I just heard about yet another study on the differences in male/female behavior. When are we going to finally understand that we are not the same. It is essentially a big DUH !
Get a group of guys together about last week’s golf game. What will you hear? Unless it’s talk about the weather, more often than not you’ll hear them brag about how well they did: best game I ever played.” “You should have seen me hit right to the green on the seventeenth hole. It was beautiful.” Men like to reinforce their dominant position. Whenever they’re in a position of having won, of beating out a competitor or leading the tribe to victory, they want everyone to know it and admire it. Women, on the other hand, usually feel very uncomfortable in similar situations and more than likely will do the opposite. If they’re talking to other women about themselves it will likely be in a disparaging way. “Oh, I feel so fat today.” Or “ My hair really looks awful today. No matter what products I use, it always looks the same. I just can’t win.” Why? Because women know that talking about their own insecurities will draw other women in and make them instinctively comfortable. Women want to bond with other women, they want to complete the circle and create an aura of mutual nurturing. Men don’t have that need and actually get a kick out of ragging on each other. Their primal programming drives them to strive to put each other down, and helps to amuse the group.
This behavior seems to create closeness and the clarification of where they stand in the pecking order. They rarely try to boast each other’s egos. It is taken for granted that each member of the group feels good about themselves. To show weakness in this area would be to show vulnerability. A trait that is not considered a male strength. On the other hand women love to share their problems and their image issues. It brings us closer together and feeds our caretaking needs. In fact we can go on and on for hours about problems that affect us and others, even individuals that are friends of friends of ours. Men might off handedly mention that someone had a heart attack, but they don’t spend an inordinate amount of time adding small details like what their cholesterol count was prior to the attack, and how they should have eaten better. The bottom line is it can all be pretty amusing, and the more we can laugh with each other about our differences, the better we’ll get along!