Who’s more selfish – men or Women?
A study says it’s men -- and Toby Young’s wife Caroline agrees. After all, he tried to check into a hotel to sleep when she brought their new baby home! So what does HE have to say for himself?
LOOkINg back, the alarm bells should have rung 20 years ago. I was living in New York and had decided to stay over for the first time at my new boyfriend Toby’s apartment. I was enjoying a deep, vodka-induced sleep when I was roughly shaken awake.
‘Sorry, darling, but you’re going to have to go home,’ said Toby. ‘What do mean?’ I asked blearily. ‘You’re snoring and I can’t sleep. Come on, you’ve got to go,’ he said, as he bundled me out of bed and his apartment onto the streets of Manhattan.
Admittedly, I did live close by, but it was 3am. I was flabbergasted. I accept snoring may not be one of my most attractive qualities, but really? How rude! How selfish!
And, as a recent report concludes, how utterly characteristic for a man.
researchers from the University of Zurich have finally proved what women the world over have known for years. That women really are the kinder and more selfless sex.
The study, which looked at the areas of the brain that are active when charitable decisions are made, found that the reward centre in the brain is more strongly activated in females when they do something friendly or helpful than something selfish.
The male mind, on the other hand, is more egocentric, encouraging narcissistic acts over selfless ones.
I can’t say the results surprised me. For even though I went into marriage with Toby with my eyes wide open, there have been times when he has behaved in such spectacularly selfish ways that I have been left speechless.
Four days after the exhausting and physically draining experience of giving birth to our first child, Sasha, and while I was struggling to cope with breastfeeding, Toby — already sick of sleepless nights — declared: ‘That’s it! I’m just too tired. I’m going to have to go and check into a hotel to get some sleep.’ It was only after I unleashed my postpartum, psychotic, hormonally-charged monster that he realised the error he was making.
Not, I hasten to add, that he learned from his mistake. When I became pregnant again a year later, we decided to get an au pair. Anastasia arrived two weeks before the birth of our son.
On her second night she was supposed to babysit Sasha as Toby had theatre tickets to the hot new play in the West End. But at the last minute I panicked about leaving the baby with someone and told Toby I thought it would be best if I didn’t go.
Without pausing for breath, Toby turned to Anastasia, who was 20 years old, 5ft 9in tall with perfect skin and startlingly green eyes, and said: ‘It’s supposed to be great and it would be a shame to waste the ticket. Do you fancy it?’
The baby was promptly dropped in my lap and before I could scoop up my jaw from the floor, Anastasia had changed into a mini- skirt and the door had slammed behind them.
We now have four children, aged 14, 12, 10 and nine, and not once has Toby got up with them in the morning to help with the school-runs.
He often has work dinners which means he doesn’t get home until well after they have gone to bed, and he certainly doesn’t know how to put on a wash.
I don’t resent this at all, as I gave up my job as a solicitor after Sasha was born and Toby does work tirelessly as a writer and broadcaster to support us all.
What I do mind, though, is that he can afford to go to bed considerably later than me and every night when he comes into the bedroom he stomps around as he undresses.
nOT content with collapsing heavily into bed, he then starts watching television loudly on his iPad. And this is after years of husband-training.
When we were first married, he would come into the bedroom when I was fast asleep and switch on all the lights. He was shocked when I told him that was selfish and demanded he change his habits.
You might wonder why I went on to marry Toby when he had revealed his true colours so early on in our relationship.
Perhaps I instinctively knew what Dr Alexander Soutschek and his Zurich team have discovered, namely that men are naturally more selfish than women and become more so as they get older. In other words, whomever I married, the story would have been the same.
Or perhaps it’s because I know I am capable of being quite selfish myself. Toby was very supportive of my decision to become a stay-athome mum when I wasn’t particularly enjoying my career.
I also have a tendency to get obsessed with new hobbies: boxing, barefoot running and, lately, tennis. He is very indulgent of these fads and doesn’t complain too much when my latest hobby takes me away from family life for hours at a time.
There are also times, I’ll admit, when my husband’s selfishness can come in handy when it comes to occupying the marital moral high ground. It was my birthday last week and Toby was away. I found myself almost hoping that he would forget to call me so I would get extra credit in the bank for when I want to go off to play in a tennis match.
I was almost disappointed when I got a text at 10 pm. He’d just snuck in under the wire.
But then I discovered he’d only sent it because the friend I was dining with that night was so worried about my reaction had he forgotten that she texted him a reminder under the table.
Do I believe his claims that he would have remembered anyway? Not for one minute — the selfish so-and-so . . .
TOBY WRITES
CArOlINE made it pretty obvious she wasn’t the most selfless woman in the world on the night I proposed to her. It was January 1, 2000, and we were in a French ski resort.
I had intended to propose the night before, on Millennium Eve, but before I could get the diamond ring out of my pocket, a good-looking young man in a kilt approached our
table and invited her to a party. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ she said.
‘I’d prefer not to,’ I said, fingering the ring in my pocket. ‘In any case, I don’t think I’m invited.’
‘You’re so selfish,’ she said, and stormed off back to the chalet.
The following night I plonked the ring down on the table before anyone else could derail my proposal.
She looked at it with wide-eyed amazement, clearly not expecting it. I made my pitch and it seemed to go over quite well. At least, I thought it had.
She started talking about what it would be like to be married to me and, to my ears, the pros outweighed the cons. ‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked. ‘ Because you haven’t said “No” yet,’ I replied ‘Yes, but I’ve implied it.’ Reluctantly, I stuffed the ring back into my pocket.
‘Hang on a second,’ she said. ‘Can I at least try it on?’
She slid it on her wedding finger and held it up to the light. ‘ How much did it cost?’
Now, at this point I have to confess to a certain lack of romance. I had got the stone from a friend in the diamond trade for the cost price of about £800. ‘Twelve thousand pounds,’ I said. ‘Really?’ she replied. I immediately began to worry that I would have to live in constant fear that she would find out the truth about the ring. I practically yanked it off her finger.
Anyone reading this will probably think we deserve each other. But after 16 years of marriage, I definitely think Caroline is more selfish than me. For one thing, she doesn’t work.
I know, I know. Looking after four children is work. But it wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I married her.
Caroline was a trainee solicitor, and I envisaged a comfortable existence in which she paid the bills and I eked out a living as a full-time writer. But as soon as she qualified she got pregnant, and, in very short order, we had four children.
To be fair, I’ve always wanted to have a large family and it would have been difficult to do that if Caroline and I both had demanding careers.
We agreed I would be the breadwinner and she would be a fulltime mum — and I’m glad that at least one of us is able to devote ourselves to the children’s needs.
It is when it comes to the little selfish things she does that I get cross.
WHY does Caroline never bother to hang up the towels after she’s had a bath? I have been complaining about this incessantly since we first started living together, yet I’m still confronted by a pile of damp towels on the bathroom floor every night.
Then there’s the fact that she cannot enter a room without turning on all the lights — and never bothers to turn any of them off when she leaves. Doesn’t she realise electricity costs money? The same goes for the central heating, which Caroline insists on switching on at the beginning of September each year. I have taken to showing her the monthly utility bills and pleading with her to put on another jersey to save money but nothing has changed.
She also goes to bed earlier than me and insists I creep into the bedroom without turning on the light. Heaven forbid I should wake her up.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the floor wasn’t strewn with booby traps — cardboard boxes, shopping bags, high-heeled shoes. If I make the slightest sound, she sits bolt upright and accuses me of being ‘selfish’.
According to the experts from the University of Zurich, women are the nicer sex because they get more pleasure from sharing than men do. Dr Soutschek insists the male mind is more egocentric, and men derive more satisfaction from narcissistic, selfish acts.
THAT may be true in general, but it’s certainly not true of Caroline. The thing that gives her the most pleasure is when a new pair of trainers arrives from Amazon.
She is not as bad as other women when it comes to buying clothes, make-up and handbags, but her trainer habit is threatening to bankrupt us.
I lost the joint bank account battle years ago — what’s mine is hers — but it would be nice if, just occasionally, she asked before shelling out £130 on a new pair of Nikes.
The reason she buys so many pairs brings me to the one area in which Caroline definitely is more selfish than me: her hobby.
About five years ago she started playing tennis seriously, and it consumes more and more of her time.
She’s now the captain of the ladies’ second team at the local sports club and insists on playing in both the winter and the summer leagues. If you add all the ‘social tennis’ she plays, as well as the one-day tournaments she enters, it’s not an exaggeration to say her hobby takes her out of the house three nights a week. I have become a tennis widower.
Caroline’s defence is that I left her with little choice because my career as a journalist and broadcaster, not to mention running a free schools charity, means I’m out several nights a week myself.
What is she supposed to do? Sit at the kitchen table with a pair of slippers and a hot, cooked meal, waiting for me to come home? Not a chance.
In truth, I suspect we’re both pretty selfish, but we’re also quite good at making allowances for each other. The fact that we knew what to expect going in — that we are both headstrong people used to getting our own way — helps.
We accuse each other of being selfish all the time. And because we’re both right, the marriage seems to work.