Men's Brains Can Take 7
Hours Longer:
So Give Him
Time!
by Gary Thomas
Here's another big difference in the
male brain that lies at the root of many marital
confrontations.
Neurological studies show that
men may take up to seven hours longer than women
to process complex emotional data.
Think of that: seven hours!
Stop a few minutes and ponder the
implications of this research.
Why do
men's brains have this delay? Many physiological
facts help to explain it.
Men have a smaller hippocampus in the limbic
system (which processes emotional experiences).
Females have more neural pathways to and
from the emotive centers of the brain.
The bundle of nerves that connects the left
and right portions of the brain, the corpus
callosum, - which allows the processing of
thoughts and talk with emotions - is about 40
percent larger for women than for
men.
Consider the huge implications!
Suppose a woman has an argument or disagreement
just after breakfast with her husband. She will
take about fifteen minutes to get a grip on why
she feels so angry. Her husband may not get to
that point until dinnertime.
But women often find it hard to wait that
long. They want to discuss their feelings right
away, and they want their husband to discuss his
feelings (which he's not good at anyway) while
he's still processing. His brain lags behind,
stuck in the earliest stages of processing what
just happened.
Many woman might
respond, "But he won't discuss it later either."
Here's a tip from Leslie Vernick who works on
helping wives "learn how to bring up something
without attacking their husbands and while working
on their own heart and approach."
Most men are willing to discuss something if
they're not feeling like they're being pushed into
a corner or blamed for something they did
wrong.
Here's her suggestion:
if you have an emotional issue that needs to be
addressed, why not give your husband a heads-up
several hours before you will actually have a
chance to talk to him about it?
"Honey, something's really been
bugging me (or hurting me, or frustrating me, or
worrying me.) Here it is in a nutshell. Can you
think it over so that we can talk about it later
tonight?" By using this tactic, you'll give him
plenty of time to process complex emotional
data.
_________________________________
by Gary Thomas. Published
by Zondervan Publishing. 
