That's men for you: You know the scene: you are with your wife and she meets her best friend whom she hasn't seen for a couple of weeks.
"Oooooh!" the friend gushes. "New shoes! They're gooooooooorgeous! Where did you get them?"
"Of course he," the wife says indicating you, "didn't notice them at all. I could be wearing hobnail boots for all the difference it makes to him."
Your futile efforts to pretend that you did, in fact notice the shoes but didn't get around to mentioning it are dismissed.
Sometimes women get really unfair about this sort of thing, but these lapses are not due to indifference on the part of men. They are due to variations in the ways men's brains and women's brains are wired up.
Women take in more detail than men do because their brains are structured to be very good at noticing details.
Otherwise, they would find it just as hard as we do to notice dirty dishes, socks on the bedroom floor, new hairdos, new shoes or, God help us, new handbags.
Other variations, too, are caused by differences in brain structure and not by an unthinking and uncaring attitude on the part of us men.
That area of a woman's brain which is linked to processing language happens to have more neurons packed in than does the corresponding part of a man's brain.
As Scientific American diplomatically put it, it could explain "women's enhanced performance in tests of verbal fluency".
Women bond more than men, too. They put a higher value than men on conversations and actions which suggest togetherness.
One of the primary chemicals which stimulate bonding is called oxytocin. Women's brains produce more oxytocin than do men's.
Differences in the way our brains are wired up come out in many other ways, as well.
Year-old babies will choose different types of toys, depending on their gender. Girls are likely to choose dolls and boys to choose things they can throw or move, like cars. This difference is even found in male and female baby monkeys who presumably have not been influenced by human society.
If presented with a choice between looking at a human face and a mobile, day-old girls will spend more time looking at the human face and day-old boys at the mobile.
Getting from place to place also shows up inherent differences between men and women. Men tend to estimate distances and directions. Women tend to use known landmarks. Again, these variations seem to relate back to different brain structures.
The point of this is to understand the futility of undermining our relationships by criticising each other for perfectly natural differences.
Many of the flashpoints in our relationships have nothing to do with being good or bad. They have everything to do with the way our brains are physically designed.
It's not deliberate.
It's just a brain thing.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.