Are males and females insulated from arguing with each other? Considering that none of us is infallible, the answer is a resounding “No!”

But how each gender reacts to arguments varies.  The first thing to take into consideration is that men and women have physiological differences.  In plain English, they are wired differently.  Therefore, what is normal behavior for men when handling problem-solving is caustic for women.  The sooner that they come to terms with this reality, the more harmonious relationships they will enjoy.

But nothing is simple in this life.  Even after men and women realize that they are different and make necessary adjustments to their problem-solving techniques, there is usually an elephant in the room that remains addressing.  And that elephant is what men and women were exposed to when they were young and saw how their parents treated conflict.  Dysfunctional or abusive behaviors by the parents and witnessed by children leave indelible scars that must be addressed aggressively before harmony can be restored to their households.

The main complaint that women have in relationships is that men simply don’t listen or don’t care.  The main complaint that men have is that women are always trying to change them. 

Here is the disconnect.  When a woman argues with a man, the latter listens for a few minutes, assesses the situation, and proudly offers a solution.   What the woman is looking for and what she needs is empathy, not solutions.  For men, it is difficult to navigate to the world of feelings. Moreover, men like to solve their problems by themselves, while women seek help and enlightenment from their families and friends.

Following is a case in point that illustrates the tendency of men to be goal-oriented.  When they go to a restaurant, they view it as opportunity to engage in food management: no shopping, no cooking, and no washing dishes. But for women, going to a restaurant provides an opportunity to nurture a relationship – both giving and receiving validation from a friend or spouse.

Considering that women are not obsessed in proving their competence, offering help comes natural and needing help is not viewed as a sign of weakness.  To men, receiving unsolicited help from a woman could make them feel incompetent, weak, and unloved. 

Another sign that men are solution-oriented is their motto that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Men have a habit when they like something to stick with it.  Ergo, when they find a dinner entrée at a favorite restaurant, they repeatedly continue to order it.  Women, on the other hand, are more adventurous and prefer to try new main courses. 

I can recall when I went to a Peruvian restaurant in Virginia with my wife to celebrate my birthday, and I announced that I would order my favorite entrée: “lomo saltado” or “pan-fried beef.” My wife prodded me to try something different.  I responded by telling her that of all times, I was not going to order something different and run the risk of having an unsavory experience on my Natality Day.

Now we come to the point where there is an argument and how both sexes react to it. 

Men suddenly become introverts and go to a private cave to think about the problem that triggered the argument and find a solution.  When they succeed in finding a solution, they feel great and are ready to come out of the cave.  This process can take anywhere from three to seven days. 

But keep in mind, that if they can’t find a solution, they automatically will do something to forget their problems.  They will watch the news on TV, surf the Internet, read a book, or engage in a project that has been on their to-do list for the last eight months.  By doing these chores, they can relax. At times like these, they love to take the tranquilizing drug of “don’t worry/be happy.” This, of course, is not a recommended approach – as it tends to make matters worse.

When men are in their caves, they are highly stressed and become very distant, forgetful, and unresponsive.  They need time in seclusion.  There is no question about this.  But some women misinterpret this aloofness as a sign of not caring because they are not talking to them.

It is unnatural and toxic for a woman to deny a man his cave-time when facing an argument.  To expect a man to deal with a problem shortly after it happens is to rob the man of his physiological make-up and emotional needs.  To use a word in the vernacular, to do this represents the emasculation of his manhood.  Once this happens, this man would be a ghost of his past and an unsatisfactory partner – a laughing stock to the many. 

Turning over to women, they prefer to turn to someone that they trust and share in great detail what’s bothering them.  This helps them to feel better and less overwhelmed.  Women are not ashamed of having problems.  Their egos do not require them to feel competent all the times.  Instead, they aim to being in loving relationships.

The right move is for the woman to wait until she’s more loving, centered, and forgiving to talk to her man.  By doing the latter, she sets the right mood for the man to listen to her feelings.  This is to say that a woman does not have to suppress her feelings or change them to communicate with her man.  She does definitely need to express them in a way that doesn’t make her man feel as if he’s being attacked, accused, or blamed.  If the man feels attacked, he’ll take out his sword and go back to his cave again, which proves counterproductive to the entire problem-solving routine.

Men’s greatest fear is that they’re not good enough.  Therefore, they concentrate on activities that will bring them success and achievement.  To become better human beings, men have to learn how to give more, and that it’s okay to fail, and that they don’t need to have all the answers all the time.  To get to this level, men need their women to be loving and forgiving through all their mistakes. 

Let’s discuss now incidents that happened in the past that act as barriers to present-day problem solving.  I’ll present two case studies that I’ve concocted to illustrate these challenges.

Ricardo was eight years old when he lived in Communist Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro was in charge of the government.  With the diminution of civil rights and basic liberties by the communist regime, his father made the decision to emigrate to the United States.  Considering that the government is the sole employer in a socialist society, Ricardo’s father got fired from his job in Venezuela.  As his father was the sole breadwinner in his family, he had to resort to dealing in the subterranean black market to make ends meet.  To get an exit visa from the Venezuelan Government took three years.

Ricardo was enrolled in the fourth grade in a government-controlled public school.  To indoctrinate the children in the Marxist/Leninist ideology, the Venezuelan Government passed a law to force parents to send their kids to government schools.  This brought a lot of confusion to Ricardo, as he was learning communist ideology in the public schools, learning the democracy ideology at home, and Catholic dogmas in catechism on weekends. 

Ricardo became a very rambunctious boy, and he got into lots of trouble – at school and with other kids in the neighborhood.  His father got scared that Ricardo’s troubles might interfere with the Government’s willingness to grant his family an exit visa to the United States. 

Under enormous stress, Ricardo’s father beat the heck out of him when he got in trouble.  Ricardo was an intelligent and sensitive boy.  He realized that sometimes he deserved to be punished, but other times he thought that he was innocent of the charges.  By denying Ricardo his due process rights, he resorted to cursing his father out as his only line of defense – which only brought about more beatings.

Ricardo thought that he could have engaged his father in a fist fight, but this was anathema to the Hispanic culture and Catholic doctrine.  So, he had to eat it up and put up with it.  

This trauma rose its ugly head after Ricardo was married, and he got engaged in arguments with his wife.  After he came out of his cave and his wife attacked him verbally, his reaction was to take out his sword and go back to his cave again – for longer periods than it was necessary.  Just like cursing out his father in his youth was a defensive move, the cave served the same purpose.  But the bottom line is that neither one of these defense mechanisms solved the problems or arguments.  Going to the cave for three to seven days was normal.  Staying there longer was unnatural.

Ricardo’s wife, Teresa, was also from Venezuela.  They met when they were attending college in the U.S. Teresa’s father was also the sole breadwinner in a family of three girls and three boys.  The mother was a stay-home mom, with her sole responsibility being meeting the needs of the three girls.  Her husband suffered the same hardships that Ricardo’s family went through after announcing his intention to emigrate to the U.S.  To find relaxation, the husband turned to alcohol often and resorted to denigrating and insulting his wife – at times, in front of the children.  Considering that the stay-at-home mother was fully dependent for all her needs on her husband, she had to tolerate all these indignities. 

Teresa made an oath to herself that she would never allow similar abuse from a man by joining the workforce and being an equal partner in the household expenses.  After she married Ricardo, she found him to be her Prince Charming.  He could do no wrong.  But as the romance wore off by confronting every-day’s challenges, she demanded respect – something that her mother never had.

When Ricardo retreated to his cave, Teresa thought that he was inconsiderate and chauvinistic.  She demanded that he address the challenge of the moment immediately – not three or seven days later.  A delay on Ricardo’s part got interpreted as a frontal attack on her feelings and womanhood.  She thought that this business of Ricardo going back to his cave was more appropriate for cavemen – not 21^st century men. Even worse, she thought that Ricardo was arrogant and insensitive to her emotional needs.

This made problem-solving very difficult and very frustrating.  When Ricardo came out of his cave and was ready to talk to Teresa, she attacked him verbally for taking so long to deal with the challenge.  This resulted in Ricardo going back to his cave, and the entire dysfunctional cycle started all over.

Ricardo’s cave-seeking adventures were biology-driven.  This is a typical reaction of men when confronting adversity.  But it was more pronounced in him because it was a defensive move dating back to his youth when he couldn’t engage his father in a fist fight when he felt his father treated him unfairly.  Now, the cave provided a welcomed substitute to arguing heatedly with his wife for fear of putting his marriage in jeopardy. 

Teresa transformed herself into a Joan of Arc by verbally attacking Ricardo so viciously that he refrained from constructive problem-solving.  Teresa retreated to her youth and saw Ricardo as the personification of her father when he subjected her mother to demeaning outbursts.  

Before Ricardo and Teresa can have a loving marriage, they need to validate their past traumas.  They can help each other out to overcome their past demons.  They need to bring them out of the dark.  After doing so, they must conclude that what’s in the past needs to be buried in the past.  Times change, cultures evolve, and people outgrow their past hurts.  When they reach the conclusion that the best is yet to come, they’ll be on their way to securing that loving relationship and enjoying those loving momentos.   

Theodore Roosevelt was the 37-year-old president of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City when he wrote: “To sit at home, read one’s favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men’s doing.” Americans are counting on Republicans to aggressively confront the rioters, looters, and those inciting disturbances in our cities.

I’ve been around our planet long enough to realize that most people have set the wrong priorities when it comes to finding the meaning of life. And it pains me greatly to see dear ones come to term with what’s really important when it’s too late for them to reap the benefits of their discovery.

When I was in the federal workforce, there was a virus going around that infected the behavior of many employees. I hear that the virus is still around today. Rather than being content and diligent with fulfilling their job elements to the best of their abilities and making their programs and offices more successful, they were obsessed with just getting their next promotion. The higher the promotion in the career ladder – like the one for the Senior Executive Service (SES) – the more aberrant their behavior got. For example, I met an African-American manager who confided in me after exiting a job interview for an SES position that he had told the members of the interview panel that he was willing to do whatever it took to keep the managers happy – even to the extent of manipulating the regulations to derail potential findings of discrimination in civil rights complaints. This manager was an embarrassment to the civil service and a disgrace to every employee who filed a meritorious complaint of discrimination. But he was only thinking about himself and the SES promotion.

And I remember acquaintances who were overly concerned with outwardly appearances. When the disco fever was around, they spent their full paychecks on getting the grooviest wardrobe. To hook up the prettiest women, you had to dress the part – was their motto. And some contracted matrimony without really getting to know each other well – which led often to disastrous marriages and breakups. 

But let’s not forget the couples who had to evince to their neighbors that they had attained the American Dream. Driving a Lexus was not chic enough – a Maserati or a Bentley were better choices. And what better way to flaunt their pseudo opulence than wearing a diamond ring of at least two carats. Never mind that the husband was having an affair, the teenage son had an opioid addiction, and the wife was a victim of domestic violence. What’s most important to them was that the outside world saw a “they-made-it-in-the-high-society” picture. 

Then, there is the person who had a 2-hour commute to get to work, rarely took any vacations, neglected his family responsibilities consistently (like not taking his kids to soccer practice or attending their games), and had no time to take his wife to a romantic dinner at a nice restaurant. His excuse was that he’d have the time to do all these things after he retired.

And then, there is the married couple who argued a lot because they wished that they lived with the “perfect” significant other. Missing from these arguments was a realization that women’s emotional intelligence is far more developed than that of men, or that most men think with their minds first before they bring in their hearts. Moreover, most women want to settle arguments instantly, while men need more time to digest incidents in their caves. To aim for perfection in each other is delusional. To ignore the physiological and psychological differences of the sexes is counterproductive.

Which brings me to the point of what’s really important in life. It’s none of the things that I’ve discussed above. 

Here is the secret that I don’t mind sharing with you. The most important thing in life is “TIME.”

A person who thought that he/she could live forever was in for a rude awakening when he’s told that he/she had stage-4 cancer. The millions in the world could not grant him/her two more weeks to see his/her son/daughter graduate from college.

A member of the military when mortally wounded did not have time to raise his kids, pay for their education, and tell his wife how much he loved her.

An employee who’s suffered a major heart-attack lacked the time to go on vacation and see the world.

And the list goes on and on.

But I choose to go back to the married couple who had frequent arguments because of their search for perfection in each other. And their arguments could last for days and weeks. And one was too proud and silly to tell the other that he or she was sorry. And I think about those wasted moments that the patient with stage-4 cancer, the mortally-wounded service man, and the employee with the massive heart-attack never had. They would have killed to have these moments for themselves!

And I’ve come to the realization that the most precious thing that the married couple above could have to enjoy a happy life together is the time to enjoy life to the fullest, to make every moment count in their love for each other, their families and their friends, and to make an oath that going forward they will be content to accept the many imperfections that we all have because of our humanity.

The world will be a better place when we cherish the Time that we are all granted by our God to make a positive difference in each other. There is not a precious moment to waste. Our God grants us a beginning and an end. What comes in-between is a gift, and it’s up to each of us what we make of it!