Like chalk and cheese

- Buy Men! by Isabel Losada

"It's blatantly obvious that we just don't understand one another very well," Losada smiles wryly.

"Essentially women want men to be more like women and have been complaining for years, 'Why doesn't he just talk to me?', and the same is true in reverse, with men wishing women were more like them and thinking, 'Why is she always moaning?'!"

In an attempt to understand the reasons for this, Losada interviewed Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, about the difference between men and women.

After years of detailed study, Baron-Cohen discovered two distinct groups of people - the 'empathisers', or E-types, who are able to identify and appropriately respond to the emotions and thoughts of others, and the 'systemisers', or S-types, who are more comfortable analysing how systems work and behave.

"A person's sex does not necessarily determine brain type, so not all men have the S-type brain and not all females have the E-type brain, but, on average, this theory holds true," Losada explains.

"So now we know it's scientifically proven that most women are interested in intimacy and talking about emotions, but most men are about as interested in doing that as I am in the inner workings of my computer. We have long suspected it, but it turns out to be true - our brains really are just wired differently," she adds.