Dr. Goodheart's
Flirting Hints for Dating Success
Why Men's Biological Make-up
Makes Them Do The Things They Do!
"It's
all about the medulla oblongata..."
~Ladies, have you ever noticed how you often
sit and stare at your partner thinking, "Where on earth did
that guy I'm married to/dating go?" Well, you wouldn't be the first female,
or the last for that matter, to ponder the obviously "eccentric
eccentricities" (if you will) of the male specimen.
In fact there are very good, alas, "scientific" reasons
why men often do the inexplicable things that they do. Below are just
a few clarifications on some of men's most odd, and often perturbing
behavior that have been the center of many relationship complaints
for years on end, (more than likely) to come. Hopefully, by exposing
men's innocence to their own "crimes" via this article,
us females can come to better understand and appreciate our men as
they are - quirks and all... The mystery's solved: logically enough,
it's all in the genes.
Perturbing Quirk 1: THE INVISIBILITY FACTOR
We've all been there before: Man goes to TV. Man turns on TV. Woman
disappears.
BUT WHY?
To help clarify the scientific reasoning behind women's sudden invisibility
factor is Daniel G. Amen, MD, who argues that it is a fact that
women generally have better hearing than men. As such, Dr. Amen says men will unconsciously
tune out external auditory input to focus on the action and auditory
sequences emitted from the tube. Moreover, Dr. Amen explains that men
are usually not as efficient at multi-tasking, and have trouble alternating
and/or multi-tasking their focus as is a direct effect of the
smaller size of their corpus callosums (the part of the brain that
connects the left and right halves). So if it appears that when you
are trying to talk to your man and he's simply ignoring you, in a
way he really is, but only unintentionally.
The next time you want his attention simply hit the mute button,
the off-key, or make sure to distinguish your auditory pitch from
the TV volume to garner his direct attention (read: raise the level
or "pitch" of your voice). I promise, even if only temporarily,
he'll pull out of fantasy football land and listen to what you have
to say.
Perturbing Quirk 2: "FRIENDLY" COMPETITION
Sure, it's generally a good thing when a guy is competitive. It mean's
he's driven, has goals, intends on going somewhere, etc. But what
happens when you two settle down and suddenly you find yourself feeling
as if living with your guys is like living a real-life showdown between
the Steelers and Seahawks and he's determined to take home the Super
Bowl title?
Often guys feel the need for competition, even with their
female partners. The culprit: testosterone. Apparently increased
levels of the infamous hormone directly result in a man's continuous
need for a competitive environment where they're the victor- so no,
it's not necessarily just "little man's syndrome."
One way to turn his competitive streak into a streamlined wave of
self-advantage is to find ways to use his competitive nature to
help you out with upcoming difficult tasks. Say you two are cleaning
house, get him to not only actually participate but clean more than you by wagering a contest: "I bet I can clean more of the house
than you can." Sure it may seem trivial (juvenile even), but the friendly
competition can work to your advantage and help you and your man maintain
a healthy, stable, and progressive relationship that is still young
at heart, and action. Which leads us right into perturbing quirk number
three.
Perturbing Quirk 3: BAD TEAM BLUES
Every guy has his favorite team - be it football, soccer, basketball,
baseball, or otherwise. But why does it seem that whenever his team
loses it's a reenactment of the apocalypse? Seriously, even the minor
games (as in pre-season, etc.) when lost by your guy's team seems
to send him into a multi-hour, if not day, depression.
The truth of the matter is, in a way, your guy is not overreacting
that much - your man really IS feeling depressed. Anthropologist Helen Fisher explains that all this "jock drama" is a direct result of the opposite effect of the above quirk.
Rather than experiencing an increase in testosterone, when a guy's
team loses he will experience a decrease in testosterone. Such a reaction
is associated with side effects such as lethargy, sadness, and even
mild bouts of depression (read: MILD). So when your beau's team really
bites the big one, his suddenly altered mood isn't a simple encroachment
of clouds overhead. Rather, your man is actually suffering on a
chemical level.
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To help lift him out of his moody blues moments, however, you can
opt for activities that increase the "feel-good" hormone, oxytocin. To be frank, the most efficient and quickest way to do so is copulation
(SEX). There are, however, other ways to raise oxytocin levels,
but you just need to poke at your man to see just how "up"
he is to try to lift his spirits.
Perturbing Quirk 4: THE FORGETFUL FACTOR
This one may actually not be so perturbing once we ladies understand
the biochemical reasons why men seem so apt to forget everything we
say and ask of them.
According to Fisher, women become excited the "memory
regions" of their brain become more active, whereas for men the exact opposite
reaction occurs. Upon excitement or pleasant stimulus, a man's memory
goes bezerk. When a man is falling head over heels, or is totally
into you and the moment, rather than his memory regions being triggered,
his visual centers operate on full-speed. So whereas you're absorbing
the moment via storing every single verbal nuance in the crevices
of your memory bank, your man is reciprocating your romantic feelings
another way: he's taken you in, all of you, on a wholly visual level.
So the next time you decide to test your man on the last five minutes
of your conversation don't be too upset when he draws a blank. In
fact, you should be flattered. he was too busy focusing on you, visual
or no, to hear what you had to say (remember that multi-tasking problem
we addressed earlier?). Even though it may seem your man is constantly
going blank, in actuality, he's just forming a lasting impression
of his "it" girl. The details are there, just not your words.
And LAST, but definitely not least...
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Perturbing Quirk 5: ONE-HEADED MAN
Picking up right where we left off, it seems a man's anatomy is,
if not simple, uni-form. As in our above example, when a man
gets excited and suddenly spaces on the "hearing thing" because he
is too busy visually observing the encounter, his excitement also
triggers another region- yup!, the one down south - which tends to
cloud the rest of his brain activity.
According to ob-gyn, Dr. Normal Fertel, men really can only think with
one "head" at a time. Linking visual sensory perception to chemical
biological reactions, Dr. Fertel explains that after a man has finished
"visually" checking you out, if there's even the possibility
for an erection, your man experiences an immediate chemical reaction
which triggers a particular mind-set: sex. To clarify, when arousal
is triggered, particular chemicals in the brain slip your man into
sex mode making it unbelievably difficult for him to pay attention
to any other motive other than that primitive pleasure. The next time
your man suddenly spaces on you, or just seems "elsewhere" with his
thoughts, you now know where to look for answers.
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