This catchy phrase is the title of a book I recently came across. It is an international bestseller, and is reported to answer all the things you’ve ever wondered about the opposite sex. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The authors, Barbara and Allen Pease give us a hilarious look at where the battle line is drawn between the sexes, why it was drawn, and how to cross it.

In my previous newsletters #29 (The Neuroendocrinology of Love, Hate, and Aggression) and #59 (The Male Brain), I wrote about the revealing insights from brain hormones about the importance of understanding basic human drives. In newsletters #19, 26, and 39, I included information about the effect of stress on the immune system, weight control, and how the cells in the body cope with stress at the molecular level. Also, in the Mental Performance Improvement, and in the Immune System Builders sections, I provide even more information about this. These revealing insights into the battle of the sexes are based on the dramatic findings from research on the brain, and evolutionary biology. The importance of having successful relationships is a key element to avoiding the harmful stressors that hastens aging. The authors of this new self-help book have added more findings from studies of neuroscience, social change, and psychology to give us a sometimes shocking, always illuminating and humorous new look at topics of perennial interest to both sexes.

I strongly urge you to read this book for yourself, but to summarize, I can’t resist quoting from the authors own introduction to their book: “The fundamental problem here is simple: Men and women are different. Not better or worse---just different. Scientists, anthropologists, and sociobiologists have known this for years, but they have also been painfully aware that to express this knowledge publically in a politically correct world could turn them into social pariahs. Society today is determined to believe that men and women possess exactly the same skills, aptitudes, and potentials---just as science, ironically, is beginning to prove that they are completely different. 

And where does that lead us? As a society, we are on extremely shaky ground. It’s only by understanding the differences between men and women that we can really start building on our collective strengths rather than on our individual weaknesses. In this book, we seize upon the enormous advances that have recently been made in human evolutionary science and show how the lessons learned apply to male and female relationships. The conclusions we unearthed are controversial. But they give us all a solid and thorough understanding of the many strange things that happen to men and women. If only Bob and Sue had read it before they had set out---“

Pease, Barbara and Allen. Why Men Don’t Listen & and Women Can’t Read Maps. New York: Broadway Books,2001.