Cognitive behavior of men and women in relationships
It has been few years since you have married the love of your life, and are spending quite an enjoyable life with her. You might have a child or two and consider your life is complete. But one fine day, your wife somehow bursts out about how unhappy she is with you and she wants to move out. You go into a state of shock, and are unable to figure out what went wrong and where.
It’s hard to understand, but you try to see what caused this break in the relationship. You always thought your relationship was ideal and you cannot digest the fact that your wife was not happy with you.
Considering this as your point of view, your wife might not agree to that. She might say “I have been giving indications and ‘signals’ to you,” but you never seem to be interested in realizing her emotional needs due to your “carefree” nature. You are confused as to what these signals are or were.
John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus explains in detail about the different mindset and thought process of males and females. While males continue their life in an ongoing trance, women take the little things of life more seriously. Women think about things in a different way as compared to men and therefore perceive the same situations in a completely different manner. For her, it would matter if you don’t have a smile on your face and say ‘goodbye’ to her as she is leaving for work, or when you don’t receive her with a happy smile. Similarly, it might make her sad for days that you were not paying attention to her while she was telling you how her day was.
This does not necessarily mean that men deliberately try to hurt their women and make them sad. Most of the time it, happens involuntarily because of their nature – that is, men are more focused on the objective matters of life and less oriented towards the realization of feeling, emotions and thoughts to the extent that women are. Due to this they are mostly misunderstood by women as ‘careless,’ ‘carefree,’ ‘inconsiderate,’ ‘rude,’ or even ‘harsh.’
When men are faced by a problem, they will try to solve it by themselves. In certain cases where they discuss the problem with someone, they will be looking for a concrete solution. When women discuss their problems, they are doing it solely for the discussion.
Yes, you read that right.
Women are not actually looking for the solution. They just want to have some sort of support so they can share their burden with someone and feel lighter. This is exactly why when women discuss problems with men, men provide them with solutions but women may seem irritated on the proposed solutions because they were not actually looking for one. They were looking for someone to be a good listener and support system.
Similarly, since women notice each and every small thing in the man’s behavior, they expect that men are doing the same. However, this is not the case. Men do not have the sense of detail to an extent a woman has. A woman will think for days on trifling matters that men forget in a matter of hours.
In order to maintain a healthy and successful relationship, both men and women have to understand their mutual differences and respect each other for them.
Any relationship cannot be 100% perfect. Everyone has his or her own flaws and every person brings their best qualities and flaws into the relationship. The key to a successful relationship is nothing but to realize the differences and respect them – not to waste your energies into changing the other person according to the patterns set by your mind.
It is important to understand that men’s brains and women’s brains work differently, so maybe what seems like a “signal” for a woman will not be anything noticeable for a man. Once both partners realize the difference in cognitive behavior and start respecting them, relationships become stronger and much more enjoyable for the partners.
Written by: Maria Mir
