The Female Mind – Why We Read Into Things
February 20, 2010 by Rachel W.
Filed under Featured, Girls, Explained
Every guy I know is baffled by the amount of THINKING and OVERTHINKING that women do. Why can’t things be straightforward and simple, the way they are in a man’s brain? Men seem to ignore anything that doesn’t actively threaten the safety of their loved ones or their egos, but women dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, looking for reasons and answers that sometimes don’t even exist.
When a guy says, “Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing,” a woman can’t leave it be. If he says, “Everything’s going to be okay,” she doesn’t believe him. Because in her mind, it IS something. It’s NEVER nothing. And seriously, if we don’t come up with every possible route that our current situation could take in the future, we have no idea if everything will be okay in the end. We want to play out all the possibilities in our minds and feel like we’re prepared for the worst, no matter what form it may take.
Part of this comes from the differences in male and female brains in the way that we build intimacy. Psychologists have realized that men build intimacy with others through shared activities – thus, they feel closest to the people who they do things with. Women build intimacy with others through sharing of important issues and problems in their lives – thus, they feel closest to the people with whom they share the most emotionally.
Put a man and a woman in a relationship. As long as they’re doing things together and getting on fairly well, the man will assume that all is well, everything’s going to be okay. Trouble brewing? It’s okay, we’ll figure it out, the man thinks. The woman, however, immediately wants to talk it over with her man. She wants to go through the details, she wants to share with him and have him share with her. When he refuses to listen or share his thoughts on the matter, she begins to get anxious and feel less intimately connected with him.
Weird, huh?
Our worrying is our way of trying to connect with you and build intimacy. Sure, it’s annoying. Sure, it’s a bit neurotic. Sure, sometimes it’s borderline crazy. But in the end, we do it because we care about you and we want to feel close to you.
What can you do to help us?
Listen. I know this article is taking a kind of serious tone, but this is important, dangit! The one thing you can do right now to make your woman worry less is to listen more. Take time to sit down with no distractions and really hear her out when she talks about the things that worry her. Don’t try to tell her that her fears are unfounded – if she feels them, they’re real. Share with her any worries you’ve felt on the same subject so she knows you’re with her. You “get it.” Then come up with a few options together that will soothe her back into a sense of security and intimacy again.
Get your intimacy meter full and you’ll find that you get more of that OTHER intimacy, too! Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Related posts:
