Men Their Five Deadly Sins

*I did not write this but I found it interesting*

1. Why won't men stop and ask for directions?
WHILE men were hunters, they learned a good sense of direction and how to retrace their steps by feel, so they could travel for a long distances and find their way home again.

Today, one in three men know instinctively what way north is something only one in five women can do. Women did not venture alone past the horizon they did not need to so they learned to navigate by landmarks. If a woman could see a tree, or a lake or a hill, she could find her way around it and get home again.

This is the key to how a man should give a woman directions. If he tells her to go to the road with the giant oak tree, then head to the pink building opposite the supermarket next to the lake, she'll probably get there. If he tells her to go up the A435 for two miles, then to take the third exit off the second roundabout and drive four miles north, he may well never see her again. For a man to admit he is lost is to admit failing at his number one task finding his way. And he never wants to admit that especially not to a woman.

SOLUTION: Buy a map and leave it in the car for him. Print out directions for your journey from a website on your computer and take them with you. A safe emergency strategy is to tell him you urgently need the loo, which will force him to stop preferably at a service station, where one of you can ask for directions.

2. Why do men continually offer solutions and give advice?
TO appreciate why a man insists on giving solutions to every little thing, there are several things that need to be understood about the way the male brain works.

Men evolved as hunters, and their main contribution to the survival of the human race was the ability to hit a moving target so everyone could eat, and so they could injure anyone who threatened their families or who wanted to steal their food.

As a result, men's brains evolved with a target-hitting area called the 'visual-spatial' area that allows them successfully to carry out their whole reason for being hitting targets and solving problems. They turned into results-oriented people who measure their own success by results, accomplishments and their ability to come up with solutions to problems.

As a consequence, a man still defines who he is, and his self-worth, by his problem-solving abilities and achievements. He feels that he is the one person most capable of solving his own problems, and he does not see the need to discuss them with anybody else.

This is why he will rarely talk about what is bothering him. He will ask another person's opinion only if he feels he needs an expert view and he considers this to be an intelligent move. In return, the man who is asked for his opinion feels honoured by the request.

Consequently, for a woman to offer a man advice when he did not ask for it is seen by him to be a statement that she feels he is incompetent because he can't solve his own problems. A man loves to offer advice and solutions to others, but unsolicited advice especially from a woman is not welcome.

On the other hand, a woman's brain is organized for communication through talking and the main purpose of the talk is, simply, to talk. For the most part, she is not looking for answers, and solutions are not required.

Herein lies the problem for most couples. At the end of the day, she usually wants to talk about the events in her day and to share her feelings but he thinks she is giving him her problems to fix and starts to offer solutions. She then gets upset because he won't listen to her talking, and he becomes angry because she won't accept his solutions. He thinks he is being caring and loving by solving her problems. She thinks he is indifferent or is trivializing her feelings by not listening.

SOLUTION: If a woman is stressed and needs to talk, a simple technique is to say to a man: 'I need to talk with you about several things. I don't need any solutions — I just need you to listen.' A man will be happy with this approach because he knows exactly what he is supposed to do.

If a woman is talking, and a man does not know whether she is asking for solutions, he can find out quite easily by asking: 'Would you like me to listen as a boy or a girl?'If she wants him to listen as a girl, he has only to listen. If she wants him to listen as a boy, he can offer solutions. Either way, both will be happy because they know what is expected.

3. Why do men keep flicking through the channels with the remote control?
FOR thousands of years, men would return from the hunt at the end of the day and spend the evening just gazing into the fire for long periods, without communicating. Fire-gazing was a valuable form of stress relief, and a way to recharge his batteries. For the modem man, fire-gazing still occurs at the end of the day, but now involves tools like remote controls.

However, male channel changing is a pet peeve of women everywhere. At the end of a long day, women like to relax by becoming involved in a TV show, especially anything involving emotional scenes. Her brain is organized to read the words and body language of the actors, and she likes to predict outcomes of relationship scenarios. She also enjoys watching the commercials.

Men prefer doing anything that will take their mind off a stressful situation, such as flicking through TV channels, surfing the internet, working on the car, watering the garden, working out in the gym or his favourite having sex. As long as a man concentrates on one thing, he is able to forget his own troubles and feel good about himself.

If a woman is worried about a problem, it makes no difference if she does any of these things the problem still preoccupies her multi-tracking mind and she needs to talk about it to get any relief.

SOLUTION: A woman needs to tell a man that flicking through the channels drives her crazy, and ask if he could not do it while she is watching her program. Alternatively, she can try hiding the remote control. Or, as a last resort, she can buy her own TV set with her own remote control.

4. Why do men love tasteless jokes?
MALE brains have an amazing capacity for remembering and storing jokes. Males think it is hilarious to be crude, whereas to most women, none of it is remotely funny. Jokes are so important as a communication medium to men that whenever there is a global tragedy, the world's email networks and faxes are swamped with men sending tragedy related jokes.

Herein lies the difference in men and women in handling serious emotional issues. Women deal with calamity or tragedy by openly expressing their emotions to others, but men withhold their emotions because showing them could be seen as weakness.

Laughing and crying are closely linked from a psychological and physiological standpoint. They both instruct the brain to release endorphins into the blood stream. An endorphin is a chemical that has a similar composition to morphine and heroin, and has a tranquillizing effect on the body.

The harder it is for a man to talk about an emotional event, the more he will laugh when told a joke about it however heartless and insensitive it may seem to women. Men rarely talk about their sex lives to other men, so they tell jokes about it as a way of discussing it. Women however, will discuss their sex lives with their girlfriends in graphic detail, without the aid of any jokes.

SOLUTION: You should know John sat still as the fortune-teller gazed into her crystal ball. Suddenly, she started to laugh loudly. John leaned across and punched her on the nose. Finally, he'd struck a happy medium that as long as there are Irishmen, there will be Irish jokes. Or Asian or Aussie or feminist jokes. And every time there's a tragedy, it will invariably spawn its own set of jokes. Being offended is a choice. And choosing offence tells the world that you are unable to come to terms with the problem addressed by the joke that you aren't in control of your own emotions or are not prepared to face a situation.

If a man insists on telling inappropriate jokes at the wrong time or place, tell him you don't like it and you want him to stop. If he continues to do it, simply walk away and do something else. Or you could strike up a conversation about his jokes with the line: 'Do you know any jokes that aren't nasty?' and so turn the talk to a general discussion about the nature of humor.

5. Why do men make such a fuss about going shopping?
HUNTER man developed a form of tunnel vision, (which enabled him to move directly from A to B in a straight path. The amount of zigzagging through shoppers and stores needed for a successful shopping expedition makes him feel extremely uneasy. Men were creatures that made a quick kill and went home again. Today, that's exactly how they like to shop. Women shop the same way their ancestors gathered food heading off for the day with a group of other women to a place where someone saw some tasty things growing.

They spent the day wandering, squeezing, smelling, tasting and feeling, and if nothing was ripe they returned home. The next day they went to another place, until they found something worth picking and taking home. Research shows that most men find shopping not only unenjoyable, but actually stressful and therefore physically bad for them. For women, however, it is a much loved form of stress relief.

SOLUTIONS: There are ways to make men feel more positive about the shopping experience. Firstly, if you are food shopping, let the man push the trolley. He will like being in control and 'driving'. He will also like to pack the shopping into bags at the checkout it uses his spatial skills.

Ask him what he likes to eat and add it to the trolley treat it as his reward. Shopping is not hard-wired into the male brain, so incentives are needed. When shopping for clothes, remember most men have a shopping attention span of 30 minutes. If you must take him with you, do it near a hardware store so at least he can go off and look at a new DIY gadget for a while.

If you leave him outside a changing room, get him something to eat first. If you want his opinion, ask if he likes what you are wearing not which of two or three outfits he prefers.