Martine Rolls: Kiss and a cuddle erase differences

So many people have said to me that they want to see more good news in the Bay of Plenty Times. I'm sure they would have been happy when they picked up Monday's paper and looked at the front page.

The story about Joyce and Eric McGarva, who have been together for more than 70 years and never argue, was heart-warming.

Typing "how to keep the spark alive in a relationship" into Google gives a staggering 24,300,000 results. It must be a hot topic.

On Facebook, we also received some great reactions when we asked for tips on how to maintain a great marriage or relationship.

I thought first that it would be just the ladies commenting on this question, but it was good to see some guys putting in their two cents worth, too.

Tim Jamieson replied: "Communication is very important, and trust is essential. Communication is about listening properly as well as talking properly. And kiss each other deeply for at least 10 seconds every single day to keep the romance alive!"

Tim, you sound like a great guy.

I'm by no means an expert on how to maintain a great relationships with the opposite sex but I am interested in how people manage to do it.

Truth is, wouldn't we all like to have a beautiful and long-lasting relationship just like Joyce and Eric's?

So what are the issues here? Are women really too fussy?

Are men too insensitive? Do women talk too much? Do men talk too little?

I'm convinced that most of the common problems in relationships between men and women are the result of fundamental differences between the genders.

If we would understand and accept that, maybe we can make it work?

Are you ready for a few serious gender generalisations that all hold a certain degree of truth to me?

When a woman shares her problems with a man, she is not looking for solutions. All she needs is someone to talk to and to listen, while all he wants to do is fix it for her.

Thank God for today's navigation devices because, if a woman gets lost on the road, she will stop at a service station and ask for directions.

Men will never stop and ask for directions. They would rather drive around in circles and insist on finding their way. At least men are good at reading maps.

While on the subject of driving, the majority of men firmly believe that women cannot drive, not to mention how many of them confess that it annoys them that every part of a car is known to women as "that thing".

A typical male has, at most, six items in his bathroom - a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel. The average number of items in a woman's bathroom is around 400, and most men have no idea what most of these are for.

Let's stop here, wouldn't you say?

In the world of science, it is now widely accepted that a few of the fundamental differences between men and women are biological.

To get a better understanding of each other, we may need to turn to neuroscience.

It turns out that men and women do, in fact, have different structures and wiring in their brains.

A bit of online research tells me that women have larger connections and more frequent interaction between their brain's left and right sides.

This explains why women have better verbal skills and intuition.

Men have greater brain hemisphere separation, which explains their aptitude for abstract reasoning and visual-spatial intelligence.

Men have approximately 6.5 times more grey matter in the brain than women do, but women have about 10 times more white matter than men do. This difference may just be the key to the differences in the way men and women think.

Men seem to think with their grey matter, which is full of active neurons. Women think with the white matter, which consists more of connections between the neurons.

If you now say that you understand the problem a little better, that's great.

But what's the solution?

I guess that depends on whether you are a woman or a man.