Cecille's Creativity

Women and men when it comes to emotions are wired differently. Psychologist Susan Pinker says, "Some studies show that men's brains respond to stress by activating a part of the limbic system that prompts action." This means that if you want a man to listen sympathetically instead of solving the problem for you, you'll have to say so.

"Men don't pick up emotional nuance as quickly as women do, and women put emotion into word faster," says researcher Louann Brizendine, M.D., author of The Female Brain. In women's brains, the left and right hemispheres more often work simultaneously. This means, women relay messages from the amygdala (the almond-shaped in the brain that helps regulate human emotion) where emotions are triggered, to the brain's left hemisphere where those emotions are verbalized, more quickly. So be patient, and give him a chance to formulate a response to whatever you're saying.

On the other hand, Sandra Witelson, Ph.D., and her team of researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario found that women have more neurons in parts of the cortex of the temporal love, which is associated with processing and understanding language, than men do. "That plays a role in why women, on average, perform better than men on verbal tasks," UC Irvine neuroscientist Larry Cahill,Ph.D., explains.

The point is: Sometimes not talking about his emotions is the only way he can deal with them. Letting a day go by before coming back to the issue might get him to open up.