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Why men don't understand women?
The simple answer, as if there was anything simple about it, is: Evolution.

As far as our DNA is concerned, we have left the caves a few minutes ago. Deep inside our brain the wiring is just the same as that of the Geico caveman. Helen fisher "The first sex" and Deborah Tannen "You just don't understand" have carried out seminal work on the subject of male-female communication and behavior.

The short answer is this: Men evolved to be hunters and as such developed a task oriented behavior and communication style. Communication in men developed to solve immediate problems, generally related to the task at hand; whether the task is getting a woolly mammoth to fall off a cliff, or taking apart a motorcycle engine, the style of communication is the same: Brief, explicit and task oriented. Sometimes I've gone fishing or hunting with a male friend. After I come home, my wife asks me: "What did you guys talk about?" The answer is of course "Nothing" There is not much talk needed to butcher a deer or gut some fish.

Women on the other hand were gatherers. They probably moved about in female groups, gathering roots, berries and such, while communicating with each other. At the same time that food was gathered, they would keep an eye on the children, make sure they did not stroll to close to that hedge where that big snake lives, keep an eye on that lion over there, make sure it doesn't get any closer, and at the same time catch up on the doings of the other women in the group. I.e. multitasking and non linear thinking.

Not only did women evolve differently but on top of it they developed a higher pitched voice. Now babies respond to high pitched tones more than lower pitched tones, so this may have provided an evolutionary advantage and thus the different tone of voice, but this resulted in a more musical speech by women. Recent studies on brain function found out that men do not hear musical speech as well as women. There's strike two.

The third strike is the short attention span that men have for anything that is not of immediate interest. Because men communicate only to problem solve (almost only) and not to share, the minute a woman talks to a man about something, he immediately tries to problem solve. This is a recipe for disaster. Here she is sharing something that frustrated her for the whole day, and he glibly provides an answer after only a minute of conversation. When she complains some more, he gives her a second answer, and maybe a third; if, as usually happens she is getting more and more upset, he can't understand what got into her. He has been trying to be so helpful; he provided three solutions to her problem; why doesn't she like any? In any case, he ends up in the couch, drinking a beer and wondering what did men do to deserve this.

Of course she wants to share and, if he has some experience, he will just shut up and pretend to listen. That is the reason words like Aha, hmmm, and harrumph exist. Of course she gets wise to this very fast and he ends up in the couch, drinking a beer and wondering what did men do to deserve this.

Both sides are equally responsible for this, and no one side can resolve the issue.

Men need to detect when women just want to share, and then just nod their heads and say "Yes dear" and try to keep at least track of the general drift of the monologue, err.. I mean conversation.

Women need to let men know that they just want to share, and do not need a solution to their problem, and also understand that men's attention span, if there is no problem to be solved, is about 1.5 minutes, and do their sharing in a short time period. Maybe 5 minutes.

And I'll just go directly to the couch at this time.

Learn more about this author, Pedro Miranda.
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