July 03, 2008

How many times have you heard exasperated phrases such as, “I don’t understand women!” or “Men can never be understood”? Differences, conflicts and misunderstandings have always been present. It’s human nature. Think Mars versus Venus and the battle of the sexes. As Allan and Barbara Pease, co-authors of Why Men Lie and Women Cry, put it: “We call each other the ‘opposite’ sex for a reason — we are opposite.”

“Women have a natural, protective and nurturing maternal instinct. They nurture and care for the people in their lives and their priorities are home-related,” says Hira, an art graduate. “They cherish relationships and are always giving advice or offering suggestions. That’s the way we are — we want to improve everyone and everything around us.”

“Women are homemakers,” says Mavrah, a mother of two. “We are our children’s primary caregivers. If I ever have to go out to run errands and my husband is looking after the kids, all I can think about is what may be going on at home. I know that at any moment my husband may call and say that there’s an ‘emergency’ at home which usually translates to ‘The baby has soiled his diaper and needs to be changed’.”

Men are not interested in people as much as they are interested in things and objects. They love fast cars, the latest technology and new gadgets, and they can’t understand chick flicks such as Steel Magnolias. Men’s priorities are more job-related. Men are goal-orientated and are always improving their skills and power. They also have a logical and practical approach towards everything.

Farrah Hafeez, an educationist, points out, “During discussions, men usually get straight to the point. They say what they mean, whereas women beat around the bush. They tend to get emotional or try to frame it in a way that will come across better.”

This brings across the point that women are more emotional than men. And the emotion women tend to display the most is sadness, frequently expressed through crying. It could be crying whilst watching an episode of Oprah or crying as a means of manipulating others’ emotions. Women are more likely to cry in order to emotionally blackmail others. “During the early days of marriage, I would come home from work and my wife would cry. She’d just moved to a new home in a new city and would be miserable. To make her feel better, I’d take her out in the evening for dinner or shopping. Things changed after she got a job and no longer felt totally dependent on me,” says Asim.

There are other behavioural differences. “When men get together they tend to talk about politics, sports or work. When women meet, they need to gossip. They tend to get catty, spiteful and even jealous,” says Saadia, a storeowner.

Men and sports

Why most men are sports-obsessed is beyond a woman’s comprehension. “My husband can stay up all night watching football. He will watch every single match and then watch all the replays and highlights. He knows the background of every player and always knows which team is at the top of the league’s tables. He also loves Formula One. I don’t get how anyone can watch whizzing cars monotonously going round and round in circles, without falling asleep,” says Maria. She is just one of the many women referred to as “sports widows.” Women, however, should use this time to their advantage. Whether their partner is watching sports on TV or out in the heat playing golf, women can take it as a chance to spend time with friends and family, or even go shopping.

Women and shopping

Women love to shop. They can spend hours aimlessly roaming shopping centres regardless of whether they need to buy something or not. Says Adil, “My wife has an extensive wardrobe, but still complains that she has nothing to wear.” Men on the other hand can wear the same five shirts, two pairs of pants and shoes for years on end.

“When I go shopping, I just go and get what I need,” says Nadir. “On the other hand, my wife and daughter need to go to at least seven different shops to find the ‘perfect’ shoes that will look ‘just right’ with their new outfit. Going shopping with them is sheer torture.”

According to psychologists, men find shopping stressful. As they are goal-orientated, they have a clear destination, objectives and time limits. They get what they want and go home. On the contrary, women find shopping a form of stress relief. They don’t have a specific item in mind and can wander about all day. Even if they just window shop, they come home with a sense of fulfilment.

Women and nagging

“As soon as I get home from work, all my wife seems to do is nag. She is always giving me instructions about what needs to be done around the house and what things need to be bought. It’s not as if she’ll say it once. She’ll tell me the same thing at least a dozen times. It has come to a point where I just dread going home. After a hard day’s work, I need peace and quiet and not this kind of harassment,” complains Zaeem, a government officer.

After a man gets home from work, he usually wants to unwind, channel flick and generally laze around. John Gray, in his book, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus says that men often want to recoil, spend time in their cave, and, when they are ready, will return as loving and supportive as ever. In other words, men just need time to relax and aren’t insensitive and unsupportive to the needs of others, as the nagger presumes them to be.

Women and multi-tasking

Women are multi-taskers. Men are not. A woman, whilst cooking, can watch TV, talk on the phone, tie a child’s shoelace and drink a cup of tea — all at the same time. For a man, doing the same is impossible.

According to scientific research, women have more connections between the two halves of the brain than men do, therefore making the female brain better equipped for multi–tasking. Men’s brains are compartmentalised and have up to 30 per cent less connections between hemispheres than women’s brains and hence they are mono-tracked. They can focus better when they do one thing at a time. Some women think this is a blessing; if men were capable of multi-tasking it would be a nightmare, nothing would be achieved. They would dart from one thing to the next and nothing would ever be completed.

Men don’t listen

Men have selective hearing. While listening to a woman’s chatter, they will nod at regular intervals but will be thinking about something completely different.

The importance of the 12 lemon centrepiece

“When women want new furnishings, men tend not to see what the point of it is. To them, a fancy fixture is not needed unless it is absolutely essential,” says Farrah Hafeez.

There is a scene from the Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn movie, The Break Up, which encapsulates this essence of the male/female relationship. Brooke (Aniston) is having a dinner party and asks Gary (Vaughn) to bring home lemons (which she needs to make a 12-lemon centrepiece. He brings home only three lemons and this frustrates her to the hilt. Gary can’t even comprehend the ‘importance’ of such a centrepiece. “So no one’s going to eat these lemons? You’re suggesting to me that these are just show lemons?”

Men and channel flicking

After a hard day’s work, when a man returns home, he just wants to relax in front of the TV, with a remote control in his hand and flick through all the channels endlessly. “No one, and I mean no one, can watch an entire TV show in my house if my father is holding the remote,” says Sadaf. “He’ll switch channels every couple of minutes. It drives all the family crazy, but he will continue doing it.”

Boys and their toys

Remote controlled cars and aeroplanes, video games and bigger ‘toys’ like a 42-inch plasma or a top of the range car, are examples of sources of interest for men. These things fascinate them for hours on end.

But why do boys love their toys? The spatial segment of the brain is the area used for estimating distance, speed and time. Due to the spatial layout in men’s brains, they become addicted to basically anything that has moving parts — a motor, buttons and battery operated objects.

To sum up the whole men versus women scenario, we can safely say that they communicate differently and also think, perceive and react differently to various situations. Both sexes have problems identifying and comprehending the other’s issues. Men often have no clue what women want out of them and women have no clue what men want out of them, and that’s why life is so interesting.