What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works

Introduction:

What Could He Be Thinking?

I hold nothing alien that has to do with human nature.

—Terence, Roman poet

The title for this book comes from a conversation I had one Saturday with my wife, Gail, and four of her friends, following their monthly women’s lunch. Gail had invited her friends to our house for tea and dessert. Three of the women were mothers, two were married, two were in long-term relationships, the other dating, all were professionals, two were presently stay-at-home moms. Their ages ranged from thirty to sixty.

I was about to leave them alone when Carly, one of Gail’s best friends, a woman in her early fifties, said with a wry smile, So, Mike, come sit down with us and explain a few things about men.

Ah, the dangers of this particular moment! One must tread carefully, even among friends. It is so easy to appear to be rationalizing or making excuses for men, especially if a husband or boyfriend has recently behaved badly.

I laughed. You know, Carly, I think I have to go fix the car now. Then I have to clean the garage.

After a few chuckles, Gail said, We were talking about men, and we just want you to put on your biological ‘male brain’ hat for a second. I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this conversation!

Not that men are all we ever talk about! Carly joked. "But will we ever figure you guys out?"

It was one of those What could he be thinking? lunches, Gail told me. This phrase had emerged over the last few months in the women’s group. Often it was used in humor, other times with poignancy, as when Gail came home from the lunch having learned of a marital conflict or of a family in pain.

I sat down with these women and we got down and dirty.

Danielle, thirty-one, referred to her boyfriend. Okay, Mike, explain this to me: Last night Jeff and I were watching Charlie’s Angels on video. After it’s over he says, ‘Danielle, that was a great movie.’ He really meant it! I’m going, ‘Charlie’s Angels? A great movie?’ What could he be thinking?

Katherine, mother of a ten-year-old boy and herself an urban planner, said of her husband, Larry and I started talking about Timothy McVeigh and whether he should have been executed. Larry was just cold about it. I’m glad they killed the guy. Just forget about it,’ he said. I thought, I’ve been married to him for twelve years, but I don’t understand him. At least it’s worth thinking about the implications,’ I said, but he said, The implications mean nothing. Kill the guy and move on.’ I know he had deeper thoughts and feelings about it but wouldn’t admit it. I’d like to know what he was really thinking.

Sandy, a single mother of four, told a story about her ex-husband, who had kept the children the previous weekend. Logan is only six years old, but his father let him ride his bike to the park unsupervised. I mean, really, what could that man be thinking?

Carly, recently remarried, her children grown but her stepchildren still in their teens and living with her, recalled an incident a few days earlier. Her husband would not back down in a conflict with another man over his place in line at the grocery store. He’s fifty-two years old and wouldn’t let this other guy get a word in edgewise, Carly reported. He made this other guy’s little slight into such a big deal, such a blow to his pride. What could he be thinking?

I think in those two hours we must have covered countless questions about men and male behaviors. Here are just a few—some humorous, some quite serious.

Why is it, when he’s staring into the refrigerator, he never sees what’s right in front of him?

Why does he just leave his laundry lying around?

Why does it seem like men are on some kind of quest?

Do men and women think about ethics differently? Are there biological sources for this difference?

When a man’s development is wounded in his childhood, is his brain actually altered? If so, what emotional adjustments should a woman expect to make in order to keep a marriage strong?

Does the male brain experience as many feelings as women do?

Why do men seem to leave their kids behind and start a new family more easily than women after a divorce?

How can men remember all the pitchers’ names and World Series scores, but they can’t remember yesterday’s conversation?

Why is ‘romance’ such a primal thing for women but not as much so for men?

Do men have more sexual fantasies than women?

When men get angry, it’s difficult to get them to ‘talk about it.’ Why?

My dad worked himself to death for his family and we never really appreciated him—now my husband does the same thing. Why do men put so much into work?

Men seem to think about ‘honor’ a lot—at least it seems so from the movies. What does ‘honor’ mean to them? Is there a biology to male honor?

Can men actually be more fragile than women, at least in a lot of ways?

What is it with men and cars?

Are women afraid of commitment, or is it only men who are?

Why are men obsessed with getting control of the TV remote? In fact, what is it with all the gadgets in men’s lives?

Is it healthy for men to cry as little as they do?

It seems like men bond with women differently than women bond with men. Is this true?

What had started as a dangerous moment for me became one of great learning. This conversation was more than just the individual anecdotes expressed. There were certainly answers I could give about males, yet throughout the discussion I was as much a listener as a teacher, realizing the existence of questions and comments these women couldn’t express—the deeper confusions we all have about men. When a woman asks herself a question about a man in her life, she is most probably asking a question about all men.

Discussing the encounter with Gail that afternoon and on into the night, I knew that I wanted to address these questions and answers in a book. Women, like men, are asking very loudly today, What is a man? and all of us are seeking solid answers, not just some new trend of images or ideas.

During the afternoon’s discussion, some of the women put this need into words. Danielle said to me, When you talk about men, you talk about neurobiology and that kind of thing. It’s as if there’s a ‘science’ about men. That’s good to know.

It’s such a revelation, Katherine said, "to learn how the male mind actually works."

It’s a relief, Sandy agreed. "I didn’t have any brothers, and I barely knew my dad. It helps to know what men really think."

These comments reveal our readiness to look for solid identities. Danielle, Katherine, Sandy, and many others are ready to absorb social-trend theories into their thinking. But in intimate relationships, they want to rely on what is natural and altogether real.

THE SCIENCE OF MANHOOD

The research base of What Could He Be Thinking? is primarily the science of men. Just as the sciences of physics and astronomy are charting our universe now as never before, the biological sciences are charting human nature, both female and male.

As a social philosopher who specializes in neurobiology, I utilize an approach I call nature based. Its basic idea: Since society originates from nature, studying what is going on in human nature itself is the clearest base for social thinking. Though our culture presently uses the dichotomy of nature vs. nurture to attribute different elements of human development, nature-based thinking posits very little distinction between the two. In real life no biological organism exists outside its environment, thus the organism and the environment actually work in tandem, not in opposition. When we talk in this book about male biological trends, the male brain, and male biology, we will be looking at nature and nurture together.

In What Could He Be Thinking? the nature we will most frequently consult is the nature of the human mind: the brain and the many human mysteries that interact with the brain, as science can help us understand them. In the last decade, scientists have learned so much about the human brain that many of our past assumptions are being completely discarded. We can now grasp a great deal about the nature of the human mind if we ask the right questions. What could he be thinking? is one of the right questions.

In this book I’ll help answer it with the assistance of a number of kinds of research, and with a special emphasis on scientific approaches. In the note section for this introduction, you’ll find resources that enable you to read much of this material yourself, if you so desire. I will use three categories of research:

1. Hard science. In this category are scientific studies into the male and female brain, conducted on all seven continents over the last three decades. These involve cutting-edge technologies for studying the human brain. Research from the following fields of hard science will appear in these chapters:

•  neurobiology

•  neurochemistry

•  neuropsychology

•  genetics

•  endocrinology

2. Soft science. In this category are the social sciences. We will match hard science with soft as we proceed, checking results of each with the other. This research includes the fields of:

•  psychology

•  sociology

•  anthropology

•  ethology

We’ll pay specific attention to historical and anthropological studies of biological trends in men and women from all ethnic and racial groups. By biological trends, we mean inborn tendencies that predate social influences and inborn tendencies that are modified or enhanced by social influences. We’ll also utilize psychological and social studies on male and female development. I have chosen, among these, mainly the cutting-edge studies that include human biology and human nature, and I’ve avoided psychological studies that are mainly the social opinion of the clinical psychologist.

3. Supporting anecdotes. Both hard and soft sciences give us a credible and secure base for understanding human nature, but they are dry and lifeless without real life as an illustrator and critic: real people living real life, men and women in everyday relationships. I have selected a variety of sources for anecdotal support to the biological research, including:

•  A focus group in Spokane that was formed from Gail’s women’s lunch group.

•  Action research from the Michael Gurian Educational Institute, with anecdotes and stories.

•  Illustrative letters and E-mails I’ve received during the last decade from men and women.

•  Research from my family therapy practice (I have changed clients’ names and withheld certain details in order to protect confidentiality).

•  Examples from historical literature.

•  Examples from contemporary books, movies, and other media.

•  Personal life experience.

Supporting anecdotes and stories from individuals who have lived out the biological trends are crucial, I believe, to the understanding of the male brain. When we put hard sciences together with soft, then combine these sciences with diverse life stories, we can investigate the mysteries of a subject—in our case, the male mind—with greater confidence.

In each chapter of this book, you’ll find an in-depth presentation of what the sciences say about men, the male brain, and male nature, in research corroborated on a world stage with diverse cultures; you’ll find this presentation illustrated by psychological and sociological studies; then, in turn, you’ll find all the scholarly research from the sciences reflected in everyday examples from lives just like your own. With this approach, I am striving to make the new sciences, by which we can finally understand men, highly accessible; I am hoping to bring scientific wisdom about men, women, and relationships to everyday life. When this happens, we have established a new field of human study called gender biology one that enables us to understand men and women from the inside out.

We’ll look at how the male brain differs biologically from the female brain.

We’ll explore how male biology affects a man’s thinking about emotions, communication, sex, romance, marriage, morality and other keys to the journey of human life.

We’ll wonder together if a man could really be serious when he says, What do you mean the house is a mess? or even more frustrating, You worry too much. The kids are fine.

With this approach and material, we’ll not only discover the secrets of the male mind but also investigate maleness as an essential element each of us must encounter fully in our lives if we are to advance our humanity.

Throughout this scientific process, we should keep in mind that one book is not the whole person—so we are striving to see what he could be thinking.

In presenting this information to you, I hope you’ll find inspiration and vision that is life changing. I have set that high standard for this book, a standard based on the idea that human nature is always adapting. In our time now, we are striving for adaptation as passionately as people of any other time have. One of the key pieces we’ve been missing in our discussions of men and women has been the knowledge of male and female nature itself. I hope in this book that key piece will fall into place.

THE NATURE OF A MAN

I decided to write What Could He Be Thinking? after the inspiration of that Saturday afternoon encounter, but its journey into print began at the start of my twenty years of research into the biology of males and females. At that time I noticed that basing ones theories on actual human nature ran counter to the trend in psychological literature, self-help, and the social philosophy of relying on the opinions of clinicians in the fields of sociology and psychology for wisdom. Still today, much of what we read about men, women, relationships, family life, and education is primarily based on the study of social trends, not biological ones—society blind to human nature. When the subject of men and women is broached in most popular and academic literature, it is viewed from the lens of how our society has affected a man or how our culture has affected a woman.

My own research over the last twenty years compels me to make that approach secondary, not primary, in my books. Though social opinions and expert studies of social and personal trends are certainly of value, hard science generally provides an even more compelling and accurate base for answers to questions about male and female development.

From deep within our biology we gain a most powerful sense of who we really are.

Personally and professionally I did not always understand this. I was a child of my generation, looking toward social ideology and psychological opinions about men and women for truth about human identity. When I was a college student in the seventies, a course was offered called The Nature of Man—a philosophical study of human civilization, past and future. I searched in it for hard data about men. Despite its wisdom about Man, I didn’t learn from it what a man (or a woman) was. In graduate school, I still searched, learning that whatever a man was, he was socialized to be dangerous and defective. Manhood was really masculinity, a social construct that needed to be deconstructed.

Earlier in my boyhood, my family had lived around the world, so I had learned some important things about what men were both in my own culture and in others. Everywhere we traveled, I observed, I modeled, I listened. In any country of the world, the topic of manhood haunts a growing boy. Over the years, and when we returned to the United States, I learned a lot about what people thought the male role should (or should not) be. During adolescence I grasped at manhood by doing dangerous and provocative things and by watching the men.

Neither my professional development nor my growing up showed me the nature of a man—something from deep within that I could hold on to. I matured in a time that lacked consistent messages about the nature, goals, and responsibilities of men because all the human messages about males were in transition. At one point, in my twenties, I decided that it must not matter if I became a man. Being an adult and a person was enough.

But it wasn’t. I, like all males, knew at some deep level that there is a biology of manhood—internal frameworks that drive a man just like female frameworks drive a woman. I sensed something organic and naturally male in me. I could not discover what it was. I came to believe there was no useful male nature. I was in a kind of limbo and, often, in despair. I looked in the mirror many times and wondered, Who am I? I formed relationships with women who wondered why we men didn’t value our love relationships enough to explain and share ourselves. These relationships ended more quickly than I wished. I rarely understood why they ended, and only later did I realize that I did not understand the full breadth and depth of how I, as a man, could carry on these relationships.

When I became a practicing family therapist, I helped married couples through their pain and hurt. Sitting in the little room talking, all of us knew that marriages, families, and lives were at stake. Who were these men sitting in these rooms trying to talk? Over the years, many of us came to realize that we had to understand men from the inside out or we would not be fully able to live or love. Many men live and die without understanding who they are. Millions of relationships and marriages die in confusion.

Twenty years ago, during graduate school, I became intrigued by new sciences—neurobiology, sociobiology, neurochemistry, biochemistry. I couldn’t find full courses about them, but there was burgeoning literature available. These sciences were very wise. When combined with common sense and a spirit of wonder, they revealed to me the inner world of the human being. Their revelation of our human nature is even more advanced today, providing nature-based research that answers, in this book, the very question: What is the nature of a man?

In the last twenty years, I have surveyed scientific literature from thirty cultures on all continents, and no matter the culture I study, I discover what early brain scientists (some of whom you’ll meet in this book) already knew: Socialized differences between men and women exist, but there is a primal nature to man and woman on which culture has only a minor effect. This nature holds keys to better life, work, parenting, and especially, the success of all intimate relationships, including marriage.

Science, at its best, is of practical use to human beings living their everyday lives. In What Could He Be Thinking? I plan to provide you with practical, useful, and inspiring science.

A NOTE OF GRATITUDE

Though this book is primarily about men, it could not have been written without the help of many women. Gail’s help, guidance, and encouragement have been invaluable. From Gail, my daughters, and all the women who have guided me, I’ve gained a gift that deeply enhances this book: In presenting the nature of men, I must try to think like a woman. The women in my life have helped me focus on the primary questions women and girls are asking about men. The many possible chapters in this book were honed down to eight with their wise assistance. Gail, my daughters, and all the women I know possess amazing wisdom about the nature of a man.

Don’t just write another book about relationships, a friend said to me when she heard what I wanted to write. Don’t write what we already know. Help us see the future.

Another friend said, Don’t apologize for this book being about men. There are gobs of books and magazines and talk shows about and for women. Help us women understand you men!

My intention in this book is to fulfill those charges: to provide a new vision of men. Now let us begin that vision with a look into the place where so much of the human journey begins—in the male brain itself.

PART I

The Male Brain

Is there really such a thing as a male brain? Of course there