Relationship Intelligence - Hear This Gentleman, The Female Superpower

I vividly recall a science fiction novel from decades ago. In that story, an intelligent species from another planet has a society similar to humans’. However, there is a key difference: the alien species has three genders. Instead of male and female, they have left, middle, and right. The left is a gender that is highly logical and rational. The middle is always sensitive and sensible, full of rich feelings. The right is stable, calm, and nurturing. Any relationship can only develop when individuals from each gender engage. The exact details of the novel fade from my memory, but the triangulated, complex, and intriguing relationships between the three genders truly fascinated me. Jealousy isn’t a binary feeling directed at another but rather a feeling about the connection between two others. Passion is expressed through uniting three individuals, while betrayal can occur within the group of three genders or towards another group of three. There are also significant misunderstandings between one gender and the other two. The left doesn’t understand why the middle relies so much on intuition, whereas the middle doesn’t appreciate that the right is as fluid as dead water. While I certainly enjoyed the novelty and fanciful nature of the novel, it’s clearly not a relationship model I’d find appealing. The idea of a genuinely fascinating relationship between two genders is complex enough on Earth. One more level of complexity? I’ll pass.

Many years later, I realised that people (on earth, obviously) expect much more from relationships due to societal evolution, which is illustrated as CUPID expectations in the section above. It’s a bit amusing to imagine how a three-gender alien creature would end up with their CUPID expectations, especially given their deep misunderstandings among genders. However, a question strikes me: do we, humans on earth, understand the opposite gender well enough to support CUPID expectations?

I don’t think so. Any airport bookshop would have more than a few dozen books explaining why men or women behave a certain way (Why Does He Do That? Why Women Grow? Why Men and Women Act the Way They Do? All these are real books). When we turn on the radio where programmes allow people to dial in and share their stories, sentences like “I simply could not figure out why men/women do this” often come up. A lady I met at a kid’s playdate told me, after just twenty minutes of chat, that she assumes “all men are bad until they prove otherwise”. (Really? All of us?) On a much larger scale, there is the 4B movement in South Korea that encourages women to: 1) not marry men, 2) not have children, 3) not date men, and 4) not engage in heterosexual relationships with men. While the Manosphere movements declare that “the system is rigged against men,” the MeToo movement clearly shows a belief that the system pushes women by tolerating harassment. I have no intention of presenting, evaluating, or judging any of these social movements, but it’s clear there are deep misunderstandings between men and women. So, let’s try to resolve these misunderstandings here a little bit, in the hope of increasing our relationship intelligence.




Hear This Gentleman - The Female Superpower




The main misunderstanding for men is the idea that women have a superpower over emotions. Due to biology and evolution, an average woman is generally better at perceiving, processing, and expressing emotions. Usually, when looking at large groups, women tend to have a higher average ability to perceive, process, and share emotions than men. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean every man and woman you meet, where the man is emotionally clueless and the woman is emotionally advanced (although, technically, the chance of finding an emotionally clueless man is higher than that of a woman, if selection is purely random).

Reasons for women’s emotional advantage are plentiful. Firstly, this advantage directly compensates for women’s lesser physical strength and speed. When a woman faces danger from another human, especially a male, she is less likely to succeed in fighting or fleeing. Therefore, women have developed an advanced ability to accurately perceive others’ emotions, such as recognising if someone approaching is angry or hostile. In other words, since women cannot rely solely on fighting or fleeing from hostile strangers, those with a better ability to assess danger through emotional analysis gained an evolutionary benefit. As a result, more of these advantageous genes for emotion processing have been passed down through generations.

The second reason women have an emotional advantage is their primary caregiving role for children. Since children have a limited ability to use language to communicate, the main carers of babies, usually females, rely on emotional cues to understand their needs. When a baby is crying softly, with hand waving and mouth slightly open, it probably means the baby wants a hug. However, if the baby produces high-pitched crying, fists clenched, mouth wide open, he or she might be hungry. Female primary carers have been practising the superpower of deciphering their little ones’ needs through all the subtle cues, such as tiny mouth movements and eye widening. This superpower of decoding emotions is supported by natural selection, as females who better understood children’s needs correctly were more likely to pass on their genes.

The third reason that females have an emotional edge is their natural tendency to connect and relate with other females. Similar to the physical disadvantage mentioned earlier, which pushed women to quickly and accurately assess strangers, this physical challenge encouraged females to build strong bonds with others, fostering a sense of belonging. While both men and women need a sense of belonging, the need is biologically stronger in females because, when faced with danger, they tend to rely more on their group for support than men do. Social studies have shown that, compared to men, women are more prone to depression and anxiety when alone (no wonder teenage girls are known for forming their own tribes). Therefore, to boost their chances of acceptance within a group, females developed the skills to relate, to be empathetic, to communicate, and to share. In evolutionary terms, females with a better ability to integrate into a group had a higher chance of survival.

These three reasons have given women a real superpower: the ability to relate, understand, and empathise. Society increasingly values this superpower. Over the past few hundred years, there’s been an unprecedented need to cooperate, resolve conflicts, listen, and connect. Thousands of years ago, when humans mainly lived in tribes of about 150 people, the challenges to thrive were simpler and less diverse. Most of these 150 individuals shared the same race, cultural background, food, and language. Encounters with other tribes of similar size were rare, and when they did happen, interactions were straightforward, like trading goods and splitting land. Today, society’s complexity has grown many times over. Business meetings often involve people from five continents. You can hear five languages spoken on a street of just twenty houses. Trade disputes now and then involve most countries, with consequences that can occur almost overnight. For example, a 300% tariff on Chinese products? Fine, I’ll declare bankruptcy. I wouldn’t be surprised if more female leaders could help achieve faster and more peaceful resolutions to international conflicts. If Donald Trump were a woman, I doubt he would say, “I can be the toughest man in the world, don’t tell me how I should feel,” in front of other world leaders.

Why is it important to understand women’s emotional superpower for improving relationship intelligence? Men can better understand women by recognising the depth of their emotions. As Hermione told Ron in Harry Potter: “Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon does not mean we all do.” Ron struggled to grasp why Cho Chang felt both happy and sad at the same time. Similarly, men have sometimes been like Ron, unable to understand mixed feelings like jealousy with excitement, bitterness with relief, or longing with poignancy. However, having relationship intelligence involves recognising that a partner, lover, girlfriend, or wife might be experiencing emotions beyond our understanding. This awareness enables us to support, validate, and comfort—whether by offering a hand, tissues, or a cuppa. Embracing the vast ocean of emotions can foster a deeper bond.