Monday, July 19, 2004
Crossing the Gender Line
Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different - Kate Millet
It’s a day like any other when a seemingly normal woman walks into our office, sits in a chair, and says something like, “I don’t know what I do to turn men off. Somehow I am pushing them away. Maybe I’m too demanding, or not demanding enough; I don’t know. Men are so confusing.”
And it could be that very same day in that very same chair that a seemingly normal man, unrelated to the first woman, sits down and says, “I don’t get women. I must be doing something wrong or I’d have at least a semblance of a relationship with one of them. Women are so confusing.”
We’ve seen it time and again. Each gender trying to make contact with the other side but becoming dazed and confused in the process. Like an animal which has come too close to a hot-wired electric fence, we’ve seen both men and women jump hack and retreat from the opposite sex because they didn’t want to risk the potential pain of misunderstanding or rejection. So they keep their distance.
The barrier between the sexes is built early on in life by our fear for being teased for having a “girlfriend” or “boyfriend.” Remember those days? Some researchers can’t seem to forget. A classic study of children’s friendships has found that three-year-olds say about half their friends are of the opposite sex; for five-year-olds, it’s about twenty percent, and by age seven almost no boys or girls say they have a best friend of the opposite sex. These separate social universes re-intersect only as the adolescent years approach. Is it any wonder that male-female relationships are confusing?
This chapter is dedicated to helping you—whether male or female—take some of the mystery out of relating to the opposite sex. We don’t guarantee to solve the age-old gender puzzle in just a few pages, but we do intend to give you some practical insights for equipping you in your trek across the gender line. We’ll help you explore just how different the sexes are, not only in their psychology but in their biology as well, and we will expose the “fundamental cross-gender relational error,” an error that will trip you up every time. We then take turns at revealing in detail what women need to know about men and what men need to know about women. Used correctly, you can consider this information your key to crossing the border. Before closing this chapter we do our best to answer the age ol’ question of whether or not men and women can be “just friends,” free from romantic entanglements and sexual snares.
But let’s now begin at the beginning. We start with a straightforward fact: When men and women get together there are, in effect, two worlds—his and hers. The question this raises, however, is what’s the difference?
A World of Difference
Have you ever wondered why a man can seemingly read a map blindfolded but can’t find his own socks? The reason may be found in his genetic makeup. Research is discovering that men and women actually perceive reality differently. In one university experiment, students were blindfolded while an experimenter who served as a guide walked them through a complex maze of tunnels that run beneath campus buildings. After traversing this maze, women were asked to locate a familiar college building. Nearly every woman in the experiment was uncertain and unable to locate it. Men, on the other hand, had relatively little trouble with the task. In spite of all the subterranean twists and turns, men tended to retain a firm sense of direction and with a kind of internal compass were far more likely to identify the location of the building—even after walking through the maze blindfolded. Chalk one up for the male species.
But before you put all your money on men, consider another university experiment. In this one, students were asked to wait in a small room with a cluttered desk while the experimenter “got something ready.” The students thought they were simply waiting for the experiment to begin, but this actually was the experiment. After two minutes, the student was asked to describe in detail the waiting room from memory. Men, it turns out, didn’t do well on the test, and were able to remember very little. Most men were barely able to describe much of the room in clear and accurate detail. They often missed major objects located on a desk right in front of them. Women, on the other hand, could go on and on with precise descriptions of the rooms contents. In fact, women proved seventy percent better than men at recalling complex patterns formed by apparently random and unconnected items. One point for the women’s side; but who’s keeping score? (Actually, the men are probably keeping score, but we’ll get to that later.)
In these experiments and dozens of others like them, men and women consistently perform at different levels—sometimes men outperform women and sometimes vice versa. Which is all to say that scientists are suddenly fast at work trying to account for the differences, and what they’re finding may surprise you.
Why are researchers just now exploring the differences between men and women? The reason can be traced to the 1970’s when the feminist revolution nearly prohibited talk of inborn differences in the behaviour of males and females. Pointing out distinctions between the sexes was simply off-limits if you were a respectable researcher wanting to keep your job. Men dominated fields like architecture and engineering, it was argued, because of social, not hormonal, pressures. Women did the vast majority of society’s child rearing because few other options were available to them. Once sexism was abolished, so the argument ran, the world would become perfectly equitable. But as hard as we tried to squelch our differences, the evidence for innate gender difference began to mount, and admitting the differences between men and women has now become unavoidable. What’s more, the differences are not exclusively relegated to how you were raised as a child and society’s traditional stereotyping. The differences, research is discovering, may lay much deeper.
Scientists have not ignored the ol’ nature-nurture debate all together, but they have come to accept that a few fundamental differences between men and women are apparently biological. It turns out that men s and women’s brains, for example, are not only different, but the way we use out brains differs too. Women have larger connections and subsequently more frequent “crosstalk” between their brains’ left and right hemispheres. This accounts for women’s seeming ability to have better verbal skills and relational intuition than men. Men, on the other hand, have greater brain hemisphere separation, which enhances abstract reasoning and visual-spatial intelligence. Poet and author Robert Bly describes women’s brains as having a “superhighway” of connection while men have a “little crookedy country road.”
Big deal, you may be thinking, men can rotate three-dimensional objects in their head and women are better at reading emotions of people in photographs. How’s that affect my relationships with the opposite sex? Fair enough. Here’s our answer: If you evaluate the opposite gender’s behavior according to your own standards, never considering significant social and biological differences, you will miss out on a meaningful connection because you were compelled to make that person more like you. That’s what we call the fundamental cross-gender relational error: assuming that misunderstandings between the sexes have only to do with cross-purposes and not psychological and biological crossed wiring.
Okay, I understand the problem, you are saying to yourself, but what’s the solution? That depends on whether you are a woman or a man; either way, there are a few things you need to know.
What Women Need To Know About Men
If you are a woman reading this hook, I (Leslie) want to reveal a few facts that can help you make healthy connections with the men in your life. Not that I have the answer on how we women can relate every man. The male-female connection is too mystical for such claims. But I do have a few insights that have proven helpful to me many other women. They have to do with knowing how men are different from us. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, here are a few of the important distinctions— the ones that can make or break your ability to cross the gender borderline.
Men are not as in touch with their emotions as we are.
The first problem women run into when they attempt to explore men s emotional needs is that men don’t want women to explore their emotional needs. Let’s face it women, relative to us, men should come equipped with an emotional thesaurus. I’m not saying they don’t feel things deeply, but men certainly don’t express their emotions as clearly or as readily as we do. And who can blame them; they were raised that way. Parents, a recent study found, discuss emotions (with the exception of anger) more with their daughters than with their sons. As adults, men naturally tend to have a smaller feeling vocabulary and stuff their emotions. The point? We can’t expect men to identify our emotions or their own as quickly as we do.
Men are more independent than we are.
Here’s a lesson from “Male Development 101”: Very early on, males define themselves in relation to their mothers by being different and separate. Their impulse is to go away and assert their masculinity. Men need to wriggle free, to do male bonding, to place a great deal of emphasis on work (or golf, for that matter) as an escape from being smothered. But it’s not so much being smothered by the women in their lives as iris being smothered by their own feelings of dependency. Men need space to be men. And the more fragile a man’s sense of self, the stronger the impulse is to flee. So don’t expect men to glom on to you and tell you how much they need you. Instead, take comfort in the fact that the men in your life do need you, but most of the time they are trying to deny how much they need you because it poses so many threats to their sense of masculinity.
Men are more abstract than we are.
While you and I are more likely to talk about our fears, feelings, and experiences, men are more likely to talk about ideas, concepts, and theories. Men want to tell you what they know. They use conversation to discover factual information the same way an anthropologist uses a pick and hammer to unearth an artifact. Men gather facts, debate opinions, and solve problems through reasoned conversation. Sociologist Deborah Tannen calls this abstract style of man-speak “Report Talk.” It’s well established, so we can’t expect men to be too enthusiastic about conversation that serves as a means with no end. We can certainly talk about our fears, feelings and experiences to the men in our lives, but we can’t expect them to listen with the same vigilance we’ve grown to expect from our girlfriends.
What Men Need To Know About Women
Now that Leslie has had a say, allow me to turn the tables. Just as there are important insights for women to gain in understanding men, so can you, as a male reader, discover a few tips that will make relating to the women in your life a bit easier. “Every woman is a science,” John Donne. And if we take the time to carefully study women’s needs and how they differ from us, we’ll discover some fairly universal principles. I’ll echo the same qualifier as Leslie, however: There are always exceptions to the rule, but here are some fundamental ways in which women are different from men.
Women are not as independent as we are.
Let’s face it: we love the mystique of the rugged “Marlboro Man” image. Sure, it’s cliché, but we can’t get over this tough-minded, lone cowboy who reports to nobody as he freely rides the range. Women, on the other hand, couldn’t give a can of beans about protecting their autonomy. They prize what Harvard’s Carol Gilligan calls “a web of connectedness. Just as we are threatened by a challenge to our independence, so are women threatened by a rupture in their relationships. So don’t expect women to fully understand and accept your “need for space.” Don’t expect them to romanticize your independence. Instead, do yourself and your relationships with women a favour—bite the bullet and let them know you value the relationship even when you need to ride the range.
Women focus on the here-and-now more than we do.
Someone defined the future as a place where men spend most of their time. You and I both know that’s not exactly true. But it becomes more true in comparison to women. While we are scheming plans and solving problems for a better tomorrow, most women are asking, “What’s going on right now and how do I (and others) feel about it?” Women focus on current feelings and experiences because these build emotional bonds of connection between them. So while we men are more interested in the “report” of what has happened and where we are going, women are more interested on building “rapport” right now. The bottom line is that if you want to get down to the task of solving problems for the future with the women in your life, you must first take the time to explore their feelings about the present.
Women are not as competitive as we are.
As little kids growing up, boys play games in large groups, with an emphasis on winning. Competition is the name of this male-gender game. Little girls, on the other hand, play together in small, intimate groups, with an emphasis on minimizing hostility and maximizing cooperation. The same emphasis follows both genders into adulthood. As men, we still want to prove our point, keep score, and win the debate in conversation, while women are more likely to sacrifice superiority as the price for keeping peace. It’s not that one mode is necessarily better than the other; they both have their strengths and weaknesses. But if we want to build a healthy relationship with the women in our lives, we must honour their cooperative spirit and take care not to step on their toes.
Making a cross-gender relationship work does not depend solely on recognizing our differences. It’s a matter of appreciating those differences as well. Women, for example, can improve their relationships with men when they value the more masculine traits of emotional constraint, independence, and analytical reasoning. And men can improve their relationships with women when they esteem the more feminine qualities of interpersonal dependence, present-centeredness, and cooperation.
We’ve known some people who clearly recognize gender differences but then mistakenly try to eliminate them. It’s a futile exercise. Gender differences are not eased by creating symmetry—by having men and women thinking, feeling, and doing everything alike. The fact is that men and women are different. And people who openly acknowledge their differences and appreciate them improve their chances for a successful relationship.
Can Men And Women Be Just Friends?
We had just stepped off the platform of a college auditorium in Illinois where we were speaking on gender differences. Lingering around us was a small crowd of students who had a few comments or questions. That’s when a young, forthright man came hounding up to us and blurted out a question: “Is it possible for men and women to be friends without being romantic.
The auditorium fell suddenly silent. Even students who were just about out the door turned around to wait for our answer. We mumbled a spontaneous reply that was mostly based on out opinions and then turned the question back on our listeners. “What do you think?” we asked. For nearly another hour we sat on the edge of that platform and listened to a lively discussion while dozens of students gave their two cents’ worth.
That was several years ago, but we continue to hear this question so frequently that we would be remiss not to address it before closing this chapter. And since that occasion in Illinois, we have reviewed dozens of scientific studies and surveyed numbers of people about cross-gender friendships to discover whether these relationships can work or not. We’ve also listened in on countless discussions with men and women on the issue. And believe me, we’re now well acquainted with both sides of the argument.
For many people the idea of a man and a woman being friends is charming, but improbable. “It always leads to something else,” they argue, meaning that the relationship eventually becomes romantic or soon fizzles out. Perhaps they are right. After all, in contrast to the countless love stories we see in the movies, male-female friendships are rarely acclaimed or depicted as an ongoing, freestanding bond. How many stories can you think of that richly portray or endorse the lasting, devoted friendship of a man and a woman as an end in itself? Even the acclaimed film, When Harry Met Sally, which got a lot of people talking about cross-gender friendships, ultimately proves to be another tale of romantic love. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s tumultuous and endearing friendship is only a stage in the development of the more celebrated attachment of falling in love.
On the other hand, there are those who ate seemingly surprised by the question and argue that of course male-female friendships are possible; why wouldn’t they be? These people’s persuasiveness almost make the romantic pull of such relationships seem unusual. They ignore it altogether. “One of my best friends is a woman,” the male proponent of this perspective insists. “And it’s never crossed my mind to consider her in a romantic way.” Well, that takes care of that, I think. “My friendships with men are far less complex than my relationships with women,” a female with this position might say. “We can play sports and just have fun.”
In our informal survey of people who are “just friends” with someone of the opposite sex, we heard a number of positive remarks. Over I over, men spoke about how a woman’s friendship provided them with a kind of nurturance not generally available in their relationships with men. They said things like, “I don’t have to play the macho game with women. I can show my weaknesses to a woman friend and she’ll still accept me.”When we asked women about their friendships with men. we heard comments like “He is a good sounding board for me to get the male perspective, the kind I can’t get from my women friends.”
Interestingly, women do not report the same level of intimacy as do with their cross-gender friendships. Even women who count among their close friends feel harriers between them. Women will say things like, “I have fun with men, and they can even be supportive and helpful about some things, but it’s just not the same. If I try to talk to my male friends the same way I talk to my female friends, I’m always disappointed.” At first glance the payoff for men seems to be bigger than the payoff for women in cross-gender friendships. But that’s not necessarily true. Women report great enjoyment from the diversity their friendships with men bring to their lives.
So does all this mean the answer to the question about men and women being friends is yes? Few relationships issues are that plain and simple. The real answer is “it depends.” So, you say, let’s cut to the chase and get to the bottom line: What do these relationships depend upon? They depend upon how much each person in the relationship is willing to stretch and grow. These friendships, you see, require both men and women to call upon parts of themselves that are usually less accessible when relating to their typical same-sex friends. For a man, a woman friend allows him to express his more emotional side, to experience his vulnerability, to treat himself and his friend more tenderly than is permissible with male friends. What is typically missing for him in this cross-gender relationship, however, is the kind of rough camaraderie he can have with another man. For a woman, friendship with a man helps her express her independent, more reasoned, and tougher side—the harder edge that’s kept under wraps in relationships with women. The down side for her is the relative absence of emotional reciprocity and intensity she normally shares with a female friend.
So, okay, twist our arms for a yes or no answer to this question and the answer will be yes. But we will quickly qualify it. Men and women can enjoy friendship together, but not at the same level they do with friends of the same sex. The next chapter, however, will reveal that friendships within our own gender provide tough competition.
For Reflection
Consider your cross-gender relationships. What aspects of these relationships with the opposite sex (excluding romantic relationships) seem to be easier than relationships with the same sex? What are the biggest hurdles you encounter in relating with the opposite sex?
When you were growing up as a kid, what social activities or games do you think influenced your gender roles? Looking back on it, do you put more stock in the way your environment shaped you or the way your biology programmed you?
This chapter notes several things men and women should know about the opposite gender. What differences could you add either to the list for women to know or for men to know?
Have you noticed how women use their conversation to build rapport” while men use conversation to give or get the “report”? What examples of this disparity can you remember from your own experience?
The major point of this chapter is that we doom our relationships with the opposite sex when we try to change them into being more like us. If this is so, what can you do to accept and even appreciate the different qualities of the other gender?
Written By Drs Les & Leslie
Contributed by Farina
Re-edited by Johan
Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different - Kate Millet
It’s a day like any other when a seemingly normal woman walks into our office, sits in a chair, and says something like, “I don’t know what I do to turn men off. Somehow I am pushing them away. Maybe I’m too demanding, or not demanding enough; I don’t know. Men are so confusing.”
And it could be that very same day in that very same chair that a seemingly normal man, unrelated to the first woman, sits down and says, “I don’t get women. I must be doing something wrong or I’d have at least a semblance of a relationship with one of them. Women are so confusing.”
We’ve seen it time and again. Each gender trying to make contact with the other side but becoming dazed and confused in the process. Like an animal which has come too close to a hot-wired electric fence, we’ve seen both men and women jump hack and retreat from the opposite sex because they didn’t want to risk the potential pain of misunderstanding or rejection. So they keep their distance.
The barrier between the sexes is built early on in life by our fear for being teased for having a “girlfriend” or “boyfriend.” Remember those days? Some researchers can’t seem to forget. A classic study of children’s friendships has found that three-year-olds say about half their friends are of the opposite sex; for five-year-olds, it’s about twenty percent, and by age seven almost no boys or girls say they have a best friend of the opposite sex. These separate social universes re-intersect only as the adolescent years approach. Is it any wonder that male-female relationships are confusing?
This chapter is dedicated to helping you—whether male or female—take some of the mystery out of relating to the opposite sex. We don’t guarantee to solve the age-old gender puzzle in just a few pages, but we do intend to give you some practical insights for equipping you in your trek across the gender line. We’ll help you explore just how different the sexes are, not only in their psychology but in their biology as well, and we will expose the “fundamental cross-gender relational error,” an error that will trip you up every time. We then take turns at revealing in detail what women need to know about men and what men need to know about women. Used correctly, you can consider this information your key to crossing the border. Before closing this chapter we do our best to answer the age ol’ question of whether or not men and women can be “just friends,” free from romantic entanglements and sexual snares.
But let’s now begin at the beginning. We start with a straightforward fact: When men and women get together there are, in effect, two worlds—his and hers. The question this raises, however, is what’s the difference?
A World of Difference
Have you ever wondered why a man can seemingly read a map blindfolded but can’t find his own socks? The reason may be found in his genetic makeup. Research is discovering that men and women actually perceive reality differently. In one university experiment, students were blindfolded while an experimenter who served as a guide walked them through a complex maze of tunnels that run beneath campus buildings. After traversing this maze, women were asked to locate a familiar college building. Nearly every woman in the experiment was uncertain and unable to locate it. Men, on the other hand, had relatively little trouble with the task. In spite of all the subterranean twists and turns, men tended to retain a firm sense of direction and with a kind of internal compass were far more likely to identify the location of the building—even after walking through the maze blindfolded. Chalk one up for the male species.
But before you put all your money on men, consider another university experiment. In this one, students were asked to wait in a small room with a cluttered desk while the experimenter “got something ready.” The students thought they were simply waiting for the experiment to begin, but this actually was the experiment. After two minutes, the student was asked to describe in detail the waiting room from memory. Men, it turns out, didn’t do well on the test, and were able to remember very little. Most men were barely able to describe much of the room in clear and accurate detail. They often missed major objects located on a desk right in front of them. Women, on the other hand, could go on and on with precise descriptions of the rooms contents. In fact, women proved seventy percent better than men at recalling complex patterns formed by apparently random and unconnected items. One point for the women’s side; but who’s keeping score? (Actually, the men are probably keeping score, but we’ll get to that later.)
In these experiments and dozens of others like them, men and women consistently perform at different levels—sometimes men outperform women and sometimes vice versa. Which is all to say that scientists are suddenly fast at work trying to account for the differences, and what they’re finding may surprise you.
Why are researchers just now exploring the differences between men and women? The reason can be traced to the 1970’s when the feminist revolution nearly prohibited talk of inborn differences in the behaviour of males and females. Pointing out distinctions between the sexes was simply off-limits if you were a respectable researcher wanting to keep your job. Men dominated fields like architecture and engineering, it was argued, because of social, not hormonal, pressures. Women did the vast majority of society’s child rearing because few other options were available to them. Once sexism was abolished, so the argument ran, the world would become perfectly equitable. But as hard as we tried to squelch our differences, the evidence for innate gender difference began to mount, and admitting the differences between men and women has now become unavoidable. What’s more, the differences are not exclusively relegated to how you were raised as a child and society’s traditional stereotyping. The differences, research is discovering, may lay much deeper.
Scientists have not ignored the ol’ nature-nurture debate all together, but they have come to accept that a few fundamental differences between men and women are apparently biological. It turns out that men s and women’s brains, for example, are not only different, but the way we use out brains differs too. Women have larger connections and subsequently more frequent “crosstalk” between their brains’ left and right hemispheres. This accounts for women’s seeming ability to have better verbal skills and relational intuition than men. Men, on the other hand, have greater brain hemisphere separation, which enhances abstract reasoning and visual-spatial intelligence. Poet and author Robert Bly describes women’s brains as having a “superhighway” of connection while men have a “little crookedy country road.”
Big deal, you may be thinking, men can rotate three-dimensional objects in their head and women are better at reading emotions of people in photographs. How’s that affect my relationships with the opposite sex? Fair enough. Here’s our answer: If you evaluate the opposite gender’s behavior according to your own standards, never considering significant social and biological differences, you will miss out on a meaningful connection because you were compelled to make that person more like you. That’s what we call the fundamental cross-gender relational error: assuming that misunderstandings between the sexes have only to do with cross-purposes and not psychological and biological crossed wiring.
Okay, I understand the problem, you are saying to yourself, but what’s the solution? That depends on whether you are a woman or a man; either way, there are a few things you need to know.
What Women Need To Know About Men
If you are a woman reading this hook, I (Leslie) want to reveal a few facts that can help you make healthy connections with the men in your life. Not that I have the answer on how we women can relate every man. The male-female connection is too mystical for such claims. But I do have a few insights that have proven helpful to me many other women. They have to do with knowing how men are different from us. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, here are a few of the important distinctions— the ones that can make or break your ability to cross the gender borderline.
Men are not as in touch with their emotions as we are.
The first problem women run into when they attempt to explore men s emotional needs is that men don’t want women to explore their emotional needs. Let’s face it women, relative to us, men should come equipped with an emotional thesaurus. I’m not saying they don’t feel things deeply, but men certainly don’t express their emotions as clearly or as readily as we do. And who can blame them; they were raised that way. Parents, a recent study found, discuss emotions (with the exception of anger) more with their daughters than with their sons. As adults, men naturally tend to have a smaller feeling vocabulary and stuff their emotions. The point? We can’t expect men to identify our emotions or their own as quickly as we do.
Men are more independent than we are.
Here’s a lesson from “Male Development 101”: Very early on, males define themselves in relation to their mothers by being different and separate. Their impulse is to go away and assert their masculinity. Men need to wriggle free, to do male bonding, to place a great deal of emphasis on work (or golf, for that matter) as an escape from being smothered. But it’s not so much being smothered by the women in their lives as iris being smothered by their own feelings of dependency. Men need space to be men. And the more fragile a man’s sense of self, the stronger the impulse is to flee. So don’t expect men to glom on to you and tell you how much they need you. Instead, take comfort in the fact that the men in your life do need you, but most of the time they are trying to deny how much they need you because it poses so many threats to their sense of masculinity.
Men are more abstract than we are.
While you and I are more likely to talk about our fears, feelings, and experiences, men are more likely to talk about ideas, concepts, and theories. Men want to tell you what they know. They use conversation to discover factual information the same way an anthropologist uses a pick and hammer to unearth an artifact. Men gather facts, debate opinions, and solve problems through reasoned conversation. Sociologist Deborah Tannen calls this abstract style of man-speak “Report Talk.” It’s well established, so we can’t expect men to be too enthusiastic about conversation that serves as a means with no end. We can certainly talk about our fears, feelings and experiences to the men in our lives, but we can’t expect them to listen with the same vigilance we’ve grown to expect from our girlfriends.
What Men Need To Know About Women
Now that Leslie has had a say, allow me to turn the tables. Just as there are important insights for women to gain in understanding men, so can you, as a male reader, discover a few tips that will make relating to the women in your life a bit easier. “Every woman is a science,” John Donne. And if we take the time to carefully study women’s needs and how they differ from us, we’ll discover some fairly universal principles. I’ll echo the same qualifier as Leslie, however: There are always exceptions to the rule, but here are some fundamental ways in which women are different from men.
Women are not as independent as we are.
Let’s face it: we love the mystique of the rugged “Marlboro Man” image. Sure, it’s cliché, but we can’t get over this tough-minded, lone cowboy who reports to nobody as he freely rides the range. Women, on the other hand, couldn’t give a can of beans about protecting their autonomy. They prize what Harvard’s Carol Gilligan calls “a web of connectedness. Just as we are threatened by a challenge to our independence, so are women threatened by a rupture in their relationships. So don’t expect women to fully understand and accept your “need for space.” Don’t expect them to romanticize your independence. Instead, do yourself and your relationships with women a favour—bite the bullet and let them know you value the relationship even when you need to ride the range.
Women focus on the here-and-now more than we do.
Someone defined the future as a place where men spend most of their time. You and I both know that’s not exactly true. But it becomes more true in comparison to women. While we are scheming plans and solving problems for a better tomorrow, most women are asking, “What’s going on right now and how do I (and others) feel about it?” Women focus on current feelings and experiences because these build emotional bonds of connection between them. So while we men are more interested in the “report” of what has happened and where we are going, women are more interested on building “rapport” right now. The bottom line is that if you want to get down to the task of solving problems for the future with the women in your life, you must first take the time to explore their feelings about the present.
Women are not as competitive as we are.
As little kids growing up, boys play games in large groups, with an emphasis on winning. Competition is the name of this male-gender game. Little girls, on the other hand, play together in small, intimate groups, with an emphasis on minimizing hostility and maximizing cooperation. The same emphasis follows both genders into adulthood. As men, we still want to prove our point, keep score, and win the debate in conversation, while women are more likely to sacrifice superiority as the price for keeping peace. It’s not that one mode is necessarily better than the other; they both have their strengths and weaknesses. But if we want to build a healthy relationship with the women in our lives, we must honour their cooperative spirit and take care not to step on their toes.
Making a cross-gender relationship work does not depend solely on recognizing our differences. It’s a matter of appreciating those differences as well. Women, for example, can improve their relationships with men when they value the more masculine traits of emotional constraint, independence, and analytical reasoning. And men can improve their relationships with women when they esteem the more feminine qualities of interpersonal dependence, present-centeredness, and cooperation.
We’ve known some people who clearly recognize gender differences but then mistakenly try to eliminate them. It’s a futile exercise. Gender differences are not eased by creating symmetry—by having men and women thinking, feeling, and doing everything alike. The fact is that men and women are different. And people who openly acknowledge their differences and appreciate them improve their chances for a successful relationship.
Can Men And Women Be Just Friends?
We had just stepped off the platform of a college auditorium in Illinois where we were speaking on gender differences. Lingering around us was a small crowd of students who had a few comments or questions. That’s when a young, forthright man came hounding up to us and blurted out a question: “Is it possible for men and women to be friends without being romantic.
The auditorium fell suddenly silent. Even students who were just about out the door turned around to wait for our answer. We mumbled a spontaneous reply that was mostly based on out opinions and then turned the question back on our listeners. “What do you think?” we asked. For nearly another hour we sat on the edge of that platform and listened to a lively discussion while dozens of students gave their two cents’ worth.
That was several years ago, but we continue to hear this question so frequently that we would be remiss not to address it before closing this chapter. And since that occasion in Illinois, we have reviewed dozens of scientific studies and surveyed numbers of people about cross-gender friendships to discover whether these relationships can work or not. We’ve also listened in on countless discussions with men and women on the issue. And believe me, we’re now well acquainted with both sides of the argument.
For many people the idea of a man and a woman being friends is charming, but improbable. “It always leads to something else,” they argue, meaning that the relationship eventually becomes romantic or soon fizzles out. Perhaps they are right. After all, in contrast to the countless love stories we see in the movies, male-female friendships are rarely acclaimed or depicted as an ongoing, freestanding bond. How many stories can you think of that richly portray or endorse the lasting, devoted friendship of a man and a woman as an end in itself? Even the acclaimed film, When Harry Met Sally, which got a lot of people talking about cross-gender friendships, ultimately proves to be another tale of romantic love. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s tumultuous and endearing friendship is only a stage in the development of the more celebrated attachment of falling in love.
On the other hand, there are those who ate seemingly surprised by the question and argue that of course male-female friendships are possible; why wouldn’t they be? These people’s persuasiveness almost make the romantic pull of such relationships seem unusual. They ignore it altogether. “One of my best friends is a woman,” the male proponent of this perspective insists. “And it’s never crossed my mind to consider her in a romantic way.” Well, that takes care of that, I think. “My friendships with men are far less complex than my relationships with women,” a female with this position might say. “We can play sports and just have fun.”
In our informal survey of people who are “just friends” with someone of the opposite sex, we heard a number of positive remarks. Over I over, men spoke about how a woman’s friendship provided them with a kind of nurturance not generally available in their relationships with men. They said things like, “I don’t have to play the macho game with women. I can show my weaknesses to a woman friend and she’ll still accept me.”When we asked women about their friendships with men. we heard comments like “He is a good sounding board for me to get the male perspective, the kind I can’t get from my women friends.”
Interestingly, women do not report the same level of intimacy as do with their cross-gender friendships. Even women who count among their close friends feel harriers between them. Women will say things like, “I have fun with men, and they can even be supportive and helpful about some things, but it’s just not the same. If I try to talk to my male friends the same way I talk to my female friends, I’m always disappointed.” At first glance the payoff for men seems to be bigger than the payoff for women in cross-gender friendships. But that’s not necessarily true. Women report great enjoyment from the diversity their friendships with men bring to their lives.
So does all this mean the answer to the question about men and women being friends is yes? Few relationships issues are that plain and simple. The real answer is “it depends.” So, you say, let’s cut to the chase and get to the bottom line: What do these relationships depend upon? They depend upon how much each person in the relationship is willing to stretch and grow. These friendships, you see, require both men and women to call upon parts of themselves that are usually less accessible when relating to their typical same-sex friends. For a man, a woman friend allows him to express his more emotional side, to experience his vulnerability, to treat himself and his friend more tenderly than is permissible with male friends. What is typically missing for him in this cross-gender relationship, however, is the kind of rough camaraderie he can have with another man. For a woman, friendship with a man helps her express her independent, more reasoned, and tougher side—the harder edge that’s kept under wraps in relationships with women. The down side for her is the relative absence of emotional reciprocity and intensity she normally shares with a female friend.
So, okay, twist our arms for a yes or no answer to this question and the answer will be yes. But we will quickly qualify it. Men and women can enjoy friendship together, but not at the same level they do with friends of the same sex. The next chapter, however, will reveal that friendships within our own gender provide tough competition.
For Reflection
Consider your cross-gender relationships. What aspects of these relationships with the opposite sex (excluding romantic relationships) seem to be easier than relationships with the same sex? What are the biggest hurdles you encounter in relating with the opposite sex?
When you were growing up as a kid, what social activities or games do you think influenced your gender roles? Looking back on it, do you put more stock in the way your environment shaped you or the way your biology programmed you?
This chapter notes several things men and women should know about the opposite gender. What differences could you add either to the list for women to know or for men to know?
Have you noticed how women use their conversation to build rapport” while men use conversation to give or get the “report”? What examples of this disparity can you remember from your own experience?
The major point of this chapter is that we doom our relationships with the opposite sex when we try to change them into being more like us. If this is so, what can you do to accept and even appreciate the different qualities of the other gender?
Written By Drs Les & Leslie
Contributed by Farina
Re-edited by Johan
