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One out of every two marriages ends in divorce.
- Several studies have shown that the divorce rate in this country is high because people seem more willing to leave a relationship than to get to the root of the problem through “honest and open” communication. One of today’s biggest fears is the fear of intimate communication.
Extramarital affairs among married men and married women are at a peak.
- Oftentimes couples will not leave a marriage but instead have extramarital affairs. As studies have shown, it is not the “sex-act” that couples are longing for, but rather the closeness of someone who will “listen” to them, who will understand them, and who will “talk” to them. If couples would learn how to better communicate with one another by using what I call the Sex Talk Rules-the do’s and don’ts of how to communicate with the opposite sex-there would be virtually no need to look for someone else.
Sexual dysfunction in on a dramatic rise.
- The rate of sexual dysfunction for both men and women has increased dramatically over the last five years. Psychologists feel that poor communication skills are to blame for this.
Understanding and incorporating Sex Talk can enhance intimacy between couples.
- Most marriage and sex counselors believe that the major cause of impotence in males and frigidity in women results from not knowing how to communicate desires openly and honestly. Oftentimes both words and tone of voice alienate people, causing emptiness, and sometimes hostility. By learning how to utilize talk sex, couples can sidestep or eliminate these problems.
The fact that many men and women continue to communicate in sexual stereotypes perpetuates these problems in our society today.
The way in which both men and women have been raised, conditioned, and socialized has created genuine and sometimes even insurmountable communication problems for both sexes. We take for granted that the opposite sex understands us, yet it has been clearly proven that men and women do not communicate in similar ways.
Nature vs. Nurture
Why are males and females different in their communication styles. Some reasons are obvious. Others are less apparent. To date, there is great controversy concerning these differences. Are they biological, environmental, or a combination of both? Are we different because of the way we are raised or because of our biology, neurochemistry, or hormones?
For centuries biologists, neurologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have searched for one definitive answer. The only consensus is that a combination of all these variables contributes to differences between the sexes.
Several researchers have discovered that hormones are responsible for “masculinizing” or “feminizing” the developing brain in utero, which allows little boys and little girls to experience the world differently as they mature.
This may be why men and women do not handle such behaviors as stress or aggression in the same way. For instance, men may become more physically agitated than women during stressful situations because of an increase in their testosterone level.
Women, on the other hand, become more emotional and have more memory loss when there is a lack of the female hormone estrogen. According to Beverly Hills gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Gil Mileikowsky, an increase in estrogen leads to more water retention which thereby causes the irritability familiar in Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS).
Other aspects of behavior are not hormone related. A woman’s ability to nurture, for instance, has not been connected scientifically to estrogen levels. Studies show that “nurturing” behavior is mostly a learned phenomenon. After all, adoptive mothers do not have biological hormonal elevations as they haven’t physically birthed the child. Yet, they usually do a superb job nurturing their infants. Researcher Harry Harlow’s experiments with female monkeys at the University of Wisconsin also confirm that “nurturing” is a learned behavior instead of a hormonally influenced one. He found that those female monkeys raised in isolation were not very effective at nurturing their young, despite their increased hormonal component.
In essence, hormonal influences do seem to have some influence on the behavior of the different sexes, but it is not this influence alone which can affect male and female behavioral patterns.
