Familiar scenario? We think so.
Hopelessly lost, the woman suggests that you stop for directions and the man behind the wheel refuses, grits his teeth and drives further on towards the back arse of beyond. You have no idea where you are going, but he’s determined to find a way out without any help at all.
But while we think the reluctance of male drivers to ask for any outside help seems like ignorance, it may actually stem from a far less macho cause, plain blind panic.
While it seems women are more than happy to pull over and ask somebody directions and use all available resources to help them, men will rigidly stick to the original “plan”, be it a map or a set of directions, even if you are clearly taking the wrong track.
Experts have revealed the true meaning of the “women are from Venus, men are from Mars” theory, well when it comes to the steadfast car directions argument anyway.
They have suggested that being forced to confront the fact that their system does not work makes men flustered usually results in them putting the pedal to the floor in a bid to avoid the actual situation.
Oh nooo, things are heating up… and not in a good way.
Tristan Gooley, an explorer and expert in “natural navigation”, said he had noticed the difference between men and women while running courses in the use of cues like the position of the sun, moon and stars for orientation.
When men were shown a house with a low sun beside it, they struggled to tell whether the sun was rising or setting, but women realised it must be setting because the lights in the house were on.
Gooley explained his theory to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme; “I was testing the things that I taught people – the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, the weather, plants, animals, all these sorts of things.
“I put this test in front of groups, and men would stick within the system I had taught whereas the women would quite often say, ‘never mind all that, I can tell the lights are on in the house and nobody puts all the lights on at the start of the day’.
“I think women have less comfort with and faith in a system, whereas men like systems so they stay within the system even if it isn’t working all the way.”
It is almost never as enjoyable as this…
In the context of the stressful and very lost car journey, Gooley said men might refuse to ask for directions because if they did, they would be admitting that their system was not working.
“If you admit a system doesn’t work once, the fear creeps in that it doesn’t work at all and so there is a panic. Men won’t admit it, but that is my theory why men don’t ask for directions.”
Gooley’s suggestion was backed up by Dee Cafari, the solo round-the-world sailor, who added; “I think maybe our outlook and our view is different. I would say that women are more open to alternative suggestions.
“It is a little like creating something from a box – the women will read the instructions to find out how it should be done and the men will just go forth and see what bits are left over.”
She has just described most people’s childhood Christmas.
We think the only solution to this problem is to invest in a GPS, and pray that it works…
