Why Women Never Forget an Argument

April 25, 2009

There is a right way, and a wrong way, to talk things out.

Understanding our different thought patterns helps us to better appreciate our partners.

Women’s brains are wired to feel and recall emotions far more intensely than the brains of men. The process of experiencing emotion and then storing that emotion as a memory occurs more readily in a woman’s brain than in that of a man.

Although scientists have not yet been able to identify the exact neural basis for this difference, studies consistently indicate that women tend to have more vivid memories of emotional events than men. Under stress, during an argument for example, a woman’s mind often becomes flooded with these memories.

What researchers have discovered is that men and women store emotional memories in two different areas of the brain. Men in the right amygdala and women in the left amygdala of the brain. The connections that women have between emotional memories and emotional reactions are closely associated. For men that same process is performed in two different hemispheres of the brain.

Here as in many of the differences between the functioning of the male and female brains, the connections that women have between feelings, thoughts, and actions can be better explained as examples of whole brain function, whereas males evidence the compartmentalization of many of these functions where connections are not clearly made.

All of this is more easily understood in terms of males hunting while females performed a variety of functions back at home, not the least of which was raising the children. While a male may focus on one object for hours on end (think hunting) a female is wired to juggle three different things at the same time (dinner is cooking, two of the boys are wandering off from the encampment, and the two girls are fighting over a stick.)

The male focus on one particular object or point to the exclusion of most everything else has long been considered a possible reason why modern males enjoy games centered around a moving object: a baseball, a hockey puck, a golf ball.

Women have the capacity to remember the negative and the positive things that their mate did in the past with much greater clarity than a man will. That doesn’t mean that a man will not remember a hurtful act, but as a rule he will not be able to recall good and bad moments with the clear and vivid response that a woman will have.

Just as men don’t like to hear their mates say, “This is the same mistake you made last year,” they love to hear about times when they did something kind and pleased their partner. As for their failures to do that, men tend to filter this out and leave it forgotten in the past.

Women who expect men to express the same degree of intensity and accuracy about personal issues and events are inevitably disappointed. When a woman lowers her expectations of what she believes her partner should recall it lessens the tension between them. She is not lowering her expectations, she is realizing the difference in how they both store and recall emotional memories.

Obviously it is disappointing to a woman that her partner won’t recall a particular moment, but it’s important to remember that we’re not living out a carefully scripted Hollywood romance. In real life we simply function in our own unique way with the intellectual capacity that nature has given us.

This article is based on a chapter entitled “Hardwired to be Different” from John Gray’s newest book, Why Mars & Venus Collide.

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Feeling Letters: Express Your Feelings in Marriage

Love and Marriage: How Big Problems Grow Out of Small Stuff

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5 Key Traits for Long-Term Loving Couples

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