Over a decade ago, I began studying men with this question: What if men are responding to women? I wanted to know what made the same man treat one woman so differently from another.

He could be very attentive to one and completely ignore another. He could treat one like a sister, another like a barmaid, and yet another like a queen. Being the one that usually ended up as the sister or barmaid, and never the Queen, I wanted to know!

Since then I have found numerous ways in which men are responding directly and in the moment to the behavior and attitude of the woman in front of them.

In looking for the ways men respond to women, I discovered the other side as well - the many ways that a man's behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with a woman, or anyone else!

One of the things we learned about men is that their thinking processes work very differently than women's. Men are "Single Focused". This means that they pay attention to one thing at a time. Being multi-task oriented, women have often made the mistake of interpreting Single Focus as being stupid or stubborn. It is not. It is just a different way of thinking that is extremely effective for many purposes.

Because we have not understood Single Focus, we do things that really do not work for men and give us very poor results. For example, we interrupt a man while he is focused on something and expect him to shift to paying attention to our topic or our needs. It doesn't go well, as I am sure you know.

Being Single Focused does not mean a man cannot handle complexity. They can and do very well. Think of coaching football for example. There is an enormous amount of information being dealt with at the same time. During a football game, he's got the offense, the defense, the clock, the score, the play book, his team's strategy and theirs. But he is not confused by it at all. All those things are dealt with inside of being focused on one thing - winning the game.

Now, here is the good news for women about Single Focus. Remember all those times your feelings were hurt or you got angry because your man was watching T.V. and ignoring you? Or eating dinner and ignoring you? Or staring into space and ignoring you?

You might have thought if you were sexier or more outgoing or thinner or more beautiful, or something else, then he would not have done that. Guess what? He never did that. He was never ignoring you. Ever.

Men are never watching T.V. AND ignoring us - that would mean they were paying attention to two things! All those times our feelings got hurt? They were not ignoring us!  So you never have to be ignored by a man again!

We think men are ignoring us because that is what we can do. Being multi-task oriented we can do almost anything while actively ignoring someone else!  And we often do.

One more thing. Remember this the next time a man is watching T.V. - or fishing, or driving - and you plop down next to him and ask, "What are you thinking about?" When he says, "Nothing", believe him. A glorious benefit of Single Focus is getting to think about nothing. I envy men for this!

©2006 Alison Armstrong

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