From one woman to another
At the root of many women’s frustrations with their partners sits a never-ending to do list. It’s a daunting list of things that need to happen, timetables for when these items need to be accomplished, and consequences if they are not done on time. Women share with us that this nagging list can make them feel like they never have a free moment to themselves. When we enter relationships, we bring this list with us.
This list was easy to manage as a single person because when something needed to be done, there was only one person to look to: YOU. And in the beginning of your new relationship it seemed like he was on board. But, as relationships progress, couples start to find that her never-ending to do list does not match his to do list. Yes, he does have a list of his own, but the critical difference is her timetable for completion versus his timetable for completion.
Now, hear this clearly, we’re not saying that men are unwilling to help women; what we are saying is that men and women place a different level of urgency on their individual lists. What feels like an emergency to women feels like a choice to men.
Think about this scenario…
Jane comes home from work and wants to make dinner for her family. She notices that the sink is full of dishes. She can’t cook until she makes space, so she does the dishes. In the process, she notices the trashcan is full. It doesn’t smell yet, but it will. Furthermore, she sees that the floor needs to be swept, and when she goes to get the broom she sees that yesterday’s laundry still needs to be folded. Meanwhile, her husband arrives home and yells from another part of the house, “Hey, honey, what’s for dinner?” This little question sends her into a tailspin because she feels simultaneously angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, hungry, and alone. Her simple plan to make dinner has been fully derailed because there’s a house full of chores that she felt needed to be done before she could get to her real chore of cooking dinner. In Jane’s mind, one task led to another. In her husband’s mind, dinner was the more important matter and everything else could have waited. You can imagine the night this couple had.
Men’s and Women’s Brains Are Just Different
So why do men and women have such different ways of handling basic things like cooking dinner? This comes in part because of the different ways that women’s and men’s brains work. As we’ve discussed in previous articles, women’s brains are made up of thousands more neural receptors than male brains. The result of this is a higher level of communication between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Practically, this means that women can access both sides of their brain more easily than the average man can, which results in her having what is called an expansive thinking pattern.
Simply stated, women think about the relationship between many different factors at any given time. Our thinking doesn’t start from A and go to B, instead it begins with the relationship between A and B, and we can often add in the relationship with C, D, and E at the same time. To give a more specific example, as we’re cooking dinner, we might think about what the dishes will be like afterward, which could lead to thoughts of what groceries need to be bought, the ironing that has to be done, and how much we have to do to get ready for the in-law’s visit that weekend.
For most men, because their brains do not have as many neural receptors, the blood flows from one part of the brain and then to the next giving them what is called a sequential thinking pattern. Literally (and practically) this translates into thinking about one thing at a time. As a benefit, men can have a level of attention to detail that some women marvel at. But these two ways of processing information are at the root of many relationship issues.
Routine jobs around the house – as described above – can cause women to feel like they never get a moment’s peace. Add to this the fact that many men do not approach chores the same way we do. One caller told us it’s not that her husband doesn’t care about doing chores, but that he has a different timeline for when chores need to be done. She feels it needs to be done when she sees it, he feels it needs to be done when he can get to it. It just might push a woman over the edge when a man throws that empty soda bottle on top of the already heaping garbage in the can and still doesn’t change the trash bag. But, to him, it isn’t an emergency that needs to be taken care of immediately. This simple priority difference is at the root of many a woman’s frustration around getting fair support at home.
So what’s the solution? While we can improve the way we ask for a man’s support, we can also do plenty to help ourselves and reduce our own stress.
Volunteer to Nurture Yourself
We women are so caught up in our never-ending to do list that we take it upon ourselves to try to get everything done alone. We burn ourselves out. We reject our partner’s efforts to support us because we think that what he does can’t possibly be enough to ease the burden. We go from one job to the next without taking a breather and there is no time on our list dedicated to just us.
Here’s the thing, when women take more time to support themselves instead of trying to do it all, we’re actually giving a gift to the man in our life – when we help ourselves and reduce our own stress, it enables us to accept a man’s support, rather than push it away. You might be thinking, “Great, I have to add myself to my to do list now too? That’s just one more thing!” but the reality is that when you take time for yourself, you build up your energy and are able to make him feel successful in making you happy.
Not convinced that taking 30 minutes or an hour here and there to do something for yourself will be enough to rejuvenate you? We dare you to try it. Come up with a list of things you can do for yourself and give yourself one week to build up your own reserves of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone. If you do something for yourself, you’ll feel better; we guarantee it. And that never-ending to do list … well, it will no longer seem quite as daunting. Eighty percent of the effort to reduce stress has to come from ourselves – not our partners, but ourselves. The man in our life can learn how to do things that will stimulate oxytocin for us, but there are many more things we can do for ourselves. This is a revolutionary concept, we know; but, in Why Mars and Venus Collide, John Gray provides an extensive list of oxytocin-building activities that you can build into your life to help counterbalance that to do list.
Listen ladies, you know you feel stretched to the limit. We’ve become so stressed that we have little energy for our personal lives. Whether you are in a two-income household or you’re a stay-at-home mom, the world is no longer designed to give women the kind of support they need on a regular basis.
When women come home from work, their stress levels go up – they’re essentially arriving at their second job, they don’t feel able to relax after a hard day at the office. Stay-at-home moms have the never-ending to do list as well, plus their stress is magnified because they no longer have the community of other mothers to depend on as in past decades – all those moms are now working outside of the home. The majority of stay-at-home moms are left to their own devices where there are fewer and fewer people to call on for support, to share responsibilities, and to just talk to. It’s a whole new set of stressors that we’ve never really faced before.
The never-ending to do list will never completely evaporate. But we can balance our responsibilities; and, in order to do so, we have to build downtime into our daily lives where we’re responsible for our own self and our own needs. It’s tough, because as women we’re genetically designed to nurture others. But it’s OK to take the time to nurture ourselves as well, and we can learn new techniques to do so.
Feeling daunted? You’ve got Ask Mars Venus coaches on your side. If you need some fire-starters to figure out how to streamline that to do list; if you need a personal cheerleader to let you know it’s OK to work on yourself for a while, a coach is the one to turn to. Think of it as yet another positive thing you’re doing for you … 30 minutes or an hour with a coach and your oxytocin will be flowing and your stress will be that much less. |
