Getting onto the Field

Winning Points with the Women in your Life One Touchdown at a Time
by Jaci Rae

Shedding a Little Light on the Complex World of Male — Female Relationships: Why we are the Way We are.

So you've made it into the stadium and you are now stepping onto the playing field for your first day of practice with the Dallas Cowboys. Nervous excitement courses through your veins as the coach talks about the various exercises he is going to run the team through and begins to discuss the different plays and strategies he will be using during this season's games.

While much of what the coach talks about initially lies within the realm of football common sense and comes easily to you, there are little nuances in a few of the plans that you are not familiar with. Also, some of the ideas and plays are foreign to you and could cause complications and confusion in the games ahead if you don't learn them correctly.

Fun Football Fact: The term 'Super Bowl' was created by Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs.

A team's language will guide you in how to respond to your teammates on the playing field. This language that each player must learn is full of individual components, called the 'plays.' For each 'play,' there is a 'plan.' Each of these 'plays' and 'plans' has been specially formulated through years of research and scientific study, producing entire systems of proven techniques that can make winners out of the players and teams.

Once the methods were proven effective, they were gathered together and worked into a playbook for each team to base its 'plays' and 'plans' on. It is that playbook that each teammate must learn in order to be part of the winning team.

This process is much the same as that of the 'plays' and 'plans' of a relationship. You need to read the manual, learn from those who are already where you want to be in their relationships and listen actively to your partner in order to learn how to speak their language. Once you learn this language, you can enter the winning part of the game and make a run for victory!

A woman's way of viewing and speaking about relationships may seem very complicated, and sometimes annoying at first. You may find particular things in her language syntax that are hard to understand and certainly difficult to interpret! And as if that weren't enough, many women have a tendency to turn over and over in their heads most of what is said to them, finding more than what may actually be there.

While men tend to go with the flow without over-analyzing things, women try to find out what's behind the words they see and hear when dealing with their loved ones. This process is intuitively part of their naturally protective circuitry, helping them emotionally guard themselves and their loved ones. Have you ever heard the statement, 'You don't want to mess with Mother Bear?' This applies here because women are built as nurturers and maintain a natural curiosity about their environment, in order to help them protect themselves and those they love from perceived dangers.

This natural curiosity triggers what I like to call the 'need to know' gene. Women have the 'need to know' or to discover all the 'information' about their surroundings and then make judgment calls as to any dangers that may affect those they love. This of course, can lead to any number of natural responses to the perceived dangers of their surroundings and an inherent desire to analyze all causes and effects.

Because curiosity (analyzing) is a natural response for women, it tends to bleed over into other areas of their lives, namely their relationships.

Fun Football Fact: Which coach has won the most games in NFL history?

In addition to analyzing most of what is said to them, women may often have hidden meaning in what they say, even if they don't intend to put it there. Men are not as complicated (in a good way) with their spoken language. What men say is most often what they mean. So, why is it that so many women seem to include hidden messages behind their words?

In the same way that women tend to over-analyze things, sometimes they also include hidden meaning in their spoken words. The reasons for this can be partially found by looking at the traditional upbringing and social history of women. Parents and other adults teach women, at a very early age, that they need to be strong, confident and know what they want. They are also told that they need to be assertive and independent in order to succeed at fulfilling their dreams and desires for their future.

In reality, though, oftentimes the media image of a woman is much different. Society in general, sees images of successful women on television and in the movies that are more demure and non-aggressive, but still get what they need and desire.

The woman on television or in the media, who ends up with the man of her dreams, may have played it 'coy,' playing off on her seeming 'need' for the man. The media image presented is often in direct conflict with the way that a woman may have been raised. Because of these two conflicting images, women have now received mixed messages and are subjected to confusing images about the way they should behave in society.

On top of this, women see the men around them as being intrigued and often fascinated by the media image of a woman, an image that may not always interconnect with the ideals and values that they, as women, were brought up with.

Because of this, women may be unsure how to present themselves and may seek to bring forward aspects of both images at the same time. As a result, they may confuse the two images, hiding their true feelings and thoughts deep within their words, all the while struggling to achieve the final goal of communicating their needs or 'message' to those that participate in their lives.

Fun Football Fact: Don Shula has won the most games in NFL history. He won his 325 th game on November 14, 1993 as the coach for the Miami Dolphins. On that date, the Dolphins defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 19 - 14.

A perfect example of a woman who was portrayed in this fashion by the media was Princess Diana. Because she was portrayed as being meek, mild mannered, demure, and fragile, both men and women were fascinated and intrigued with her. Not only was she a beautiful princess, but she also seemed emotionally vulnerable, as well a woman a man could take care of; for many men, she was a fantasy of the 'perfect' woman.

In reality, though, Princess Diana was a fiercely independent woman, a tigress capable of fighting when it came to what she believed in, someone who went after what she wanted with a tireless passion. This truth, and the truth of many women beyond Princess Diana, differs greatly from the images often times portrayed in the media.

Are you beginning to understand the playing field a little bit more? Great, then let's move on to…

Chemistry and Environment

Our environment has a great deal to do with how we relate and react to each other as well as how we communicate with other people. Another huge factor in our character make-up is the individual chemistry that everyone is born with. While much has been said about how different the sexes are, how much do we actually know?

The facts show that men and women are conceived equally in terms of their overall intelligence. However, somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth weeks of pregnancy, there is a testosterone wash that flows over the brain of a male baby. i This wash does not take place during the formation of a female baby. Let's take a look at how the brain works and try to understand why this is so important.

Testosterone is one of the main chemicals that enable the brain to manufacture and create serotonin , which is an important neurotransmitter in the brain, causing certain nerve cells in the brain to activate and become livelier . Serotonin can also act as an inhibitor. Most neurotransmitters can act as both an exciter and an inhibitor.

Serotonin is 'a hormone found in plants and animals that acts as a neurotransmitter and vasoconstrictor in humans. ii' If someone has too little of this chemical in their brain, it can cause depression and/or obsessive compulsive disorders. Serotonin affects the brain's interior, known as the ganglia.

The ganglia are the network of the brain, which is divided into two cells, the L cell and the R cell . Scientists believe that one of these cells makes serotonin and the other produces dopamine.

Dopamine is 'a monoamine neurotransmitter formed in the brain (and is) essential to the normal functioning of the central nervous system. iii ' Dopamine acts as an inhibitor in the ganglia, thereby causing a calming effect and dampening activity. If someone has too little dopamine in their brain, it can cause Parkinson's disease. If they have too much, it can cause schizophrenia.

A neurotransmitter, by the way, is a chemical that is released when the axon terminal of a pre-synaptic neuron is excited. An axon terminal is the swollen knob like area of the axon and an axon is "The long, spider-thin, tail-like structure of a neuron. The axon carries signals (electric voltages) between the dendrites (the neuron's input sites) and the terminal buttons (the neuron's output sites that are at the very end of the axon). iv ' A pre-synaptic neuron is the point before an impulse transmission occurs.

Fun Football Fact: What do C.C. Pyle, the NFL and AFL all have in common?

Back to the testosterone wash. It is believed that during the testosterone wash, a balance between the L cells and the R cells are set, determining the amount of serotonin and dopamine that the brain's network will use. This also determines how spatially aware a person is, with men being born more spatially aware and women more temporally aware.

The word 'spatial' is defined as 'relating to space. v' As men are generally more spatially aware, they tend to be better at judging distances, which comes in handy during parallel parking! The word 'temporal,' meanwhile, is defined as being 'of or limited by time. vi' This may explain why women generally have an easier time associating time and events.

You know that little thing that really bothers men about women - she remembers everything she thinks you have done wrong and when you did it! I believe this is due in part because of a woman's propensity for temporal awareness.

Because of the testosterone wash, men tend to be more 'left - brain' oriented and women rely more readily on the 'right - brain.' 'Left - brain' individuals tend to be more interested in facts, inclined to logic and reason . They are more motivated in providing for the home and usually more interested in becoming engineers, mathematicians and scientist. These are just a few career choices that a 'left - brain' individual might make.

Fun Football Fact: In 1926, C.C. Pyle petitioned the NFL for a franchise. When they refused, he started the first AFL (American Football League), which held nine teams, including the Grange's New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Quakers. The AFL lasted only one year and folded shortly after the New York Giants shut out the Philadelphia Quakers 31 - 0 in December of 1926.

A 'right - brain' individual tends to be better at, and more interested in, developing relationships and dealing with emotional issues. They are more inclined to emotions and passions and are generally more motivated by investing in the relationships ofthe home. Their career choices tend to put them in the roles of caregivers or into jobs where they can use their artistic, investigative and research abilities.

This is in contrast to the general tendencies of 'left - brained' men. Again, a clearer picture begins to be revealed when we look at the differences between the sexes in this light.

Most men might find a leisurely reading of Popular Mechanics or Programmer's Security Desk Reference fundamentally more interesting than reading Martha Stuart Living or Parent Child Magazine, while women are just the opposite.

This is simply a matter of one's interest and NOT an intellectual issue, as both men and women can be motivated for various reasons to read on all the subjects mentioned. Remember that both sexes are born equally in terms of intelligence.

Fun Football Fact: What historic event took place for the Baltimore Ravens on January 28 th, 2001?

An interesting bit of trivia: The top women's magazines, as reported by the US Market Research Report, are those dealing with lifestyle, fashion and homemaking. They include Better Homes And Gardens, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day, Ladies' Home Journal, Oprah,Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Glamour.

The top men's magazines? Playboy (Now there's a shocker! More on this later.), PC World, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Business Review Weekly and Golf Digest.

Back to our look at individuality and what makes us all so unique and special. A 'left - brain' individual (generally a man) wants to conquer, while a 'right - brain' individual (generally a woman) wants to give sympathy and look for sequence. There's the basic chemistry lesson for now.

Here is an observation that I made of a man who wanted to conquer and a woman who was looking for sequence. There was a man and a woman who were mountain biking on a very steep and rocky road. When they reached the top of one of the steepest grades on the road and were facing an equally steep drop, the woman didn't seem to be enjoying the ride as much as the man.

With a pained expression on her face, she seemed to be saying, 'How am I going to get down this mountain without getting hurt or breaking my bike?' Her eyes darted back and forth as she analyzed the drop.

While she was carefully trying to find the best sequence of maneuvers that would keep her safe while getting her down the hill, the smile on the face of the man said it all. His eyes gleamed and seemed to say, 'Yeah! Cool hill! I'm going straight down, really fast! I'm the man!' While he was elated, she was not. Men are geared for speed and love to conquer and that's exactly what he was going to do.

Fun Football Fact: On January 28 th, 2001, the Baltimore Ravens won their first Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida. They defeated the New York Giants 34 - 7 in Super Bowl XXXV at Raymond James Stadium.

My uncle gave me a funny example the other day of how men see women's thought patterns when it comes to making decisions. I thought that this insight was a great example of men conquering and women looking for sequence and order before they tackle the matter at hand.

Here's what he had to say: 'Men rule by action. Women rule by committee. For example: Man sees hill, climbs hill. Woman sees hill, forms discussion group, sets up hill climbing committee, votes for hill climbing team, schedules climb date, checks rain fall charts, does studies to locate best path, sends out scouts, and much, much, much, much later... finally climbs the hill.'

The Good News

The facts stated thus far pertain only to our pre-disposition at birth. The things we experience each day, the lessons that we are taught as we move through our daily lives and the personal choices we make along the way will also be determining factors in how 'left' or 'right - brain' we become. These factors will also directly affect our communication with and relationship to others.

The good news is that since each of us has the freedom to make personal choices, we can learn to hear and understand each other's language when we step onto the playing field to begin practice! 'Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.' Psalms 119:73

Once you step up and onto the playing field, however, you will need to hear exactly what the coach has to say during practice if you want to make it to your first game. So listen up!

Fun Football Fact: When was the policy of blacking out home games first upheld?

© 2005 Jaci Rae

About the Author

Dubbed by the media as "The Rae of Hope" and "Racy Jaci" for her quick wit...this is one gal whose got it goin' on! Jaci Rae... award winning singer, critically acclaimed writer, radio show host touted by the media for her brutal honesty and industry guests, and successful entrepreneur. Jaci has been hitting it hard in the music industry since she was 10! Offered a contract by the majors when she was 18, Jaci sought something different and declined. Since then Jaci has toured the world, making fans one stop at a time. Continuing to educate herself in the entertainment industry as well as continuing her studies in psychology. What a mix!