Читать книгу Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improve Your Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress - Джон Грей, John Gray - Страница 18

Our brains might have developed the way they did because cavemen and cavewomen had very defined roles to ensure their survival. Our male ancestors hunted and needed to travel long distances in pursuit of game. Strong navigational skills allowed men to become better hunters and providers. A man had to depend on himself to find his way home. In those days, asking for directions was not always an option.

Our female ancestors gathered food near the home and cared for the children. They formed strong emotional attachments to their children and the other women, on whom they depended when the men were hunting. Women had to track their immediate environment as they gathered nuts and berries for survival. Maybe that’s why women today have the ability to find things around the home and in the refrigerator that their partners seem to be incapable of seeing.

Scientists speculate that women’s advantage in verbal skills could have resulted from their physical size. Men had the bodily strength to fight with other men. Women used language instead to argue and persuade. Women also used language because they could. When a man was in danger, he needed to stay quiet much of the time. To this day, faced with stress, a man will often become quiet. As a result, men go to their cave to recover from stress, while women have adapted by learning to talk about their stresses. By letting others know about her problems, she would make it easier to get their support. Unless she talked, others simply would not know what she needed.

Our brains developed with gender differences to ensure our survival. These adaptations have taken thousands of years to occur. It is unrealistic to expect our brains to change suddenly to adapt to the vast changes in our gender roles in the last fifty years. These changes are at the core of the stress that is causing Mars and Venus to collide. If we are to thrive and not just survive, we need to update our relationship skills in ways that reflect our natural abilities, tendencies, and needs.

The advances in neuroscientific research have allowed scientists to discover significant anatomical and neuropsychological differences between male and female brains that explain our observable behavioral differences.