What Could He Really Be Thinking about Feelings and Emotions?

Michael Gurian
June 17, 2005

These extracts from "What Could He Be Thinking?" by Dr Michael Gurian discuss some of the differences in emotions and feelings experienced by men and women. They are posted with the author's permission.
Robert Griffith, Editor.

The couple, in their thirties, walked into my office together. Henry was a large man in a white shirt, tie, and black slacks. Judith was a small woman in a tank top and jeans. They had been married for eight years. He had a daughter from a previous marriage, who was twelve, and they had a son together, age six. They were both lawyers. Judith had told me on the phone that they needed marital counseling. They were arguing so much their marriage was in trouble. They'd be coming in during her vacation time, she said. He hadn't wanted to take a vacation this year. Their previous therapist had told him he needed to get better at expressing his real feelings. He had disliked this therapist, and so now they were coming to see me.

Within three months of marital therapy, the commonality of the pain was established, and Judith and Henry were ready to move into their profound differences as men and women, which showed up nowhere better than in the different visions Judith and Henry had of how feelings worked or did not work in the marriage.

Over the course of a number of sessions, we learned:

1. Judith trusted feelings; Henry trusted reason and facts.
2. Judith put her feelings at the top of her list of "things I can't do without." Henry did not.
3. Henry wanted the processing of feelings to end quicker than Judith did.
4. Henry felt things by doing things; he didn't spend much time discussing his feelings. He did like to talk about what he did. Judith discussed her feelings frequently.
5. Judith spent a lot of time talking about the feelings and emotions of her friends, children, husband, and others. Henry did not.
6. Judith experienced herself as someone who did not withhold feelings. Henry experienced her as someone who talked about lots of feelings but withheld her feelings of love for him.
7. Henry experienced himself as someone who was honest about the love he felt toward her and the children; Judith experienced him as someone who withheld his love and was, therefore, dishonest.
8. Henry wanted Judith to show her feelings more in what she did (actions), like having more sex with him, trying different sexual acts, and caring better for their home; Judith wanted Henry to tell her how he loved her and show her, more frequently and more clearly, with flowers, vacations, and other romantic gestures.

With hard work, Henry and Judith saw themselves and their relationship more clearly. They identified specific issues of marital rage and despair. They understood their similar pain but dissimilar emotional methods. Throughout this process, they came to understand just how differently their brains and bodies approached the very experience that united them, the experience of being a human being who feels love and the passion for life, family, and mate. Human nature, which was, in a sense, breaking them apart, became the key to putting the marriage back together. The last few months of their therapy were spent in restructuring the marital relationship to accommodate the difference between the biology of female emotion and the biology of male emotion.

When I saw Henry and Judith at a workshop two years later, they were still together. Judith said to me, "I'll never look at any man the same way I did before I came to see you. Henry and I are doing fine. We still have some bad days, but we love each other for who we are." I gave her a hug.

Henry shook my hand and said, "Thanks for helping out when you did." I said, "You bet," and then we all turned away, back to our lives.

A Bottom Line: Women Trust Feelings More Than Men

Given the different brain structures of men and women, it will come as no surprise that men inherently distrust feelings, and women inherently trust them. Certainly this is a generalization, yet your personal experience has probably confirmed it.

If you think of the men in your life, you'll probably notice that the majority of them don't tend to think of their own feelings as the final comment on an experience. Men don't tend to think it possible that just "feeling" the experience is actually enough. Feelings are often seen by men as something other people experience.

A man and a woman try to decide what movie to go to. Which movie does he tend to choose? The action movie, the one that will lead to less feeling. She tends toward the emotional drama or love story - the movie that will lead to more feeling.

Another example might be the activity of buying a house. The woman is more likely to trust the feelings she gets when she walks into its closets, touches its drapes, stands silently in its kitchen, waiting for invisible signals to touch her emotions. The man is more likely to wonder over the price and to stand waiting for his performance imperative to be satisfied - such as the moment of negotiation with the realtor or contractor. He is more likely to see the buying of the house as part of his life's journey; she is more likely to see it as part of her heart's journey.

This is not to negate that a part of a man will wait silently to feel good in the house, nor that a part of a woman wants to negotiate and perform; it is simply to demonstrate what we've experienced in our own daily lives: A woman inherently trusts the very experience of feeling that a man inherently distrusts. Feelings aren't very logical, and he needs logic. Logic isn't very emotional, but her brain, her heart, her senses awaken in ways his do not.

A phrase proffered by a psychologist on talk shows became popular for a time after the Columbine school shooting: "If boys don't cry tears, they'll cry bullets." It was reflective of the popular tendency to believe that boys become violent because they are taught to repress their feelings - especially their tears. This kind of thinking has affected marriages, too. A woman in my therapy practice put it simply: "I think if my husband cried more, our marriage would be better." Similarly, it is popular to say that marriages fail because men have learned, through an oppressive culture, to repress not only their tears but their discussion of feelings. Our popular culture seems to say, without tears and feeling talk, a man can't love a woman adequately.

From a neurobiological standpoint, the idea that "if boys don't cry tears, they'll cry bullets" is well-meaning but not scientific proof. In fact, one can just as well prove that the fewer tears boys shed, the more peaceful the neighborhood or community will be. In Japan, for instance, boys are raised to repress tears and to repress feeling talk. It is considered "shame" for a male to cry, and there is far less emotional conversation between mothers and sons and husbands and wives than in the United States. Yet Japan has one of the lowest violence rates in the world - exponentially lower than the violence rate among males in the United States.

Practicing Intimate Separateness: Finding Power in the Nature of Emotional Life

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman poet, said, "Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself."

Both women and men can practice this as they decide to enjoy the nature of emotional life, especially the biological trends that tend to make men act in love relationships in ways women don't.

Encouraging a man to expand his expression of feeling is worthwhile, but for women who are called, by life and intimate relationship, to enjoy the male brain, there is an even greater opportunity to become a great soul by adapting oneself to a relationship with a man (especially a higher testosterone, more masculinized male). This journey can seem lonely for a woman because her partner may actually not be equipped to satisfy her emotionally. It may also be lonely if she does not let go of the belief that it is his job to do so. If she buys into the idea that he must make her emotionally whole and healthy, she gives him ultimate power over her emotional life; she tacitly buys into the idea that he, her "soul mate," is her only true mirror. This is a lonely journey if a woman has brought to her relationships significant issues regarding her own father. It will be hard for her to see beyond her emotional demands on her husband if her father did not provide her with emotional warmth during girlhood.

If a man - a boyfriend, a husband, a "soul mate" - is, by personality and character, incapable of loyalty and fidelity, then a woman has less control over the outcome of her relationship than I am hinting here. To become a "great soul" in relationship to this kind of man, she will require an almost saintly spiritual journey through life. People may even say to her, "To stay with him, you must be a saint." And if the man is abusive to her, becoming a great soul may well mean leaving him.

But given that most men are, by nature, good and healthy for women (something women clearly intuit in their longings for male love), a woman's journey is the least lonely the more greatly she understands it. The woman who understands how the male brain processes emotions will be able to decrease her unreasonable idealization of her husband's emotions and her desire for his emotional structure to match hers. Intuitively, she might find herself utilizing these practical strategies:

• She'll ask him to think about something before he goes to work and thus give him time to process it.
• She'll spend time noticing how he does process his feelings - the games and sports he plays, the way he talks, how he stands silently, how he zones out in front of the TV, how he problem solves.
• She'll come to enjoy all the "ah-ha's" she experiences as she sees a different brain system at work. These revelations will bring her joy, for she'll realize the immense variety of human experience.
• She'll alter her expectations of his feeling life, his communication techniques, and of the marriage itself.
• She'll emphasize emotional life in her friendships outside her marriage more than she did, especially with women friends and some male friends who are not an emotional or sexual threat to her life partnership.
• She'll take better personal care of herself - exercising, gaining personal time, caring for her health and wellbeing, so that her own emotional web is in balance.
• She'll express clear and reasonable emotional expectations to her husband.
  She'll not assume that he knows what she's feeling, even though, sometimes, he will.