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 about the topic 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. Would 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.

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Content taken from Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands by Gary Thomas. Published by Zondervan Publishing.