A recent study found women to better in perceiving and describing the relationships as compared to the men folk. Men often feel with a biased mind and also lack the sensitivity women are able to show while describing their feelings and those of their romantic partners.

A study was undertaken by a graduate student Dana Atzil Slonim and Dr. Orya Tishby of the ‘Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare’ at the ‘Hebrew University of Jerusalem’, in cooperation with Prof. Jacques Barber and Dr. Carol Foltz from the ‘University of Pennsylvania’ to evaluate the accuracy of the perception and description given by men and women in regards to the their relationships and the feelings associated with them.

97 American couples participated in this research, enjoying the different marital status and age groups between 18 and 46. The researchers prepared a questionnaire, focusing mainly on understanding the sensitivity shown by the couples in their relationships in three main contexts.

They tried to study the participants’ wishes and desires in relation to their partners in romance, the kind of responses, they expect their partners to give towards these wishes and desires and how would they react themselves to these responses. The questionnaire carried two kinds of questions to be answered. First how they evaluate their relationships with their partners and secondly how do they think their partners would respond to the same question.

The results shown by the survey showed a general agreement in terms of partners towards the conflicts and the feelings of love, care and sensitivity towards each other. Both wanted to avoid clashes in the relationship and similarities in the feelings. This similarity was more prevalent among the married couples. They were found to more alike in their attitudes towards each other more than what they perceived of each other’s responsiveness.

There were certain areas where there was a higher degree of disagreement regarding the opinions on certain topics, like the fear of being left or discarded out of the relationship, feeling of independence and attitude towards sex. The women were rated more ridden of fear and apprehension of being thrown out of the relationship by men whereas women rated them lower on that. Men rated themselves to be carrying a higher degree of fear and threat as compared to the opinion given by the women folk who found the men to be less ridden with such fears and doubts.

Men were rated to be found more independent by the women, few degrees higher than what they thought of themselves. Men complained of females to be less interested and more fearful in matters of physical intimacy and sex. Women gave better scores to themselves in these points.

The results showed that the women are more accurate than their men partners in projecting their thoughts about themselves and their partners too.
It also threw light on the thought patterns which were found to be mainly influenced by the popular stereotypes related to man-woman relationship. The partners projected opinions more under the influence of these popular notions rather than trying to discover the true feelings and desires in each other.

This gives stress to open communication which should be there among the couples so that the conflicts could be reduced and the quality of relationship could be improved upon.