Men are from Mars!
Communication Differences Between Men & Women & Alternative Suggestions
By: Yvette Francino
Today I want to talk about Male Communication. I'll be the first to admit, I complain about the male style of communication. In the relationships I've been in, men typically don't want to talk about relationship "stuff". Women, on the other hand, like to talk about it in detail. My girlfriends and I have a field day dissecting every conversation and innuendo, analyzing what "level" we're at with our respective romantic interests, advising each other and empathizing on whatever our current relationship issue du jour might be.
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So...men, in general, have gotten this reputation of being poor communicators. Well, I've had a bit of a revelation. Men communicate very differently from women, but often are excellent communicators...dare I say it...maybe even better than women! I'm speaking in generalities, of course...I don't really like to associate personality types or communication styles, purely based on one's gender. However, I received two very articulate emails this weekend...both from men who had said their poor communication skills had contributed to problems in their marriages. This seemed unbelievable to me since in both cases, their writing seemed much more thought-out and insightful than any of the stream of consciousness scribblings that I ramble on about when I write. How could anyone consider these guys poor communicators?
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Then I remembered how I had always labeled my husband (now ex-husband) a poor communicator. He wouldn't talk to me when I was angry because I was too "emotional". That, of course, made me angrier. The result was that we didn't talk much at all. But one time, knowing he wouldn't talk to me while I was "emotional" I wrote a long email explaining my point of view about some point of contention. I kept it as "non-emotional" as I could, rewriting it several times, explaining how I understood his viewpoint and offering up solutions. Amazingly, I remember he responded very positively and the whole thing was resolved better than I could have hoped for. I have often told people that the only way I could really "talk" to my husband was through email.
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So what conclusions have I drawn about how men communicate? Well, in general they are less emotional than women, and probably are not all that comfortable talking with an emotional woman, especially if it might result in tears or hurt feelings. Women, perhaps, over-analyze relationships and ask a lot of questions that maybe the men just aren't prepared to discuss. Men often want to think through what they're going to say more carefully, rather than blurting out the first thing that comes to their mind...which might just come out wrong, causing upset to that "emotional" woman. Especially if they're just thinking about the football game, and wondering why she's asking about this AGAIN! (Women tend to like to be reassured often of the stability of the relationship).
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One of my aforementioned friends worries that he is not emotional enough. He writes: "Ha, I just realized how ironic this is.... I had to "decide" to be more emotional.... I'm still being driven by cognition and intellect not faith and emotion." Personally, I think there are times when communication is better without the emotion. As angry as I was that my husband wouldn't listen to me when I was emotional, I think in that case, the email approach was better. The problem in marriages often isn't the lack of emotion...it's the lack of communication.
In any case, I think women, including me, have given men a bad rap when it comes to communication. In the old days, people argued and then they kissed and made up. Now, in this new age of cyber-everything, we can use email to resolve our problems. But we can still do the kissing in person (or is there a way to cyber-kiss these days?) And if we women want to over-analyze a relationship, we have several options...we can discuss it ad-nauseum with our girlfriends, we can email the guy, giving him the chance to have a well thought-out response (I usually provide a convenient multiple-choice survey), or we can write all about it in a blog. Communication in the millennium is a breeze!
Author Rights:
This work is copyright © by Yvette Francino. All rights reserved. This work is NOT in the public domain. This work is made available to you for your personal use only. You are encouraged to read this work online or download this work and make a single copy of it on paper or disk for your personal review. You may not alter, take credit for, distribute, republish, or upload this work to any other computer system, message forum, network, or server. For licensing information, contact Yvette Francino by sending email to yvette.francino@gmail.com.
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Last Modified: August 6th, 2006
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