Didn't understand the meaning of the title na?
At last i have completed my reading of the book "Why men don't listen and women can't read maps"
After reading this book, i felt my perception towards understanding the opposite gender have taken a different view.
Generally i love to read novels, and i love so much to read novels which are having positive ending and nothing in harm, at least the climax should be positive one. Otherwise, it will give a strange feeling to my mind which will stay for longer time.
But these types of books ( books which give advices) are really difficult for me to read. Generally i don't like to read if i got irritation in starting pages.
I don't really know how i started reading this book. Actually my team mate suggested this to me.
But really it took much time to complete this. I was not able to throw the book away in some pages, because it was interesting too.
Only thing is that, i did not like the statistical analysis and survey which were talked in this book.
Other than that, it was really nice and it made me to smile in so many places, because it talked about reality.
I started observing the characteristics of myself and my husband's while reading the book, and ya.. there were so much i was able to relate with..
Totally the authors Allan and Barbara did really a nice job which helps us to understand the nature about the opposite gender.
I wanted to put some points which i really liked in this book.
Something which left a smile in my face:
1. This book is dedicated to all the men and women who have ever sat up at 2 am pulling their hair out as they plead with their partners, 'But why don't you understand?'
2. Survival was difficult but the relationship was easy in olden days - Ya they never ended up in court.
3. When a man stops his car to read a street directory, what's the first thing he does with his
radio? He turns it down! Most women can't understand why this happens. She can read while listening
and talking so why can't he? Why does he insist on turning down the TV when the telephone rings? 'When
he's reading the newspaper or watching TV, why can't he hear what I've just told him?' is a lament that has
been made by every woman in the world at some time. The answer is that a man's brain is configured for one
thing at a time because of fewer connecting fibers between the left and right hemispheres, and a more
compartmentalized brain. Take a brain scan of his head when he's reading, and you'll find he is virtually deaf.
4. One woman told us that if she is angry with her husband, she talks to him while he is hammering a nail!- Nice Revenge na :)
5. Boys love their toys. This is why 99% of all patents are registered by men. Girls love to play with toys too but usually lose interest by age 12 as they begin to grow into young women. Men never lose their obsession for impractical, spatially-related toys - they just spend a lot more on them. They love miniature pocket TVs, mobile phones shaped like cars, computer and video games, digital cameras, complicated gadgets, lights that go off or on by voice command and anything that has an engine. If it beeps, blinks and needs at least six D-cell batteries, most men want one.
6. While eating,When the bill arrives, the women calculate who had what. The men all throw $100 on the table indicating they want to pay so they can grab the spotlight, each pretending that they really don't want the change.
Helpful for Men to understand Women:
1. Women can always find the missing set of car keys, but rarely the most direct route to their destination.
2. A woman knows her children's friends, hopes, dreams, romances, secret fears, what they are thinking, how they are feeling and, usually, what mischief they are plotting. Men are vaguely aware of some short people also living in the house.
3. For centuries women were burned at the stake for possessing 'supernatural powers'. These included the ability to predict outcomes of relationships, spot liars, talk to animals and uncover the truth.
4. Most men, if they're going to lie to a woman, would be far better off doing it over the phone, in a letter or with all the lights off, and a blanket over their head.
5. Women have superior sensitivity in differentiating tone changes in voice volume and pitch. This enables them to hear emotional changes in children and adults. This ability goes a long way to explaining the women's phrase, 'Don't use that tone of voice with me!' when arguing with men and boys. Most males don't have a clue what she's talking about.
6. The point of the woman's talk is to talk. But the man sees her continual talk about problems as a plea for
solutions. With his analytical brain, he continually interrupts her. When a woman is speaking her unused words at the end of the day, she doesn't want interruptions with solutions to her problems.
7. If a woman is talking to you a lot, she likes you. If she's not talking to you, you're in trouble.
8. Men need to understand that indirect talk is part of a woman's wiring and they should not get upset about it.
9.Women don't want solutions, they just want to talk about things and for someone to listen. When you're dealing with an upset woman, don't offer solutions or invalidate her feelings - just show her you're listening.
Helpful for Women to understand Men:
1. Men can never find a pair of socks but their CDs are in alphabetical order.
2. If a woman is out driving and gets lost, she'll stop and ask for directions. To a man, this is a sign of weakness. He'll drive round in circles for hours, muttering things like, 'I've found a new way to get there' or 'I'm in the general area' and 'Hey, I recognize that petrol station!'
3. A woman's brain is configured for multitasking performance. She can do several unrelated things at the
same time, and her brain is never disengaged, it's always active. She can talk on a telephone, at the same
time as cooking a new recipe and watching television. Or she can drive a car, put on make-up and listen to the radio while talking on a hands-free telephone. But if a man is cooking a recipe and you talk to him, he is likely to become angry because he can't follow the written instructions and listen at the same time.
4.A man finds it difficult to say it with words. Buying a card is never a problem for a man, it's what to write inside that stumps him. Men often choose greetings cards with plenty of words inside. That way, there's less space for them to write.
5.The first rule of talking to a man: Keep it simple! Give him only one thing at a time to think about.
6. Men may be able to find their way from A to B via a maze of back streets, but put them in the middle of a group of women discussing a number of topics at the same time, and they get completely lost.
7. Men take turns talking, so when a man is having his turn, let him have it. 'Stop interrupting me!' is shouted by men at women everywhere and in every language. A man's sentences are solution-oriented and he needs to get to the end of the sentence, otherwise the conversation seems pointless. He can't multi-track various points at different times in the conversation and he views anyone else doing it as impolite or scatterbrained. This is a foreign concept to a woman.
8. If you are a woman raising a son or have men in your life, you need to understand that while they have excellent spatial ability, most can still only do one thing at a time. Most need help to organize their homework, diary and life in order to be effective boys and men. The organizational skills come more naturally to girls and women.
9.Don't offer a man advice unless be asks for it. Tell him you have confidence in his ability to work things out.
10. To motivate a man to go shopping, give him clear criteria - colours,
sizes, brands, styles - and tell him where you will shop and for how
long. With clear objectives (even if you've invented them), you'll be
amazed at a man's shopping enthusiasm.
Comparison:
1. Under pressure, men drink alcohol and invade other countries; women eat chocolate and go shopping.
2. Women criticize men for being insensitive, uncaring,not listening, not being warm and compassionate, not
talking, not giving enough love, not being committed to relationships, wanting to have sex rather than make
love, turning the temperature down, and leaving the toilet seat up.Men criticize women about their driving, for not being able to read street directories, for turning maps upside down, for their lack of a sense of direction, for talking too much without getting to the point, for not initiating sex often enough, turning the temperature up, and for leaving the toilet seat down.
3.Women have wider peripheral vision, men have tunnel vision.
4. Architectural plan of a house is seen two-dimensionally by a female brain, whereas a male brain can see it three dimensionally, that is, men can see depth. Most men can see how a building would look as a finished house.
5. Most women can brush their teeth while walking and talking on several topics. They can make up-and down strokes with the toothbrush at the same time as polishing a table using a circular movement with the other hand. Most men find this very difficult, if not impossible. When men brush their teeth, their mono-tracked brain means they focus entirely on that single task. They all stand square to the basin, feet 30cm apart, body bent over the sink, moving their head back and forth against the brush, usually to the speed of the water.
6. Not only do girls start speaking earlier than boys but a three-year-old girl has nearly twice the vocabulary of a three-year-old boy, with her speech almost 100% comprehensible. Speech pathologists are kept busy with parents bringing young boys in for therapy with the same complaint: 'He can't speak properly. ' If the boy has an older sister, this speech difference is even more noticeable, particularly as older sisters and mothers frequently talk for their sons. Ask a five-year-old boy, 'How are you?' and his mother or
sister answers, 'He's fine, thanks'. Mothers, daughters, and older sisters often speak on behalf of
the males in their family.
7. Male brains are highly compartmentalized and have the ability to separate and store information. At the end of a day full of problems, a man's mono-tracking brain can file them all away. The female brain does not store information in this way - the problems just keep going around and around in her head. Men can mentally index their problems and put them on hold. Women churn. The only way a woman gets rid of her problems from her mind is by talking about them to acknowledge them. Therefore, when a woman talks at the end of the day, her objective is to discharge the problems, not to find conclusions or solutions. She might not be so expert at humiliating a man with a well placed barb, but she could hit him with a frying pan from a distance of 10 meters.
8.When women sit together to watch a movie on TV, they usually talk simultaneously about a variety of subjects, including children, men, careers and what's happening in their lives. When groups of men and women watch a movie together, the men usually end up telling the women to shut up. Men can either talk or watch the screen - they can't do both - and they don't understand that women can. Besides, women consider that the point of all getting together is to have a good time and develop relationships - not just to sit there like couch potatoes staring at the screen.
9. Indirect talk builds rapport among women - but it often doesn't work with men because they
don't understand the rules.
10. Indirect speech may be excellent for building relationships but, unfortunately, that benefit may pale into insignificance if cars or planes end up crashing when the driver or pilot is unclear about what is being said.
Indirect speech usually includes a lot of qualifiers such as 'kind of, 'sort of and 'a bit'. Imagine if Winston Churchill had used indirect speech to try to motivate the Allies against the threat from Hitler. It wouldn't have sounded quite the same. 'We will fight them on the beaches - kind of - we will fight them a bit in the fields - we will never, sort of, surrender. ' They might even have ended up losing the war.
11. When a woman uses indirect speech with another woman there is never a problem - women are
sensitive to picking up the real meaning. It can, however, be disastrous using it with men. Men use
direct speech and take words literally. But with patience and practice, men and women can learn to understand one another. Men's sentences are short, direct, solution-oriented and to the point, drawing on a broader vocabulary and peppered with facts. They use quantifiers such as 'none', 'never' and 'absolutely'. This kind of speech helps close business deals quickly and efficiently, and is a means of asserting authority over others. When men use such direct speech in their social relationships, it often makes them appear abrupt and rude.
12. To argue successfully, a man needs to understand that a woman will use words that she doesn't really mean, so he shouldn't take them literally or define them. Take, for example, when a woman says, 'If I sat next to a woman who was wearing the identical dress, I'd just die! There's nothing worse!' She doesn't really mean that there is nothing worse or that she really expects to die, but a man's literal mind may respond with, 'No, you won't die, there are worse things than that!' which sounds sarcastic to a woman. By the same token, however, a woman needs to learn that she'll have to argue logically with a man if she wants to win and only give him one thought at a time. And women should never multi-track in an argument.
13. Boys like things, girls like people. Girls want relationships and cooperation, boys want power and status.
14. Give a four-year-old girl a teddy bear or toy and she'll make it her best friend; give it to a boy and he'll dismember it to see how it works, leave it in pieces and then move on to the next.
15. If a man completely shuts off, let him do it, he'll be fine. If a woman shuts off, there's trouble brewing and it's time for deep discussion. A woman may cry at being insulted because an insult is usually emotionally charged but a man may not even be aware that he has been insulted. It literally doesn't mean much to him.
16. Male sex drive is like a microwave - it ignites instantly and operates at full capacity within seconds, and can be turned off just as quickly when the meal is cooked. Women's sex drive is like an electric oven - it heats slowly to its top temperature and takes a lot longer to cool down.
17. A woman's sex drive is significantly affected by events in her life. If she hates her job, she has a really
demanding project at work, the mortgage repayments have just doubled, the kids are sick, she was drenched in the rain or the dog ran away, sex will not even be a consideration. All she can think about is going to bed and sleeping. When the same events happen to a man, he sees sex as a sleeping pill - a way of releasing the built-up tensions of the day. So, at the end of the day, he puts the hard word on the woman, she calls him an insensitive moron, he calls her frigid and he gets to sleep on the couch. Most men don't understand this difference. He may have been a perfect gentleman all day but she refuses sex because she's still unhappy that he insulted her mother two weeks ago.
Information:
1. There are more left-handed women than men and 90% of all people are right-handed.
2. If you are presenting an idea to a mixed group of men and women, it's safer to use a male speaking structure to make your points. Both sexes can follow 'man-talk' but men have difficulty following a woman's multitracked conversations and can quickly lose interest.
3. If a woman is unhappy in her relationships, she can't concentrate on her work. If a man is unhappy at
work he can't focus on his relationships. When a woman is upset she will talk emotionally
to her friends, but an upset man will rebuild a motor or fix a leaking tap.
To prove his love for her, he climbed the highest mountain, swam the deepest ocean, and crossed the widest desert. But she left him - he was never home.
4. A man's biological urge is to provide for a woman and her appreciation of his efforts confirms his success. If she is happy, he feels fulfilled. If she is not happy he feels that he is a failure because he believes he can't provide enough.Men constantly say to their friends, 'I can never make her happy,' and this can be sufficient motivation for a man to leave a relationship for another woman who seems happy with what he can provide.
A woman leaves a man not because she is unhappy with what he can provide, but because she is emotionally unfulfilled. She wants love, romance and conversation. He needs to be told by a woman that he is successful at what he does and what he can provide is fine. But a man needs to be romantic and, most of all, listen when a woman talks, without offering solutions.
5. It's not that men don't want to romance women, it's just that they don't understand its importance to women.
6.Men and women are different. Not better or worse - but different. Science knows it, but political correctness does everything it can to deny it.
More than one in three women takes nine days off each year due to stress.
Most women also said that if money was no object, they would prefer to be a homemaker or 'lady of leisure'
Women enjoy parenting more than men and, unfortunately, most men never get to appreciate it until they are grandparents.
These are all the points. It might be too much to put it here. But i really liked them and really wanted to put here. It helped me to change the way of understanding men.
And at last, i want to mention an incident while reading this book.
David: 'Where's the butter?'
Jan: 'It's in the fridge. '
David: 'I'm looking there, but I can't see any butter. '
Jan: 'Well it's there. I put it in ten minutes ago!'
David: 'No. You must have put it somewhere else.
There's definitely no butter in this fridge!'
When i read about this topic, There is an incident happened in front of my eyes to prove that.
My husband was searching for a tablet which i told him to take from cup board. He couldn't identify... i took that in a second, smiled and told him "ya i understand... Its Men's nature... He got a pleasant shock, because he expected a fight or at least a shout on him" which happens always.
:-)
Its your life... Enjoy in all the ways u can...
Be Happy...
Vaanadhi
I like his approaches as a professor as well.
