Why men don’t remember stuff

Revealed: why women remember every little detail and men remember NOTHING

OUCH. IT’S MONDAY morning and I feel even more bleeucch than the end of a weekend should make me feel.

Our new dog, which has every disease it is possible for a dog to have, had sneezing fits last night at 2 am 3 am and 4 am. When I finally got to sleep, about 5 am, the youngest child woke up and demanded attention. It’s a conspiracy!

*

On mornings like this, the most active thing one can do is check the mail box.

Student Peter Wong sent me an interesting recent news cutting about a 78-year-old woman who beat up her 84-year-old husband. The AP report said:

“A witness told police the woman admitted assaulting her husband, including kicking him three times in the groin, because he had an affair 35 years ago.’

Peter said: “Isn’t 35 years rather a long time to wait to kick somebody?”

It may seem like it, Peter, but clearly you haven’t had much experience with women. They have astonishing powers of recall, far greater than humans.

*
Married men will know what I mean. Somebody appears on television, for example, and you make a seemingly innocuous comment, such as: “Madonna looks good for 50, don’t you think?”

There will be a moment of silence as the wife clicks back through her 5,000-terabyte memory dump. Then she will say:

“Ah, but you said, 13 years ago, on the way back from the supermarket, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, at 4.27 pm, limping slightly because of your new shoes, that you thought her bottom was bigger than mine.”

What is the right response to this? The only correct answer is to nod vigorously and agree with her. (Actually, this is the only response to everything your wife says.) “Yes, honey, you’re quite right, I did say that, and it’s still true.”

*
Peter, here’s some advice. Never, never dispute anything your woman claims to remember, even if it is patently obvious that she has imagined the whole thing.

A buddy of mine was once asked by his girlfriend: “Do you still love me as much as you did at 10.34 am on the second Wednesday of our first trekking holiday in Nepal?”

He replied: “It must have been someone else. I’ve never been to Nepal.”

Wrong answer! Within days, he had been kicked out. The correct answer would have been:

“Yes darling, I’m sure you’re right. I can’t remember ever going to Nepal, which surely means the two of us visited it in a previous life.”

Her eyes will fill with tears as she is deeply moved by your high level of spirituality and self-awareness. She will then agree to ANY command you give her. Woohoo.

* 
Why can’t men remember the promises they made five years ago? Or even, let’s face it, earlier the same day? I once asked a top doctor this question (actually, he was a hospital orderly, more or less the same thing) and he explained it in medical terms.

Men only have a small amount of blood, and it’s not enough to power multiple organs at once. If the brain is working, everything else stops. If another major organ is using the blood supply, the brain grinds to a halt. This explains why any man approached by an attractive woman will say extremely stupid things, babbling like a toddler.

Factor in our limited memory capacity and you begin to understand the challenges of being male.

The only way men can function is to auto-delete irrelevant data such as “the loo roll needs changing” or “I am married” to ensure there is enough memory capacity for the really important stuff, such as who scored the winning goal in the 1978 football semi-finals.

You gotta have priorities.

Ladies: you may now kick your husband.

 

Technorati Tags: women,memory

Comments

[Ellen]

Reading the above, I felt incredibly sorry for men. What hard lives you live.

And then I came to my senses. What pathetic excuses you make!

Thanx for the laugh.

[Gina]

Nury, you rock!

[Dancer]

'Why can’t men remember the promises they made five years ago? Or even, let’s face it, earlier the same day?'

Wrong! I know men who can't remember the beginning of the conversation, words coming from their own mouths, just 5 minutes ago.

Should I treat it as a gender-based amnesia, i.e. a disability - something that women should pity on, or should I start kicking anyway?

[Mel]

Spot on Ellen!

[Stevedore]

My theory is that we all live lives in which we are bombarded with information all the time. But its the stuff that we emotionally connect with that stays. we simply don't have the brain capacity to keep it all.

So Dancer, your male friend may say "I love you" and forget about it five mins later, but when he says 'I saw a maserati on the street" this is something important which he will remember and talk about for the rest of the week.

I don't think men and women have different memory circuits, just different choices.

[TS]

Nury,
Your example is flawed, men don't walk with a limp because of new shoes, that's what women do.

[Stevedore]

TS, I sometimes walk awkwardly or even limp when i see a highly attractive woman, but it is not because my shoes have become uncomfortable. Another part of my nether regions have become uncomfortable.

ps. i know you are just being sexist, so i thought i would be too!

[Karuna]

Dancer, read this earlier this morning.

>> A husband trying to analyze or understand his wife will take him nowhere. Analysis leads to paralysis. Everybody is constantly trying to understand, analyse, judge others while struggling to change the other person. Unfortunately, people fail to realize that this is impossible as all of you are like computers who have been programmed and hence have no free will of your own. Your past lives, birth traumas, childhood, education, culture and all your conditionings are in possession of you and your lives. Your life flows according to this programme.

So, when you are trying to understand and change the other person; it is only one programme trying to alter another programme. This game goes on from birth to death. Supposing you are going to a movie everyday, hoping that there will be a new ending, a new climax. Will it really change? All of you are trying to change each other in the same way!

What you need to do is experience the other person fully.

When the husband returns home to find his wife screaming; he must experience her like watching a movie or drinking a glass of juice. What happened? Why it happened? Why is her nature that way cannot be really known. Remember, it is like peeling an onion.

If you experience life becomes Joy!

It does not matter what the event is. You have to only experience the programme. Stop judging and being critical. When you experience the other person, you would know exactly how to respond.
<<

[Karuna]

similar thoughts about experiencing life are beautifully captured by our own Nury earlier in

http://mrjam.typepad.com/diary/2009/02/through-the-eyes-of-a-child.html

Personally rate this as one of the best of Nury's work

[Santox]

Does this mean that women have better memory than men?

I think they do - at inappropriate times and uncanny situations, when you least expect that that of answer; resulting in a melodrama of sorts.

[Outraged Male]

I resent all these absurd allegations that men have bad memories. I will give you an example which proves that we have an excellent capacity of recall.

It's about time the above sexist anti-male allegation was disposed of once and for all.

My example is this.

You see, um. The proof that men have good memories is er.

Hang on a mo.

No, it's gone. Sorry.

[Vaibhav]

I was going to post a response to whatitsname but i seem to have lost my train of thought.

So it is true.

[Dancer]

When I say men forget what they were saying 5 minutes ago, I meant that LITERALLY. I really timed the conversation in secret coz it happened so many times. The guy really stopped in the middle of his tracks and asked, 'what was I talking about again?'

Karuna, so far my experience of his life goes something like this:
Him: There's nothing wrong with my memory!
Me: Blah, blah, blah
Him: Blah, blah, blah
Me: Blah, blah, blah
Him: What did I talk about again?
Me: (Trying to imitate a human voice recorder).

[sej]

Darn! It's gone! What was this thread about again?

[Jonah]

Dancer, the precision with which you can remember your male friend (boy friend?)'s conversations down to the minute/second proves this column is accurate....

AH, but can you remember who won the FA cup in 1966?

You see, when it comes to the important things in life you girlz are nowhere..>>

[Jonah]

Dancer, the precision with which you can remember your male friend (boy friend?)'s conversations down to the minute/second proves this column is accurate....

AH, but can you remember who won the FA cup in 1966?

You see, when it comes to the important things in life you girlz are nowhere..>>

[Karuna]

Dancer,

That your male friend has memory lapse when he is with you is actually a great compliment to you.

As Nury points out earlier: "any man approached by an attractive woman will say extremely stupid things"

[Kwong]

Hi Nuri, how true it is ... I'm just about to wreck my marriage, if I have not already done so, because when I was having some words with my wife lately, she kept telling me things I said or promises I made, some while we were dating and some just a few minutes ago, but none of which I remember :(

To make the matter worse, I either drew a blank on my face or responded with a straight denial ... Mmm, it would be nice if you could give me (or a few of us, the men) some more scripted responses in your next article.

[fardel]

Hey guy s
I think you are all wrong.
This lady DID wait 25 years to kick her husband!
Anybody who can endure 9 months of pregnancy ( and 18 years education for each child born ) has the capacity, endurance and patience to kick the hell out of a husband when he weakens;
After all , everything is your fault, starting with her pregnancy.
If not, it is her father's fault for getting her married .
If not, it is her grandfather's fault for inventing marriage .

As for memory:
Memory is like muscles, it needs practice; we all do remember things, but accidents happen :
Getting drunk erases the memory
Falling for a girl erases the memory of previous "affairs "( this includes good memories of current marriage )

Women, at least the majority of them, do not get drunk and do not have affairs, but they do have grudges, which hey store in a corner of the brain, on a grudge shelf;
when it is too full , they literally explode.

Sorry guys to be too serious for these columns:
If you do not want your wife to kick you in a few years ,you have no choice:
Behave ,
be nice,(I mean all the time )
Do not forget birthdays, wedding anniversary, mother-in-law birthday, kids birthdays,
Help with the household
Take the kids for a walk avery once in a while
Take the dog for a walk avery once in a while
Take the mother-in-law for a walk avery once in a while ( beware: in this case,DO BE extra careful, any smile (or any look) to a young beauty will be a guarantee for dire consequences)
Buy flowers once in a while
Perform like a champion every day ( almost)
Stop drinking
Do not go out with pals, when something , anything goes wrong in the house
Have good taste;
Is my list too long?
You have no choice:
run away not to return
Join a monastery
Or get kicked when you do not expect it
Do you remember everything?
Are you the perfect husband?
You will get kicked anyway;
You have missed something that she did not!!!

[Deepak Chari]

When I ask my wife for some thing which she knows it exists somewhere in house, I unfailingly cannot see it even if I turn the neighborhood upside down. Then I scream, I cannot find it. When she comes angrily to look for it for me, that darn thing starts to appear magically where I had searched for it for hours. Now what do you call this other than black magic, which only women can practice! I think more than remembering, men also cannot see some (or most of) things. Or does it happen to me only?

[TS]

@Deepak Chari: Ha ha, No you are not alone, that's our household in a nutshell.

[Jonah]

Woah, Deepak, you just described my life perfectly.

[Vaibhav]

Reminds me of a typical conversation at my house.

Me: Honey have you seen my sunglasses?
Wife: Have you looked for them??
Me: Grrrrrr!!!

[Uli]

Women tend to forget things, too, especially when they're pregnant or during breat-feeding periods.
Presently, I can't remember the slightest things without notepads.
I plaster them everywhere...
But, really, men sometimes do not seem to have the brain capacity to store the whereabouts of tiny things like keyrings or cravats or ... They tend to remember bigger things only ;-)))

[Karuna]

Me: Honey have you seen my sunglasses?
Wife: Have you looked where you left it last night ?
.......
.......after some time....
.......
Me: Honey where did I leave my sunglasses last night ?

[sej]

Some women have the concept of a "Man Look"... ie., the way a guy looks for something when they've lost it.

And Uli, I've read about some research which suggests women lose around 5 IQ points during pregnancy, and maybe also whilst breast feeding. But you can relax, you get them back again later.

[Angela]

Nury, If the man fardel described above exist, please give him my email. He sounds like a perfect partner material :-)
Maybe he will end my singlehood..LOL..

This is a major male-female difference that I wished had been taught in school so that I could have avoided a lot of heartaches.

I take it personally that he forgot our anniversary, he forgot my favorite color, forgot my favorite flower, forgot he was married...

[Angela]

On a sunnier note, I remembered this incident.

H who is a practical joker, dropped a condom inside his friend M's wife's handbag. M travels frequently for work and who knows what he forgets during those trips. Now everyone knows that H is a practical joker and is always playing pranks on his friends. But this one takes the cake. Few days after, M's wife called H. Expecting the worse, H confessed his prank. Surprisingly, M's wife called not to scold him but to thank him and to ask him not to tell M that it was another one of his pranks because M just bought her an Hermes handbag.

:-)

[Uli]

Thanks sej, you made my day! :-)))

[fardel]

Fardel does not exist.
He is a by-product of your imagination

[sej]

Uli, You're very welcome!

[TS]

I have just realised that I'm in deep trouble.
Just went to empty the washing machine and among the things that I'm allowed to wash, mostly my own clothes and those tiny little socks that women use to make it look like they have bare feet in their shoes, I discovered a blouse belonging to my significant half.
I know very well that the geometric symbols on the washing label means that only the first born prince of Langbortistan can hand wash it, using freshly fallen melted snow from the Andes Mountain Range and tear-drops the bird species of Black-faced Spoonbill.
No! I did not forget to remember that I should not put my wife's clothes through the mangler, I Sincerely believed it to be one of my own T-shirts.

Ah well, I'll buy her a garden gnome, the blouse should be a perfect fit now.

[Angela]

I KNEW it was too good to be true!

Fardel is just an imaginary character in a fantasy world.

But oh boy! what a wild fantasy it was..LOL..