The Differences Between
Men & Women
Susan Vaughn

Have you ever noticed that men and women are different? Not only do they look different, they are different inside as well. In reading the book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by Dr. Daniel Amen, I discovered what some of those differences are.

In his book Dr. Amen says that the brains of men and women are measurably different, particularly the area called the limbic brain. The limbic brain is the part of the brain that feels emotion. It is also where we store highly charged emotional memories, tagging some memories as unimportant, and therefore they are easily forgotten. Because of these emotionally charged memories, the limbic brain then filters external events through internal states, creating what is called emotional coloring. This sets the emotional tone of the mind.

Negative emotionally charged memories produce unpleasant feelings like fear, anxiety, hopelessness, rage, despair, hurt, and shame. If there are not enough positive memories to offset the negative, the person who holds them will become depressed.

Our emotional tone also effects our motivation to succeed, our ability to bond, and our libido. When someone has an orgasm, the limbic brain has a mini seizure, which tends to lessen deep limbic activity. Since depression is created by an overactive limbic brain, lessening its activity, or "cooling it down," as Dr. Amen says, creates emotional stability.

Not only is a woman's limbic brain measurably larger than a man's, it is the only area of the brain that is filled with numerous receptorcytes for estrogen. Estrogen, as you know, is the female hormone that makes women into women, giving them breasts and the ability to bear children. Unfortunately, having receptorcytes for estrogen in the limbic brain also means that women can experience emotional turmoil at the onset of puberty, during their monthly cycle (called PMS), and also during menopause.

In addition, according to Dr. Amen, it is a scientifically proven fact that women have many more neural connectors between their limbic brain and the prefrontal cortex than men do. The prefrontal cortex is commonly called the thinking brain. It is the area of the brain that causes us to think critically about our lives, to figure things out, follow through, per-severe, control our impulses, learn from our experiences, ex-press our emotions, and create empathy for those who are less fortunate. What this means is that women are emotionally wired to think about how they feel in a way that men aren't. Because men are not wired this way, they don't tend to be as bothered by their emotions. With women, being emotional happens automatically whether they want to be or not.

There is one additional fact that I think is worth mentioning when it comes to the differences between men and women. Though I don't have the statistics in front of me, I've heard it said that women have more nerve endings in their skin than men do. This means that they are much more sensitive to touch than a guy is. According to numerous sources on the internet, women are also more sexually sensitive, having twice as many nerve endings in the vulva than a man does in the same area of the body. Being emotionally wired and physically and sexually sensitive causes a woman to be a very different creature than a man.

A man's main complaint about a woman is that she is illogical and irrational, which she finds insulting. The fact of the matter is that they are both correct, and although there are many exceptions to the rule, this general principle still holds.

How is it that you become an exception to the rule? By choosing to recognize your weaknesses and consciously, with concerted effort, improve upon them. In general, what I have described are polarities. The more conscious one becomes the more they tend to move toward the middle.
Like many women in their fifties I've had numerous relationships with members of the opposite sex, many of which have failed. In my quest for understanding, I've finally come to realize that if I am going to generate and sustain a committed loving relationship with a man, I have to stop being so emotional and see a bigger picture.

On my spiritual journey, I did intense inner work. During that time I was celibate, realizing that another relation-ship would be counterproductive to my healing. In order to heal one must temporarily focus most of the attention on the self. By changing my negative programming, learning to look on the bright side, and with a lot of help from my unseen friends who were creating miracles when appropriate, I was eventually able to deactivate my overactive limbic brain. When I did, my whole life changed.

Have you ever tried to sit in silence and meditate, clearing your mind of thought? If you have, you know how difficult this is to do. That is because your brain is doing the thinking. You really don't have much to do with it. The nature of the brain is to think, and when there are parts of it that are overactive, those parts take over whether you want them to or not. The reason why one meditates to quiet the mind is to deactivate the over-active parts of the brain so that a higher (or deeper) part of you can become the decision maker.

After I worked with and gained more understanding about my limbic brain structure, I got into another long-term loving relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I was still ignorant of the deeper biological differences between the two of us, however. In time, our biology gave us problems. I wanted him to be more emotionally sensitive to my needs. He wanted me to take care of my own needs and not expect him to change or do anything to accommodate me. Sound familiar? Isn't this the age-old problem that has always existed between the sexes? I biologically longed for greater emotional connection while he longed to remain separate and independent. He knew he could never fully please what he considered to be my "illogical" emotions.

Back to the drawing board, I began to do more inner work. I looked at how past programming, especially related to the "prince charming" scenario that many women long for, emotionally colored our interactions. I felt angry that he wouldn't be my prince charming. Eventually, I figured out that I never even knew my partner. Rather, I had (with his help) fabricated an image, and then became angry when he didn't live up to it. I asked myself if I could love the person he was without needing or wanting him to change. This meant that my fantasy life, which contained the ideal but unrealistic man, had to die.

Letting that fantasy go was emotionally painful for it was such a sweet version of reality. Yet another part of my mind, the logical me who was being born, realized that if I didn't let it go I would never be happy. Constantly being disappointed in love, I would search endlessly for a man that doesn't exist except that is, during courtship.

Here is the part that men might want to look at. While courting a woman, a man is motivated to please her. He attends her emotional needs and does the things she wants him to do. Feeling loved, perhaps for the first time in her life, especially if she had an unpleasant childhood or unpleasant past relationships, she will fall head over heels in love with him, becoming deeply limbically bonded.

When he stops being emotionally sensitive to her needs, which to him are illogical and unrealistic, she gets angry and feels betrayed. It is then that conflict erupts between him and her, creating the sense of separation that everyone is so familiar with.

I have long known that being physical is a method of evolution. Here we evolve from a less mature, conscious state to a more mature, conscious state. When we become more mature and conscious we use our strengths to improve our weaknesses. Becoming conscious is a long process. One reason why is because, at first, most of us don't even know what our weaknesses are. After we know what they are, we then have to figure out how to improve them.

When we incarnated into our physical bodies, we limited our perceptions only to that which were consistent with our biological make-up. We didn't know what we couldn't know. In order to find out, we have to build a bridge of communication, and talk to each other about our differences. Both men and women have biologically based strong points and weak points. By becoming conscious of our weaknesses, we have the opportunity to change them. Only then will we create loving relationships. They may not be ideal, but they will be real, and maybe that will be good enough.

Love is a choice and a decision you make to behave in a loving way, even when you don't feel like it. When a man chooses to be emotionally sensitive to his partner's needs, even when they seem illogical, and a woman chooses to accept her partner the way he is without needing to change him, the choice to love has been made. If you think this sounds like a paradox, it is. No one ever said that learning how to love would be easy. Certainly, learning to be whole and share real love takes an advanced set of skills that are well worth cultivating.

Susan Vaughn regularly holds classes in The Art Of Conscious Evolution and has written courses for UMS.

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