What Could He Really Be Thinking
about Feelings and Emotions?
by
Michael Gurian
©2006
These extracts from "What Could He Be Thinking?"
by Dr Michael Gurian give a glimpse of the fascinating gender
differences in mental functioning discussed in his book.
The couple, in their thirties, walked
into my office together. Henry was a large man in a white shirt,
tie, and black slacks. Judith was a small woman in a tank top and
jeans. They had been married for eight years. He had a daughter from
a previous marriage, who was twelve, and they had a son together,
age six. They were both lawyers. Judith had told me on the phone
that they needed marital counseling. They were arguing so much their
marriage was in trouble. They'd be coming in during her vacation
time, she said. He hadn't wanted to take a vacation this year. Their
previous therapist had told him he needed to get better at
expressing his real feelings. He had disliked this therapist, and so
now they were coming to see me.
Within three months of marital
therapy, the commonality of the pain was established, and Judith and
Henry were ready to move into their profound differences as men and
women, which showed up nowhere better than in the different visions
Judith and Henry had of how feelings worked or did not work in the
marriage.
Over the course of a number of
sessions, we learned:
- Judith trusted feelings; Henry trusted reason
and facts.
- Judith put her feelings at the top of her
list of "things I can't do without." Henry did not.
- Henry wanted the processing of feelings to
end quicker than Judith did.
- Henry felt things by doing things; he didn't
spend much time discussing his feelings. He did like to talk
about what he did. Judith discussed her feelings frequently.
- Judith spent a lot of time talking about the
feelings and emotions of her friends, children, husband, and
others. Henry did not.
- Judith experienced herself as someone who did
not withhold feelings. Henry experienced her as someone who
talked about lots of feelings but withheld her feelings of love
for him.
- Henry experienced himself as someone who was
honest about the love he felt toward her and the children;
Judith experienced him as someone who withheld his love and was,
therefore, dishonest.
- Henry wanted Judith to show her feelings more
in what she did (actions), like having more sex with him, trying
different sexual acts, and caring better for their home; Judith
wanted Henry to tell her how he loved her and show her, more
frequently and more clearly, with flowers, vacations, and other
romantic gestures.
With hard work, Henry and Judith saw
themselves and their relationship more clearly. They identified
specific issues of marital rage and despair. They understood their
similar pain but dissimilar emotional methods. Throughout this
process, they came to understand just how differently their brains
and bodies approached the very experience that united them, the
experience of being a human being who feels love and the passion for
life, family, and mate. Human nature, which was, in a sense,
breaking them apart, became the key to putting the marriage back
together. The last few months of their therapy were spent in
restructuring the marital relationship to accommodate the difference
between the biology of female emotion and the biology of male
emotion.
When I saw Henry and Judith at a
workshop two years later, they were still together. Judith said to
me, "I'll never look at any man the same way I did before I came to
see you. Henry and I are doing fine. We still have some bad days,
but we love each other for who we are." I gave her a hug.
Henry shook my hand and said, "Thanks
for helping out when you did." I said, "You bet," and then we all
turned away, back to our lives.
A Bottom Line: Women Trust Feelings
More Than Men
Given the different brain structures
of men and women, it will come as no surprise that men inherently
distrust feelings, and women inherently trust them. Certainly this
is a generalization, yet your personal experience has probably
confirmed it.
If you think of the men in your life,
you'll probably notice that the majority of them don't tend to think
of their own feelings as the final comment on an experience. Men
don't tend to think it possible that just "feeling" the experience
is actually enough. Feelings are often seen by men as something
other people experience.
A man and a woman try to decide what
movie to go to. Which movie does he tend to choose? The action
movie, the one that will lead to less feeling. She tends toward the
emotional drama or love story - the movie that will lead to more
feeling.
Another example might be the activity
of buying a house. The woman is more likely to trust the feelings
she gets when she walks into its closets, touches its drapes, stands
silently in its kitchen, waiting for invisible signals to touch her
emotions. The man is more likely to wonder over the price and to
stand waiting for his performance imperative to be satisfied - such
as the moment of negotiation with the realtor or contractor. He is
more likely to see the buying of the house as part of his life's
journey; she is more likely to see it as part of her heart's
journey.
This is not to negate that a part of
a man will wait silently to feel good in the house, nor that a part
of a woman wants to negotiate and perform; it is simply to
demonstrate what we've experienced in our own daily lives: A woman
inherently trusts the very experience of feeling that a man
inherently distrusts. Feelings aren't very logical, and he needs
logic. Logic isn't very emotional, but her brain, her heart, her
senses awaken in ways his do not.
A phrase proffered by a psychologist
on talk shows became popular for a time after the Columbine school
shooting: "If boys don't cry tears, they'll cry bullets." It was
reflective of the popular tendency to believe that boys become
violent because they are taught to repress their feelings -
especially their tears. This kind of thinking has affected
marriages, too. A woman in my therapy practice put it simply: "I
think if my husband cried more, our marriage would be better."
Similarly, it is popular to say that marriages fail because men have
learned, through an oppressive culture, to repress not only their
tears but their discussion of feelings. Our popular culture seems to
say, without tears and feeling talk, a man can't love a woman
adequately.
From a neurobiological standpoint,
the idea that "if boys don't cry tears, they'll cry bullets" is
well-meaning but not scientific proof. In fact, one can just as well
prove that the fewer tears boys shed, the more peaceful the
neighborhood or community will be. In Japan, for instance, boys are
raised to repress tears and to repress feeling talk. It is
considered "shame" for a male to cry, and there is far less
emotional conversation between mothers and sons and husbands and
wives than in the United States. Yet Japan has one of the lowest
violence rates in the world - exponentially lower than the violence
rate among males in the United States.
Practicing Intimate Separateness:
Finding Power in the Nature of Emotional Life
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman poet,
said, "Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they
should be. Become one yourself."
Both women and men can practice this
as they decide to enjoy the nature of emotional life, especially the
biological trends that tend to make men act in love relationships in
ways women don't.
Encouraging a man to expand his
expression of feeling is worthwhile, but for women who are called,
by life and intimate relationship, to enjoy the male brain, there is
an even greater opportunity to become a great soul by adapting
oneself to a relationship with a man (especially a higher
testosterone, more masculinized male). This journey can seem lonely
for a woman because her partner may actually not be equipped to
satisfy her emotionally. It may also be lonely if she does not let
go of the belief that it is his job to do so. If she buys into the
idea that he must make her emotionally whole and healthy, she gives
him ultimate power over her emotional life; she tacitly buys into
the idea that he, her "soul mate," is her only true mirror. This is
a lonely journey if a woman has brought to her relationships
significant issues regarding her own father. It will be hard for her
to see beyond her emotional demands on her husband if her father did
not provide her with emotional warmth during girlhood.
If a man - a boyfriend, a husband, a
"soul mate" - is, by personality and character, incapable of loyalty
and fidelity, then a woman has less control over the outcome of her
relationship than I am hinting here. To become a "great soul" in
relationship to this kind of man, she will require an almost saintly
spiritual journey through life. People may even say to her, "To stay
with him, you must be a saint." And if the man is abusive to her,
becoming a great soul may well mean leaving him.
But given that most men are, by
nature, good and healthy for women (something women clearly intuit
in their longings for male love), a woman's journey is the least
lonely the more greatly she understands it. The woman who
understands how the male brain processes emotions will be able to
decrease her unreasonable idealization of her husband's emotions and
her desire for his emotional structure to match hers. Intuitively,
she might find herself utilizing these practical strategies:
