The mind of a woman

"Why is thinking something women never do?

"And why is logic never even tried?

"Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.

"Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?"

Hopefully you realize this is not a quote attributable to me. These are the much beloved lyrics from Alan Jay Lerner's "My Fair Lady," in which the immortal question is posed: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

Still traumatized from the response of female readers to a column on menopause, I decided not to rely on my own experience about this subject and ask my female "advisers" what insight they have on the workings of the female mind and how it evolves with age.

Mostly I received positive responses from my female correspondents.

Many echoed Ann, who wrote: "I think more and more kindly of myself, warts and all. I enjoy being able to be more open and loving to everyone, without worrying about their reactions to me."

Rose got a bit more down and dirty about the subject.

"It seemed like my husband and I somehow switched places -- he's the one who's too tired or has a headache. I'm even beginning to learn the male skill of fantasizing about other men," she said. "There is an unleashed quality to aging that is pleasant."

Carolyn would agree. She is developing a homestead in the wildness of the Canadian north and intends to chop up the 1,500-foot-tall birch trees herself for firewood.

"I could hire someone to have that done, but hell no -- I want to do it myself. It contributes to a wonderful renewed sense of independence," she said.

My female correspondents consistently report this sense of a greater freedom to assert themselves to "be impatient with phony people with agendas and eliminate toxic people from my life," Margo said.

Or to rediscover the "buried, crazy, irreverent, nutso bits of me I used to love," Kathy said.

What many women will see as a greater mental freedom to be their own person, men have reported to me as "demanding," more confrontational and generally less appealing.

I asked Dr. Barry Miller, a prominent analyst, about this. He pointed out that women's minds, after midlife, can often become seized by the "masculine," just as the male mind can be overtaken by the "feminine."

He explains: "For both, this psychological condition is one where their inferior aspects take over and dominate the personality. Men become moody, easily hurt, passive, feminized, while women become masculinized."

As you can imagine, this scenario rarely results in harmony between the sexes. What needs to happen is for both men and women to integrate their "opposite sex mind" into an internal harmony. It's an essential psychological task of the second half of life.

But I can't let a couple of male psychologists have the last word on this subject. I will give that to the lovely Pam Taveggia, one of the first female minds that captured my attention back in the moonlit nights on the banks of the Mississippi.

According to Pam, who contacted me by e-mail, many things have changed for her since those days but she reports that three things have never changed for her:

"Do I want sex? Yes. Do I want chocolate? Yes. Do I want love? YES."

Dr. Michael O.L. Seabaugh is a Cape Girardeau native who is a licensed clinical psychologist in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica, Calif. Contact him at mseabaugh@semissourian.com.