Confrontation Three years ago, I broke up with Nathalie. We’d known each other across 20 years and three continents, but our values had radically changed. The decision to end our friendship didn’t come lightly. I fretted. I tried talking. Eventually, sick at heart, I wrote a letter, cutting her out of my life. Russel, my husband, didn’t get it. "Just tell her to get lost," he suggested helpfully. "That’s what I’d do."
Of course he would. Men will walk on hot coals to avoid a heated, drawn-out scene with those they know, but are happy to use a few blunt words to resolve conflict with anyone else, says Brizendine. That’s because their testosterone-driven mind focuses less on maintaining relationships than competing in the pecking order.
Women, on the other hand, hate a simmering, below-the-surface disagreement. "In women," says Brizendine, "conflict is more likely to set in motion a cascade of negative chemical reactions, creating feelings of stress, upset and fear." Faced with such situations, we do what our foremothers did for millennia: use affiliation circuits in the limbic system and cortex to confront a problem by talking it over with those we trust.
Reading faces My dad is cursed with two lifelong problems: he can’t read faces and he has a memory like Swiss cheese. It drives Linda, his wife, crazy. Just before going to a c***tail party, for instance, she’ll work out a signal with him that means it’s time to go. "He’ll agree to it. Then, four hours later when I’m frantically winking and nodding from across the room, he’ll just look blank. I’ll ask him, 'Didn’t you remember?'" says Linda. "And he’ll say, 'Remember what?'"
Unlike women, most men can’t discern subtle facial signals, says Brizendine. This difference becomes apparent early on in life. According to a 2004 Canadian study, by the time she’s almost three months old, a girl’s ability to hold gazes – possibly an indication of her ability to read facial expressions – jumps 400 per cent beyond a boy’s, guided by the amygdala along with the hippocampus and insula, structures that rule memory and gut feelings.
Men, on the other hand, are guided by – you guessed it – testosterone, which means they can instantly read anger, threat or extremes like crying, but they’re less capable of interpreting subtleties. Some researchers believe Asperger’s syndrome (a high-performing form of autism, one characteristic of which is an inability to read faces) is an extreme male-brain phenomenon, possibly caused by an overabundance of testosterone.
Multi-tasking All of this still doesn’t fully explain why Mauri can juggle snacks, dogs, laundry and kids, yet miss nothing in preparation for that family vacation. So I ask her husband, Dean, a broadcaster in Ottawa, for his side of the story. It’s simple, he says. Men are just better at focusing on one task at a time. "Give a guy a list and he’ll work through it," he says. "I was once asked why I hadn’t packed rubber pants for our baby daughter when we went out. Well, I was told to pack baby powder, diapers and a change of clothes. Not rubber pants." He sounds exasperated. "Was it on the list? No, it was not."
Turns out, this isn’t his fault, either. Brains are divided into two hemispheres; men use specialized regions in one side or the other to complete tasks sequentially. Women use both sides equally to complete multiple jobs. Even during sex, women must turn off their preoccupied amygdala before they "turn on" – which explains why women are three to 10 times less likely to reach orgasm than men. "Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road," remarks Brizendine, "men have O’Hare International Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."
It’s a state of affairs Perrot-Sinal says exists to instruct us. "We complement each other because we’ve evolved in a dynamic relationship. Our roles are changing; we need to keep sight of the fact that we’re equal, but different."
