Friday, 13 November 2009

• Differences In Male and Female Brains and How This Effects Dating

  Men and women really are different. So different that they can almost be called different species. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating. However, there are fundamental differences in brain structure and formation in girls vs. boys.
  
  Both males and females start off with a basic “female brain”. Then a testosterone surge in the 8th week burns of the “communication centers” of the brain to almost nothing while spurring growth in sections that govern sex and aggression. As a consequence, girls are more interested in nurture games and communication while boys want to tumble and run around.
  
  These brain differences make a baby girl more observant of faces while male babies get distracted easily and focus more on mechanical objects. A female seeks to understand facial expressions and keep eye contact. As a result her ability to recognize a persons attention towards her and what the attention is communicating (happiness/anger) comes to a girl before she can even talk intelligently. Her skills at observing others, knowing what their mother/social milieu is expressing are highly developed. Boys on the other hand are not so socially sensitive. They don’t notice the nuance of a facial expression or tone of voice the way a girl can AND also they don’t seek social acceptance in the same way that a girl would.
  
  So it is understandable the girls become better at language while boys are better are spatial organization and mechanical stuff. This creates a social environment where women are mostly in a connected group of friends, follows the social convention of her group, is an expert at body language and often, verbal manipulation. For example a young boys may fight to dominate while a girl would use language and make the person think they are being selfish – both getting their way through different means.
  
  What this all means is not that each sex is programmed with a specific brain function and is that way for life, it just means these are the advantages and disadvantages that each sex brings to the table. Brain plasticity is a theory that has developed around studies that show the brain adapts to its environment, growing new brain connections to learn a new skill and decreasing them if its not needed. In other words, your brain keeps changing throughout your life. The old belief that the brain stayed one way throughout your life has been disproved.
  
  Women playing Tetris (an old computer game) over 10 weeks have improved spatial ability. To the point where is a man is not practicing as much as the women, she can easily beat him at his natural “spatial organization” ability. Men too can develop a nuance for language, communication and understanding body language.
  
  For dating there is one very important lesson you can take from this.
  
  It is that men and women ARE different. We have just begun learning more and more about how men and women really are and how they can attain better lives. Now more than ever, self-improvement has become necessary for both men and women in different ways. Whether the reason is to gain a competitive advantage at work in understanding systems or reading your competitors, keeping in mind that everyone has different skills in dating and relationships because of how they see the world (i.e. brain design) it is easier to be more understanding and compassionate for others. This helps you develop patience and understanding. These qualities make life more enjoyable, attracts better mates and even makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.
  
  We can also look to understand brain differences in males and females from evolutionary roles they had to play. Creating social unity, harmony and nurturing became the domain of the female while hunting and food gathering became that of the male. This sort of behavior pattern shows up in some primate species while others forage together. Hunting for meat is mostly a human ape trait.
  
  Some say that there is a larger role of culture and parents in the formation of the brain. However, hormonal effects on the brains suggest that a good deal of this behavior is naturally hardwired into males and females. Culture may enhance the formation of these skills but probably did not create it.
  
  When you are dating or in a relationship you have to understand that your partner is different from you.
  
  Many women try to change their man, making him more like a woman. They want him to communicate more fully, with more emotion etc. But a man simply doesn’t have the connections with the ‘amygdala’ of the brain, which women do. So emotional expression of the type women enjoy and are well developed in is not something that comes naturally to a man. It can be developed in time with the interest of the man involved. But if your focus is to change him you are leading yourself down a relationship you will hate in the long run.
  
  On the other side, men can’t understand why women want to talk ‘so much’ (It’s their communication centers of their brains). Or why women demand constant attention. (i.e if a man seeks to reach the ‘top of the pack’ a woman wants to be the center of attention of the pack)
  
  A little girl will perceive her parent not looking at her when she is talking as someone who is not ‘listening’ to her. Noticing facial expression and keeping eye-contact is very important to a woman. It shows you are listing and validates her value to you. If you are watching TV and she complains you are not listening, this is exactly what it means. A woman expects your body language to be directed to her to show you are paying attention. This is what she would do so it is what she expects you (her man) to do as well. She sees talking as an important social bonding experience and she will feel that her man must communicate with her as she does with her girl friends. A man simply doesn’t have the size of communication centers in the brain as women do. It’s simply not something they are naturally inclined towards.
  
  A little boy will rush off to explore and jump onto a jungle Jim to go down the slide… while a little girl will look to her parent for approval. This is not because a girl is more insecure, it’s because she is seeking social approval (in this case from her mothers facial expression that this is OK).
  
  So in dating a guy will often be willing to rush in while a girl will want to follow a certain convention. This convention is set by culture of larger society OR her little social network of friends. (and depending on the nature of the individuals she hangs out with the girl may be in good social group or a controlling one - whatever they are she will more often than not listen to them over her own thoughts and feelings). A girls friends are a big factor in how a girl with deal with a man. So sometimes simply knowing what her social group is like will give you an idea of what kinda girl she is, or desires to be.
  
  A woman always wants to be the center of attention and that will be one of the main activities she engages in. So if she is not already the center of her social circle, her actions and words will be measured to hopefully attain that position. Since her goal is to be the center of attention (on some level), her social groups conception of dating, relationships and sex is what she will perceive as the norm (no matter how abnormal they may be to the rest of culture and society). If she is in a group that has no respect for each other and give each other bad advice, then it is best for a man to move on as she is unlikely to change. To a woman her group of friends are almost always right. Her communication centers creates a strong bond within her little group. If her group has low self esteem and lack of self respect, she will overlook these qualities so she can fit in and hopefully become the center.
  
  Of course, in some groups becoming the center of attention is where you lose the most of your integrity. In seeking to be liked by her friends a girl will often do everything she was brought up to dislike or see as wrong. Why? If her friends do it then it must be OK. Please keep in mind that this is a general overview and doesn't apply to all women all the time. But her social groups are extremely important to a woman. A secure, confident woman will more likely find a group of friends that help her grow. A woman who is insecure will generally find the opposite.
  
  A man is more solitary and is more likely to break away from the group mind than a woman is. For women whose life seems to be going no-where...beware of your friends! it may be them who are holding you back from living life in a way that will make you happy. My recommendation? Meditation and Hypnosis to find your center and build your confidence from your very core.
  
  Men are seen as the more aggressive of the two. Often they are seen as the only aggressive sex. That is a misconception. Both male and female have aggressive circuits in their brains but apply it differently. Women focus on verbal consensus to get their way – maybe using the phrase, ‘you are being selfish’ rather than a physical punch. A male will seek to physically dominate as his sex and aggression centers are larger. It is conceivable that is women were “in charge” they would create a social structure of verbal and psychological manipulation as opposed to outright physical force. In today’s age, more civilized times (for some people, in some segments of society) men use the art of persuasion to attain political of business power. This is a page right from a woman’s book. In fact, it is no coincidence that women have become more politically active – the times allow their specific skills to be used to gain power. The age of physical domination (6000bc to 2000ad ?) seems to be coming to an end. Before this, of course, was thousands of years or more, of the reign of matriarchal societies. These cultures didn’t have writing so little records of them exist. (more on that later).
  
  One of the most important skills a man needs to develop for success in dating (and women in general) is this: Learn All You Can About Body Language. Women are masters at body language, facial expression, emotional tone of voice…this is what they are naturally hardwired to be able to do. To be able to keep up with women a man should learn about voice tonality, reading expressions and what body language movements mean.
  
  Most of all, men and women have to STOP expecting the other to behave like them. A woman will talk a lot. A guy will often ignore it. A woman will want a great deal of romance. A man will want a great deal of sex. These are the natural inclinations of men and women. To try and change your mate is to try and change their very brain structures of what makes them men and women. You can acquire new skills and your brain will ‘grow’ to help you accomplish your goals. But you can’t change its basic functions.
  
  Even if a woman beats a man at spatial games or a man beats a woman in social effectiveness, the parts of the brain being used for the same or similar functions are different. So even when one sex is as good or better than the opposite sex at something that is their domain, different aspects of their brains will utilized to do these same tasks. Brain scanning done of males and females doing IQ tests, for example, have shown that even with similar scores on the same tests, girls use different areas of their brains to solves the same problems.
  
  So men and women will always be different even with similar skill sets. Respect this difference, enjoy this difference and you can always develop healthy relationships and/or be successful at dating.
  
  
  Selected Bibliography:
  
  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032301-1,00.html
  
  http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/070411/x041127A.html
  
  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/Story?id=2274147&page=1
  
  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00018E9D-879D-1D06-8E49809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=9
  
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070413212142.htm
  
  
  

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