The Female Brain by Louann Md Brizendine Page B

heroin addicts get when they do drugs. The combination of dopamine and oxytocin forms the biological basis of this drive for intimacy with its stress-reducing effect. If your teenage daughter is constantly talking on the phone or instant-messaging with her friends, it’s a girl thing, and it is helping her through stressful social changes. But you don’t have to let her impulses dictate your family life. It took Lauren months of negotiation to get Shana to sit through a family dinner without text-messaging the world. Because the teen girl’s brain is so well-rewarded for communication, it’s a tough habit for you to curb.
    B OYS W ILL B E B OYS
    We know that girls’ estrogen levels climb at puberty and flip the switches in their brains to talk more, interact with peers more, think about boys more, worry about appearance more, stress out more, and emote more. They are driven by a desire for connection with other girls—and with boys. Their dopamine and oxytocin rush from talking and connecting keeps them motivated to seek out these intimate connections. What they don’t know is that this is their own special girl reality. Most boys don’t share this intense desire for verbal connection, so attempts at verbal intimacy with their male contemporaries can be met with disappointing results. Girls who expect their boyfriends to chat with them the way their girlfriends do are in for a big surprise. Phone conversations can have painful lulls while she waits for him to say something. The best she can often hope for is that he is an attentive listener. She may not realize he’s just bored and wants to get back to his video game.
    This difference may also be at the core of the major disappointment women feel all their lives with their marriage partners—he doesn’t feel like being social, he doesn’t crave long talks. But it’s not his fault. When he is a teen, his testosterone levels begin soaring off the charts, and he “disappears into adolescence,” a phase used by one psychologist friend of mine to describe why her fifteen-year-old son never wants to talk to her anymore, takes refuge with his buddies in person or online gaming, and visibly cringes at the thought of a family dinner or outing. More than anything, he wants to be left alone in his room.
    Why do previously communicative boys become so taciturn and monosyllabic that they verge on autistic when they hit their teens? The testicular surges of testosterone marinate the boys’ brains. Testosterone has been shown to decrease talking as well as interest in socializing—except when it involves sports or sexual pursuit. In fact, sexual pursuit and body parts become pretty much obsessions.
    When I was teaching the class of fifteen-year-olds and it was time for the girls to ask their questions of boys, they wanted to know this: “Do you prefer girls who have a little hair or a lot of hair?” I thought they meant hairstyles, as in long hair versus a shorter cut. But I quickly realized that they were referring to the boys’ preference for a lot or a little pubic hair. The boys resoundingly responded “No hair at all.” So let’s not mince words here. Young teen boys are often totally, single-mindedly consumed with sexual fantasies, girls’ body parts, and the need to masturbate. Their reluctance to talk to adults comes out of magical thinking that grown-ups will read between their spoken lines and the look in their eyes and know that the subject of sex has taken them over, mind, body, and soul.
    A teenage boy feels alone in and ashamed by his thoughts. Until his buddies start to joke and comment about girls’ bodies, he thinks he is the only one consumed by such intense sexual fantasies and the constant fear that someone will notice the erections over which he seems to have no control. Compelling masturbatory frenzies overwhelm him many times a day. He lives in fear of being “found out.” He’s even more wary of verbal intimacy with girls, though he dreams