Have you and your girlfriends ever mused together about how “the male brain” only processes information about sports, sex and food? Or maybe you’ve heard comedians joke about how “women’s brains” have endless room for remembering men’s slip-ups so they can throw them back in their faces someday?
While the idea of brain differences between men and women has found its way into pop culture wisdom, it has actually long been an area of controversy among researchers.
A study released late 2015 casts new doubt on whether brains can be male or female.
The researchers looked at the MRI exams of more than 1,400 men and women. Based on what they found, they concluded that “human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.”
There are indeed gender differences in brains and behaviors, according to the study, but most of our brains are “comprised of unique ‘mosaics’ of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males.” Brains with characteristics that are purely “male” or “female” are rare.
The new research supports what I argued in my book Strong Women, Strong Love. In the book, I explained that, yes, there are some common ways that men behave and that women behave, but those aren’t the only ways. Research shows that there are more differences within groups of men and within groups of women than between the sexes. In other words, you can’t say that all men or all women do a certain thing. The behaviors you might blame on your husband’s “male brain” are more likely due to the messages he received growing up about what it means to be a man.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember, though, is that whether a person’s behavior is caused by a brain characteristic or what he or she learned from others, it’s always possible to learn new ways of being. After all, recent brain research has also demonstrated the power of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change in response to our experience.
How would you rate your own brain? Does it seem more female, more male or — as the researchers described most of the brains they studied — more of a “mash-up”? Share your thoughts in comments or on my social media channels.
Whatever is on your holiday gift list for your husband, there’s really just one thing that he desperately wants from you.
It’s not for you to lose weight, to cook more meals at home or to surprise him with some “mind-blowing” sex tip from a magazine.
What he wants from you is admiration. He wants to look in your eyes and believe that he is important, special, and necessary in your life. That’s it.
Men have a deep need to be needed, to feel like they are doing their job as your partner. While some couples are letting go of the assumption that the husband should be the primary breadwinner, boys are still raised to take care of people, to be confident, to be “the strong one.”
They get these messages from an early age. And what they come away with is the belief that their worth depends on being of some value in your life.
It might help you understand where your husband is coming from if you consider what women are taught about the importance of our physical appearance. Even if our parents didn’t raise us to believe we “have to” be pretty, even if we live our lives based on very different values and priorities, expectations about women and beauty are so pervasive in our culture that it’s difficult not to be affected by them to some degree. Being told we’re ugly can hurt in a way that other insults do not.
That’s how men feel about being useless.
‘Why Should I Stroke His Ego?’
Some of you might be thinking things like this:
“Why do I have to prop him up?”
“So now I have to flatter him all the time?”
“It’s not my job to give him self-esteem!”
Let’s be clear. It is your job to boost him — and it’s his job to boost you. You both signed on to care for each other emotionally. Expressing sincere admiration is part of that. We all have the need to feel valued and appreciated. Sometimes we overlook the fact that men have this need too because there’s still the societal expectation that men are supposed to be self-sufficient.
The keyword here is sincere admiration. We’re not talking about flattery, fawning and fake enthusiasm. But your marriage will be better when you make an effort to notice your husband’s contributions and to praise them.
Whether or not you realize it, research shows that for many husbands, their wife is the main source of emotional support in their lives. How you look at your husband has a huge impact on how he feels about himself.
When he feels valued in your eyes, he’ll feel good about himself and much closer to you. That can lead him to give you some of the things you’ve been needing emotionally too.
The Most Vulnerable Times
It’s especially important to understand your husband’s need to feel useful and admired by you when he’s going through a circumstance that could make him feel useless and not very admirable.
For example, a job loss or layoff is painful for anyone, but can be especially difficult for men. If you respond by panicking and “managing” his job search, you could be magnifying his shame and guilt. On the other hand, reminding him of the special value he has to you and expressing confidence in his abilities, regardless of his paycheck, can help him come through the crisis more quickly.
A Holiday Wish
Think of some of the ways your husband makes the holiday season a little brighter for you. Is he always patient with your talkative dad during your family gatherings? Does he go out of his way to create special moments for the kids? Does he give you gifts that melt your heart? Let him know how much it all means to you.
You’ll find many more insights that will help you understand your husband and deepen your relationship with him in my book Strong Women, Strong Love.
I wish you both much joy and closeness this holiday season and into the coming year!
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.~Anaïs Nin
We’re entering a busy time of year. But amid everything on your holiday season to-do list, don’t forget to give your marriage attention, too.
Neglect is an easy pattern for spouses to fall into — all the while assuming that things are OK in their marriage because they’re not outwardly fighting.
To some extent, it’s normal to give your relationship less attention over time as the two of you grow comfortable and secure with each other.
But your marriage will suffer if you starve it of time and attention for too long.
Perhaps it’s not very romantic, but we can compare marriage to other things that take ongoing maintenance, like caring for you car, your appearance or your garden. You can get away with putting off an oil change, a haircut or weeding for a while, but eventually that deferred maintenance takes its toll.
And there’s another similarity between marriage maintenance and the other routine maintenance tasks we perform. It doesn’t have to take long. We’re not talking a fancy dinner every week or romantic vacations every season.
In fact, it’s essential that your marriage maintenance fit into your lives. As busy as we all are, anything that seems like too much work is a hard sell.
So how do you make marriage maintenance an easy habit and avoid neglecting your relationship? Here are a few tips to help keep your love strong:
Take some time for just the two of you. Even a little bit helps.
Look for the positives. When things get hectic — as they often do this time of year — we tend to focus on what needs doing, not what was done right. Make a conscious effort to notice your husband’s contributions.
Examine your interactions. Your relationship happens in all your little daily moments together. Do they make you feel better about each other — or worse? Remember the common courtesies, like saying goodbye to each other when you leave in the morning.
Go beyond small talk. Even if the two of you don’t have much time for conversation, you can still take things a little deeper than “How was your day?” “Fine.” When you do have an opportunity to talk in more depth, you may want to try the 36 questions I wrote about in earlier blog. Research shows they build intimacy.
Don’t forget special occasions. Do you overlook the milestones you made a big deal out of back in the early days of your relationship?
Stop and check in. Do you know what’s important in your husband’s life right now? Life throws a lot at us sometimes, and when it does, you might fall back on assumptions about what’s going on with your partner. Remember to stop and ask each other how you’re doing, what your main concerns are and whether you’re both still moving toward your dreams and goals. Disconnects happen between partners. Maybe, for example, one of you feels that life hasn’t changed that much since you had a baby, but the other feels discombobulated. The important thing is to catch these disconnects early before the two of you drift too far apart.
Make it a regular part of your day. When marriage maintenance is just part of your routine, it feels less like “work.”
A little daily maintenance can make your marriage dramatically better. You can find many more ideas for strengthening your relationship even when you’re both busy and stressed in my book Strong Women, Strong Love.
#LetGo. Do you feel intense pressure to be perfect in every area of your life? The perfect wife. The perfect mom. The perfect boss. Here’s some powerful advice from some wise, older women about dealing with the social and professional pressures of modern life. Take a moment to watch. You won’t be sorry.
If housework is a sore spot in your marriage, you’re far from alone.
According to one poll, dividing up household chores was outranked only by fidelity and good sex on a list of issues associated with a successful marriage. How you and your husband share, or fail to share, housework can have a big effect on your marriage.
To be sure, men are picking up a greater share of chores than they did in the past, but studies show that women still do more housework than their husbands. And that’s true even when wives work as many hours outside the home as their husbands do — or even more.
Wives, as you’ve probably guessed, aren’t too thrilled about that. When household chores aren’t divided equitably, women are less happy in their marriages. (Husbands, though, aren’t affected the same way.)
But housework doesn’t have to be such a source of tension. Read on for some ideas to stop the squabbling — and make sure the dishwasher still gets loaded.
Why Isn’t He Taking Care of Tasks that Clearly Need Doing?
Picture this: You get home from work one evening a little later than your husband does. He’s relaxing and watching television — even though you see as soon as you arrive that the kids have left the living room a mess, a pile of mail on the counter needs sorting, and a basket of clothes is still not folded.
What do you think about your husband when you notice all of the tasks he hasn’t done?
Women often default to assuming the reason their husband is ignoring housework is because he’s lazy or uncaring. This is partly due to a mental bias all people have called the fundamental attribution error: When we’re explaining someone else’s actions, we automatically assume their behavior is caused by their internal qualities (like their personality or character), rather than circumstances. Think of the last time someone cut you off while you were driving. Did you assume they made a mistake, and forgive them? Or did you decide that they’re just a lousy human being, and curse at them? (Be honest!)
The problem is that when you believe the worst about a person, it’s easy for blame or resentment to follow. So, before you leap to a conclusion, consider other reasons why your husband hasn’t folded the laundry yet:
1. He can’t see it. If your husband doesn’t take care of chores on his own, but does them cheerfully when you ask, it’s possible he just doesn’t see the mess as clearly as you do. Research shows that people have different thresholds for noticing when something needs to be done around the house. If you’re the one who has a harder time tolerating clutter, you’ll also typically be the first to notice it and take care of it.
To make sure you don’t get stuck with all the housework just because you’re the more orderly one, resist the impulse to take on new chores, and let go of tasks you wouldn’t mind your husband handling. Trust that he’ll do a good job, even if results aren’t up to your standards at first. As they say, practice makes perfect!
2. He doesn’t know how. Some men have never had to the chance to learn domestic tasks like cooking or cleaning, but wouldn’t mind picking up these skills. If you’re a pro in these areas, you’ll have to be patient and resist the temptation to micromanage while your husband expands his capabilities. No need to check on his progress or inspect his work. Only give him help if he asks for it, remembering that struggle is a natural part of the process of learning something new.
3. He’s busy. Perhaps your husband has his hands full with other ways of contributing to your family like working overtime, doing repairs around the house, servicing the car, coaching Little League, and so on. He may even be planning to load the dishwasher, but has other priorities he needs to take care of first.
No, he didn’t fold the laundry, but he definitely does his part. You just have to make sure you notice, and give him credit for his contribution to the household.
4. He’s a traditional guy. Men’s and women’s roles have gone through some huge changes in the last few decades. If your husband holds more traditional views on roles in a marriage, he’s less likely to consider housework his job. He may not help you with tasks around the house, unless you ask him, because he sees this space as your “turf.”
There is nothing wrong with a more traditional division of responsibilities in your marriage, as long as both of you agree. But if this way of splitting up chores doesn’t work for you, the two of you should definitely come up with a different plan.
5. There is a deeper problem in your marriage. Sometimes unresolved emotional tension is the reason you are not working well as a team. If your husband is upset, he could be checked out from the relationship and feeling unmotivated to be a true partner. That explains why he’s just fine letting you carry the extra burden of housework.
Until the two of you address what’s really going on, your housework woes are likely to continue. You have to look beyond the surface and be honest about the emotional connection between you. If you don’t know how to do this on your own, consider seeking the help of a professional to get you unstuck.
So, these are a few possibilities why you’re not getting the help you need, but certainly not the only ones. Did your husband have a lousy day at the office? Is he feeling ill? Is he stressed out and needing a break? Who knows! Yes, it is possible he is being lazy or doesn’t care about you, but the point is that you should not assume this without checking out other possibilities first. Instead of reading his mind, open your own mind, and see what you can find out.
Stop Resenting, Start Asking
The most effective way to decrease resentment about housework is to let your husband know the problem (you feel overburdened), and ask directly for him to do specific tasks. Then give him a chance to step up. Be sure to notice and appreciate other ways he is already sharing household responsibilities.
I can hear what you’re saying: I shouldn’t have to ask! I already do so much. Why do I have to tell him what needs to be done? And why on earth would I thank him if he never thanks me for what I do!
I get the frustration that you’re feeling. But keep in mind that you are two unique people who came into the marriage with different life experiences, priorities, and skills. It’s unrealistic to expect you to coordinate your complicated lives without clear, direct and respectful communication.
This week, resolve to stop simmering with resentment and to start asking for what you need. If you keep that up, you may end up with a much lower stress level — and a cleaner house!
You can find lots more advice about protecting your marriage amid the demands of daily life in my book Strong Women, Strong Love.
Have you noticed the kind of pressure new parents face these days? Magazines, advertising, blogs and even friends’ social media pages abound with images of blissful couples and their infants in picture-perfect nurseries. Both parents look enraptured with their new baby and each other, making it all seem so easy.
That sets up some unrealistic expectations about the transition to parenthood. Now don’t get me wrong: Adding a child to your family is a time of great joy and can deepen the bond you have with your partner. But it can also be a time of great stress, messiness and strain on your marriage. We know from the research that marital satisfaction often takes the biggest nosedive after the addition of the first child.
Becoming parents means changes in practically every area of your life. And for most people, change equals stress. You may go on leave from your familiar world at your job. You can’t just dash out for an errand or meetup with friends so easily anymore. Going for a quick walk or even getting a hair cut can be hard to do when you’re responsible for a little one 24/7. All that can leave you feeling isolated and trapped.
The stress doesn’t stop there. Kids can also strain our wallets (hospital or adoption bills, daycare and on and on …) and our schedules. There’s simply less time for everything else, from work to self-care (especially sleep!) to couple time to housework.
And speaking of housework: Not only do you have less time to do it, you have more to do when you add a child to the family. Keeping up with it can seem overwhelming. And if your husband doesn’t have the same threshold for noticing that things need to be done, you could find yourself in a pattern where you complain and accuse and he gets defensive.
If the upcoming Mother’s Day is your first as a mom or expectant mom, I want to give you some down-to-earth advice that will help you navigate the transition to parenthood while also caring for your marriage.
Tips for New (or Soon-to-be) Parents
If you don’t have kids yet, build up goodwill. Use this time to practice being the best partner you can be. Be especially thoughtful, appreciative, and kind. Have fun together, and build up good memories. Perhaps go off on a spontaneous trip, or try something new together. Take advantage of the time you have to hang out with dear friends and loved ones. Strengthening your bond now will pay off in those intense early days of parenthood.
Get the stress level down! If you have the financial or family resources, get some outside help, such as housekeeping, meal delivery, or child care. Children are very physically dependent for the first few years and need constant supervision. This can be absolutely exhausting! Hand the baby off to your spouse or someone else for a while, and take a break. Otherwise, you’ll be likely to get upset with your husband just because you’re stressed.
Prioritize sleep and rest. Try to go to bed early, shift your schedule, or nap when the baby does to minimize fatigue. Taking turns being the one responsible for the baby at night can give each of you the unbroken sleep you need to refuel. Some people benefit from having a relative help out or hiring a night nanny for a while.
Work together. If your goal is to fully share in parenthood with your husband, be very intentional about giving him time and space to also bond and take care of the baby. Believe that both you can be equally competent as parents, and don’t make the mistake of micromanaging your spouse. Each one of you will have you own unique way of caring for baby. So, play to each of your strengths and divide responsibilities in a way that lifts the stress off both of you.
Be polite and respectful. Remember the basic gestures that show respect and acknowledge each other’s humanity, like greeting each other warmly or saying “please” and “thank you.” Little things like this go a long way toward maintaining respect in your marriage, and, as I’ve written before, mutual respect can sustain your relationship until you have time to rekindle romance and passion.
Love your baby, but keep your bond alive too. The parent-child bond can be very intense, and that’s a good thing. But it’s important to remember that you need to spend time together as a couple, not just as parents. Don’t lose yourself to motherhood. When you have a newborn, time may be limited to a short conversation with your husband or cuddling together while you’re exhausted. Brief moments of connection can be good enough during the very busy first few weeks of parenthood, but make sure you work toward reengaging each other more deeply and regularly over the long run.
And check out this wonderful, down-to-earth advice from seasoned parents:
If you’re about to begin, or just beginning, the journey of parenthood, realize that change and stress are inevitable, but that a weakening of your marriage is not. You’ll find more advice about keeping a thriving relationship even as you balance family, work and other demands in my book Strong Women, Strong Love.
