Why Men and Women Can't Communicate & What To Do About it
I will never forget when my husband was explaining to me how the car engine works. He was looking at me from the driver’s seat smiling. I was smiling back, I was excited to be communicating with my man on his turf and to understand something he knows so much about.
My excitement slowly shifted as I sat there…
I saw his mouth move and I knew he was speaking but I could not understand a single thing he was telling me.
It was like a fundamental framework in my head was missing making my brain unable to grab the words and translate them into anything I could relate to or understand.
I can best describe it as trying to put something squared into something round. The words or concepts just didn’t fit inside my head.
Then it hit me…..
“that’s how he feels when I talk about my emotions!”
Why it's so hard to communicate & emotions make it completely impossible
- We can’t SEE what is on another person’s mind
- Our brain can’t distinguish from new and old emotions
- A man and woman in a love relationship are the least likely to understand each other
First of all, each mind has a distinct perception of reality. Secondly, we have a lifetime of unique experiences, and feelings associated with the words and concepts the other person is saying.
As we grow older we live longer and longer in our own reality. One where everybody else is wrong and we are right. Men and women who love each other have an additional challenge. Love taps right into our childhood wounds. Emotions and memories of emotions are stored in the same brain.
When you feel love, safety, hurt, or anger towards your spouse it is actually memories of love, safety, hurt, or anger that they trigger from your memory. We don’t know which are new and which are old. When the brain stores new information it puts it together with old and when it is recalled it is per definition distorted because it is mixed with our childhood memories.
When we meet true love we feel we have something to lose for the first time in our lives and as a result survival instinct and or self-sabotage kicks in.
Why WORDS don't work and Reality Doesn’t exist
- Everything is hormones and habits
- There is no “logic” understanding is a feeling
- It is not what you say that matters but how you feel when you say it
Reality doesn't exist, only different emotions we either try to avoid or get more off, to get temporary relief from an underlying pain. Different things trigger different emotions in different brains. Emotions are impulses (short term) they may or may not develop into feelings that are more long term. We can choose if our emotions turn into feelings. What we choose to tell ourselves determines if our emotions develop into feelings. We experience that our feelings control our thoughts but it is our emotions.
Thoughts become stories we tell ourselves, i.e. “He is so slow” or “he is lazy” this then becomes our beliefs. And bum you have your very own reality that you created.
We all have different associations popping up in our mind and we use different labels. Some words and concepts trigger us without us even knowing why. On a brain scan, basic emotions such as fear, lust, etc are measurable and while we can measure when people have these standardized emotions we all have different memories attached to these emotions. And as a result, we feel or respond differently to the emotions (the impulse).
Our feelings and our perceived reality and our reaction to this “reality” are controlled 100 % by hormones in our brain triggering habits many of which are based on instincts.
“If everything we perceive is based on our emotions it is no big surprise that “words” themselves hardly can describe the complexity of our reality.”
Even if we deduct feelings from the equation and look at a “neutral understanding” of words, we will never know for sure if the person we are talking to has the same association with the words and concepts we are describing.
The word “love” “marriage” “freedom” definitely means something different to each person on the planet. It means something different to men and to women and to married and unmarried people. And to young and old people.
When I say “capitalism” in Denmark, people react with a lot of emotions and opinions completely opposite to my understanding of the word. If I say “socialism” in the US many people will react equally as emotional. Socialism means something completely different to many Americans than it does to the Danes I grew up with.
This example illustrates that there is NO logic, no real “meaning”, only emotions and beliefs which themselves can vary from moment to moment.
Thus understanding is a temporary feeling of connection.
In a relationship when we are led by our emotions every word can become as charged and misunderstood as the words “Capitalism” and “Socialism”.
Because of our underlying insecurity which for everyone I know is a variation of:
“am I worthy of love?”.
In my experience, the underlying insecurity in women is “Does he really love me?”
And in men, it is, “Am I really good enough for her?”
Our subconscious beliefs about ourselves become the reality we see. I know this fact but I am still led by my insecurity 99 % of the time because I have no control over my subconscious mind.
We have 124 MBs of information bombarding our brain and we filter that down to 134 thousand through deduction distortion and generalization. Of this, we conclude 7 main messages. That filtering system is our belief which we have picked up when our mind was wide open until the age of 7.
Reality is merely evidence we choose to pick up and look at. It’s been proven in sociology by Dr. Schiller that we have to see evidence that contradicts our beliefs 10 times in order to register it one time compared to evidence that confirms our existing belief.
There is no logic in a relationship or anywhere else.
It is not “logic” that I love my husband so much and hate him to death other times. Except that in that moment of my insecurity I was sure he was deliberately trying to hurt me and for that my reptile brain wants revenge: “You hurt me and I hate you!”
Like everything else “understanding” is a feeling. In a brief moment, we feel connected to the other person. In a love relationship, this happens when we are connected to our higher self not led by insecurity, and not in a state of finding evidence that he doesn't love us.
Feeling a Sense of Understanding
When a man talks to another man it may be easier for him to feel understood than when he talks to a woman. Men's brains are wired the same and they may have the same cultural background.
On the other hand, a woman should be able to make a man feel heard and understood if she chooses to, because the language, speech and empathy parts of her brain have more blood flow (generally). But her capacity to do so depends on her capacity to manage her emotions which again generally is harder for her because the emotional part of her brain has more blood flow. A woman’s advanced listening and empathy skills flies out the window when she is managed by her emotions.
The feeling of understanding arises in a “meeting of the minds” our ability to let go of our specific place in our mind. Letting go of our picture in our mind gives room for the other person to feel met in their mind.
We don’t really meet the other person in their mind as much as we just let go of our own.
People with the same background and environment will easily feel a meeting of the mind when they talk about certain things they agree on or seem to agree on.
This feeling of agreement comes not from the words exchanges as much as from the emotions and assumptions of similarity. It comes from our expectations and beliefs, and finding evidence of this belief: he gets me!
He looks, acts, and reacts like me, he works in the same area as me, thus must feel or mean the same as me.
In communication, we never really get to where the other person is in their mind. The other person feels understood because we wait long enough before we try to convey what is on our mind.
By merrily waiting long enough for the other person to describe everything on their mind your wife will feel understood. The only problem is she will go on and on and on… that is where kissing comes in it is the best way to communicate.
Fare less risk.
The biggest misconception in a relationship is to think that a man can understand a woman and that woman can understand a man. It’s never going to happen! So stop trying. Stop using words. You can't resolve an emotional issue with a logical solution.
Forget about it...
You can achieve a sense of “understanding” but never when you are desperately trying to.
The step by step process to Make Love, Not War in a relationship the "what to do about it" will be shared shortly. Also some interesting facts about the difference in the male and female brain.
Please leave a comment and let me know if you had any take-aways from this article so far.
I can't wait to share the rest...