I have heard that women mentally are able to multitask much better than men (see the link at the bottom for more information). I totally believe it, for two reasons: 1. I've seen my wife do it. 2. I know I can't do it. I used to think I could multitask. I've since learned that it feels like I'm multitasking but what I'm actually doing is task switching. In other words, I have to temporarily suspend the current task so I can focus on the new task. If men are a single processor CPU, women are a quad-core.

For instance, I do not have the ability to navigate an area of town I've never seen before in my car and carry on an intelligent conversation at the same time. I can have a conversation, it's just not intelligent. While I'm trying to figure out what the heck to do at the red light, my brain has put the actual conversation on auto pilot. I wonder how many of you women have seen this phenomenon before. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Wow, really? No kidding." We think we're actually getting away with it, but women are generally much smarter than that. If you catch a guy doing this and you can tell that his brain is wrapped up in something else, ask him a complex question that cannot be answered by yes or no. It will completely screw him up and he will have no choice but to come back to reality.

Conversational auto-pilot seems like a wonderful thing to us because we really can't do two things at once effectively and we really want to finish what we've started. It's actually an ok strategy if all of the following are true:

What I am doing is more important than the feelings of the person I'm ignoring.

I care more about this particular task than I do about my relationship with the person I'm ignoring.

I'm actually talking to my dog, who will love me regardless of how much I disrespect him.

When talking to women, it's not so great. So how do we avoid this pitfall? One very simple answer is to actually look at our wives when talking to them while doing nothing else at the same time. Simple, and effective! Practically, this means:

pause the DVD player. You have the remote and you know how to use it.

pause the DVR or Tivo (don't worry, it's recording for you). If you can't do that, it really is better to just mute the TV (unless you can reach an agreement with your wife that all new conversations that don't constitute a crisis must start during a commercial). Your wife is worth it, isn't she?

close the lid on the laptop while she's talking to you. Don't try to type while one of you is talking. You can't pull it off and you will end up missing something important.

Speaking of which, has your wife ever jumped on you because she's sick of imforming you about the same life detail over and over? It drives my wife crazy. In my case, this happens primarily because of my occasional use of conversational auto-pilot. Women, don't talk to your man about something important unless he's actually looking at you. Seriously, this one is on you. If you're in a completely different room from him telling him something important, all bets are off. You're not doing yourself any favors at that point. If you want to tell him something and he's on the computer, ask him to face you so you can talk. Don't start until you have eye contact. Again, simple and effective!

And finally, when your wife comes to you about something she's upset or angry about (whether it's about you or not), don't try to fix it unless she asks you to problem solve it with her! This one is such a struggle for me because I am naturally a problem solver. If there's a problem, I instictively want to jump in, fix it, and move on to the next problem. Apparently that's just part of my God-given wiring. I get a little bit hammer-and-nail happy. But a woman's first priority is to be heard and understood. Ask your wife if this is true for her. I bet she'll say yes. My wife often says "I just want you to be in it with me." While there are multiple applications of this, a big one is for me to be in it with her emotionally and to make that a priority over whatever the solution might be. Not doing this right will make her not want to share things with me, because she isn't getting what she needs from the conversation.