Why Communication in Marriage Can Cause Divorce, Part 2

Men and women perceive and receive the act of communication very differently, both from our upbringing as children and the complex and the different bio-chemistry that makes up the different genders.

When women talk, they release serotonin in their bodies and this makes them feel soothed. Women feel connected to the person they are talking to, if the other party is really paying attention.

Men, on the other hand are physically uncomfortable listening to someone talk about their feelings, especially a woman they care about. They get restless and start to move about or look for a way out.

When men start to look distracted, women think their man is not listening and they attempt even more engaged conversation. Some women will start to get more passionate about their subject matter and use physical gestures to emphasis their point.

Meanwhile their men are getting more and more stressed and hearing less and less that is being said. The more the woman talks the more the man pulls away. The more the man pulls away the more stressed the woman gets, and the harder she tries to grab his attention verbally or physically. The cycle begins.

Studies show that men and women respond to stress differently from birth. Little boys have a flight response to loud noises and when they get anxious about something. They start to look around and move. Little girls want and try to make eye contact with someone when they become anxious or experience stress.

Newborn boys have startle reactions up to 5 times more than newborn girls. That startle reaction causes their body to pump adrenaline. This response can happen quite often and to cope boys will have the need to draw into themselves to stop the over stimulation. The more over stimulation (honey we need to talk) the more they need to withdraw.

During talking men generally perceive that they are in the wrong and things need to be fixed. While when women talk they really just want someone to be present and pay attention.

Men feel shame when they feel they don't measure up, and that's why men tend to shrink away when their partners want to talk. Men feel that the things women want to talk about mean the man has somehow failed in his obligation to make his partner happy.

Most women know that things are never perfect and evolution created them to raise children into adults. Women have come to understand everything had a workable solution, and in their worlds talking about it fixes everything.

I know that men are more easily hurt than their counterparts and that their wounding goes deeper with fewer places to ease it.

So when a women feel lonely and tries to draw the relationship closer by telling the man what he can do to help the situation, he will either get defensive, withdraw or run away. Verbal attempts to move towards intimacy usually repel men.

A man's body releases cortisol when he feels shamed. Men generally feel shame when they feel they are not measuring up by making their partners happy. They especially feel shame when they hear their woman talk about the ideas to fix things. Men receive this information from women as criticism.

Women release cortisol when they feel like their intimacy bond is threatened, or they are shouted at or ignored by the person they love.

Cortisol is a stress hormone that had a very horrible effect on the body. It feels something like being electrically shocked and then crashing into an afternoon sugar slump. The slump or hangover from cortisol can last for a few days for women and a few hours for men. No one likes it and consequently everyone tries to avoid it.

So women are constantly trying to make their relationships better by talking about how to fix things and men are doing everything they can to just let things ride and avoid anything that resembles "honey we need to talk."

In our next part learn what to do before you attempt to verbally communicate.