then you press the ignition switch and pray things go well. The key is watching and listening. We’re not talking about stalking women, hacking into their email, or reading their text messages. We’re talking about watching what they do and correctly interpreting what they say.

The U.S. Marines have a motto: Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. It’s not important that you win every battle. The priority in this case is to win the war; the war against your own selfishness; the war against petty arguments; the war against broken relationships. If your goal is to make your relationship work no matter what, then you’ll need more than just commitment. You’ll need some creativity as well.

Who do you think you are, anyway?

I realize the first question many readers will ask is: how in heaven’s name does this male author have the cajones to claim to understand women? I might even entertain the bigger question of how any man can presume to understand the opposite sex. I admit I am making a bold statement, but I do so not because of my education or my intellect or my professional training. More than any other reason, I understand women because I listen to them; hundreds of them. As a marriage and family therapist I see wives, girlfriends and moms every day and they tell me their deepest longings; their joys; their disappointments; their fears; even their fantasies. And you can bet I take copious notes to ensure I don’t forget what they tell me. I even bounce the concepts off other women

to make sure I understand what I’m hearing. And the conclusions I have made may surprise you.

For All You Outliers

Let me extend a sincere apology to those hopefully very few men who read this article, but for whom it is of no assistance. Writing an article on understanding women from a man’s perspective is a grand undertaking, and one that is inherently incomplete. I might as well be writing a primer on how to cut diamonds. Just as every raw diamond has its individual traits, molecular makeup and structural idiosyncrasies; no one woman is the same as the next. The best any man can do is gather data and from them make his best guess.

To truly understand any particular woman, a man must understand the general principles of how women think, feel and act, but then also learn to adapt this understanding to the one woman he wishes to love. The bad news is, due to the complexity of the task, your challenges will be many; your failures will be frequent; and your mistakes will be painful. The good news: if you can think outside your own experience, develop the complex man inside you, and learn to communicate the right message clearly over and over, you may just experience a truly loving relationship.

Marriage Is Not For Sissies

As I write this I am reminded of a joke about a man who, while walking along the beach finds an ornate bottle. Upon removing the top a genie appears and says, “I am so grateful to you for setting me free, I will gladly grant you any one wish.” The man asks, “One? I thought it was always three wishes?” To which the genie replies, “I’m an apprentice. I can only grant one.” The man thinks for a moment and says, “My wife always wanted us to go to Hawaii, but she has a severe phobia of flying. Can you make me a highway to Hawaii so I can drive her there?” The genie grimaces and complains, “Wow, that’s a really big request. Do you know how many cubic yards of concrete that would take, and the engineering that would go into a bridge that long? Can’t you think of anything else you want that might be a little easier?” The man thinks for a long

minute and says, “Okay, my wife is always saying I don’t understand her. Can you just teach me how to understand women?” To this the genie replies, “Did you want two or four lanes on that highway?”

Coming to a working understanding of women, at least from a man’s perspective, requires nothing short of rocket science. But it is possible, given a certain combination of courage, persistence and humility. You are probably reading this article to help you repair a problem in your relationship with a woman. Some advice: there are no quick fixes with women. Every problem with a woman takes time, effort and consistency to rectify. It’s part of the price we men pay to get all the great things women have to offer. No use complaining because you were unaware of the fine print. Time to man-up. Along those same lines, this article isn’t for incrementalists. If you think you’re going to get a better relationship by slightly modifying your present relationship, good luck with that. This article isn’t for you. To achieve a very different relationship you’ll have to do something very different than what you’ve done in the past.

With regard to relationships with women, we men often feel we are set up to fail. To say women are complex is a massive understatement. We men are psychological square pegs attempting to fit into round holes. The only way to truly fit is to allow our angles to be rounded off. It’s not a matter of becoming who we’re not--it’s a matter of becoming who we can be, so we can experience and give the very best. You can spend your time attempting to square-up the round hole, but in my experience, it’s more productive to work on changing yourself.

The Devil Is in the Differences

Herein lies the problem; if men and women think and react in an inherently different manner, how can the sexes ever hope to get along? Mutual understanding is the answer. Let’s start with understanding the physiological differences.

There are, of course, the obvious disparities between the sexes involving genitalia, hormones, chromosomes, and appreciation for the Three Stooges. But what’s really interesting is how our brains function differently. Brain size and intelligence between men and women is generally the same, but important structural differences exist between the sexes that create differing responses to events around us.

It starts before we are ever born. Sometime between three and six months into pregnancy, hormones wash over a pre-born child’s cranial cavity to catalyze brain growth. Specifically the brain of fetal boys is bombarded with testosterone; shrinking the corpus collosum; a structure that allows us to communicate between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This at least partially explains why in functional brain scans adult women appear more adept at using both hemispheres of the brain, whereas men tend to spend most of their brain activity in the left hemisphere only. So men, when your wife accuses you of being brain-damaged, just say, “That’s technically true, but what’s your point?”

The left side of the brain—where men spend most of their time—is where logic and rationality typically occur. By contrast, women use both sides of their brain; accessing not only left brain functions, but also right brain functions like intuition and emotions. By deduction one might conclude men are more logical than women, or conversely that women are inherently smarter than men since they use both sides of their brain. Both arguments miss the point. What’s important is not that women process information differently than do men, which they do; most important is that this causes women to feel differently than men, which is why, even when given the same set of facts, women and men often arrive at very different conclusions.

The fact that women take their feelings into consideration when making decisions may work fine for them, but from a man’s standpoint this is inefficient. From a male perspective, emotions merely complicate the thinking process. Not only that, we men fear emotions will make us look like sissies, so we take great pains to manage them effectively. In fact, if we men could get by without any emotion we would. But men, to successfully communicate and negotiate with women, we must learn to understand how women translate their feelings and their experiences. This may seem impossible, but it’s not. It just takes some work.

Throughout their school ages, boys have testosterone pulsing through their bodies; propelling them into more frequent fights and more behavioral problems than generally are experienced by little girls. As a result, much of little boys’ emotional experience and expression is shaped by schoolyard politics. Boys learn early that most all emotional expression other than happiness or anger is unacceptable on the playground. If a little boy strikes out in softball then cries about it, he is quickly ostracized by his peers and often ridiculed as well. But if the same boy curses and

throws his bat to the ground in anger, though he may pay some price if a teacher notices, he gains respect or fear from his peers. So then later, when the boy becomes a man, and his wife asks him to show vulnerability, disappointment or compassion, one should not be surprised when he reacts like a deer in the headlights. He frankly has no idea how to feel anything but happiness or anger.

Similarly, on the playground boys learn to limit their words more than girls do, because boys know that past a certain point their words become fightin’ words, leading to violent repercussions. Contrary to popular belief, most little boys would rather avoid fisticuffs, so statements like “Oh yeah? Well make me!” are more often followed up with deflections like “Every time I spit I make you!” than by fighting words like, “Oh yeah? Then behind the green backstop after school, you pussy!”

By contrast, little girls learn to use their words in what boys consider overly harsh ways, because girls are just not as prone toward solving their conflicts through physical violence. And because they don’t have to fear that a physical fight will break out if they say something nasty, this sets up a verbal free-for-all when girls argue. As a result, little girls can get really good at hurting with their words. Unfortunately by the time girls grow up to be women, they have also gained a vast verbal advantage over men in arguments.

To compound this inequity between the sexes, consider also that even when little boys do get into fights, they rarely hit below the belt. Why? Because every little boy knows how much it hurts to get hit in the groin—that’s why. And every little boy also knows guys’ rule number thirteen: if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. This goes for words as well. Little boys don’t make fun of other little boys’ penises, because if they did they know they would be just one conversation away from being the brunt of the next small-penis-joke. Little girls, conversely, have no such understanding. Guys must understand this and learn to disregard women when they go too far. They just don’t know any better. No one ever taught them guys’ rules.

This brings us to a very dicey topic for men: how to know when to act on what a woman says and when not to. Aha! Finally something that makes sense. All men recognize the double bind of listening to a woman’s words. We hear things from her like, “I want you to be sensitive to my needs, but don’t be a doormat,” or “Why can’t you spend more time with me; but could you work more overtime to help our finances?” Deep down women want a guy who has goals and ideas; who’s a leader and

not a follower; who cares and sacrifices for his wife but won’t sacrifice his dignity. But ask a woman how to achieve both sides of what they say they want and they’ll give you nothing but gibberish. My wife, as I was writing this, said, “Don’t forget to mention that women have the ability to feel opposite emotions at the same time. We can hate and love someone simultaneously.” I just looked at her with that thousand-yard stare I sometimes get in our conversations. What are we men supposed to do with this nonsense? Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. Your best bet? Just do the right thing for the right reasons, and let the chips fall where they may. It’s not a perfect solution, but at least you’ll be able to sleep at night. Unless she’s PMSing, in which case, watch your back!

It is, however, altogether necessary for us men to learn how to feel emotions, other than the two previously-mentioned ones, as well as express them to our significant others. For a good start into being able to do that, read the book The 7 Levels of Verbal Intimacy by Matthew Kelly.

Men are visual. For men, visual stimulation-- whether it’s actual girl-watching or looking through a Playboy magazine—equates to brain stimulation. In 1956, James Olds performed a famous experiment whereby rats were taught to press a bar wired to a miniature electrode that delivered electrical stimulation to the hypothalamus of the rat’s brain; the “pleasure center” if you will. The rats were deprived of food and then given the choice between eating and self-stimulation. The rats always chose the pleasure stimulation. As many as 5,000 stimuli were self-delivered to the rats’ hypothalamic region. The animals stopped only when they dropped from exhaustion. Similar to rats, we men will choose that which stimulates the pleasure center of the brain, even sometimes to our own detriment. Unfortunately women, evolved creatures that they are, are often able to see past the exterior to who a man is on the inside. The problem is, they expect us to be able to do the same, so we disappoint them a lot.

Do yourself a favor: love your wife. A lot of guys see these differences and try to solve the conflict by educating their wives or girlfriends. I see many of these men in my office, after years of trying but inevitably failing to convince their women that their wandering eye or online porn addiction is somehow “normal”. Pick your battles, men. If you’re in a committed relationship, you have to give up on all those parts of your life that undermine your lady’s self-esteem. It may be difficult, but you must exercise self-discipline. Don’t disrespect your woman by looking another woman up and down in

front of her and making comments like, “Wow, will you look at the pair on that one!” Instead, take the opportunity to throw her a compliment. Building her self-esteem will reap many rewards for you later.

Men translate what a woman says into a statement about respect, whereas women translate everything a man says into a statement about relationship. Little known secret; when a man says something—anything—to his wife, deep down she is asking one question: “Are you on my side?” Smart men find a way to imbed, even multiple times per day, the following message in their communications with their wives: “I love you, I am committed to you, and I’m willing to sacrifice my comfort for your happiness.” The cause of most divorces is not money or cheating; it is the lack of including this simple imbedded message in all our interactions. From a guy’s standpoint this is ridiculous. As I heard one husband tell his wife, “I told you I loved you the day we got married, and I’ll let you know if I ever change my mind.” Heed my words, men. This does not work for women. They need to be regularly reminded that they are loved. Don’t struggle against it. You don’t need to know why it is. It just is.

The point system. Because women use more of their right brain (where emotion and relationship information are processed) than men do, they prioritize events, words and choices differently than men do. So when a guy brings home a dozen roses, he may think he gets 12 emotional points in his favor, but in reality he may only earn one point according to his wife. In fact he could have brought home just one single rose and still earned one point. (I know, it makes no sense!) The fact is, women assign relational points according to many factors: thoughtfulness, sincerity, sacrifice, history, timing, spontaneity. Cost is a tricky factor that can go either way. One thing is for sure; each woman’s point system is unique, so best do some research to get it right. Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages is an excellent guide to determining how to score emotional points with your mate. Read it. Live it. Be it.

Communicating With Women

In the book How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish suggest a four-part strategy on how to effectively communicate with kids, but it also works quite well between a man and a woman:

1.     Listen actively to the point she’s making. Say your girlfriend says, “You never let me have a say in things. Quit controlling me!” Before you defend yourself or respond to what you perceive as disrespect, construct a statement to let her know you are listening to her. For example: “Wow, it sounds like you’re pretty upset. This must be really important to you.”

2.     Acknowledge her point by mirroring it, using a combination of your and her words. Let her know you understand what she’s saying by feeding back what you think you heard. For example: “So if I have this right, you’re mad because it seems like I don’t ask your opinion before I make decisions, right?” Make your best guess, but be open to correction if you got it wrong.

3.     Empathize with her by labeling and reflecting her emotion. Construct a statement that helps her recognize and relate to her own emotions. For example: “I think I get it; that you feel powerless—like you’re not being respected. I can see why you’d be pretty upset about that.”

4.     Respond by reframing her situation, exploring options and solutions with her. Construct a statement that leads her toward a solution that works for everyone. For example: “Okay, so what do you think I can do to make sure you get more of what you want; so it seems more fair to you?”

We men see ourselves as problem solvers. Our tendency is to jump straight to step 4 to explore solutions. This way, we reason, the messiness of steps 2 and 3 is eliminated altogether, allowing us to feel both efficient and useful. When we make this jump, however, it makes a woman feel devalued because she thinks we only see her as a project and not as a person. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s how women think. Don’t struggle against it. It will only close more tightly around you. Instead, improvise; adapt; overcome.

Guys, do yourselves a favor and focus on steps 2 and 3. Trust me. She will not only feel loved, but often she’ll forget the need to solve the problem that started the discussion in the first place! Important point here guys: for women the issue is always about the relationship. So-called “problems” are only important to them insofar as they impact the relationship.

Conclusions

This article is merely a look at the tip of the iceberg of challenges associated with understanding women. For most men, understanding their wives will be a lifelong effort. My main point: it is a worthwhile effort, and though you’ll never completely understand her, with some smarts, some patience, and some commitment, you can understand her well enough to make her feel loved. And that, in turn, will change how she treats you, which can make life very worth living.

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