Men And Women Are Different - Part 2

Yesterday I blogged about the different way men and women use eye contact and body movement. Today, we'll talk about the different ways they handle touch and space.

Women tend to associate touch with warmth and initiate types of touching that express support, affection and comfort. Women are touched more than men and are touched more gently than men. (You ever see two guys hug each other? They're pounding on each other's backs the whole time.)

Men, on the other hand, initiate touch toward females more, they're touched less often than women and more harshly than women (the pounding on the back I mentioned above), and many times use touch to assert power or express sexual interest.

As far as space (i.e., personal space), women tend to approach others closer and prefer side-to-side interaction. Men are more likely to invade others' personal space, especially women, and they prefer face-to-face conversation.

Interestingly, I picked up the January 31st edition of Woman's World today, and there was a short article by Barbara Smalley titled How to Talk So Men Will Listen. One of the things this article spoke to was this: men perceive face-to-face interaction as an act of aggression, which automatically provokes their fight or flight reaction (mostly the flight one). Now, while this would seem to contradict what was said above. But, as men are more likely to invade others' personal space (a sign of aggression), face-to-face would suggest aggressive behavior, too. If you don't want to immediately put a guy on the defensive, sit next to him instead of across from him. And, apparently, the average man can process up to 600 words per minute while the average woman speaks only about 125 to 150 words per minute. Since their brains compute words faster than we speak them, they have plenty of time for their minds to wander. So say what you've got to say and say it fast!

Hope these two days can help you, either with dealing with the men in your lives, or in writing about them in your books.