Why Boyfriends and Girlfriends find it hard to talk to each other

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THERE’S A SERIOUS CRISIS in communication between girlfriends and their respective boyfriends. In fact, this is also playing havoc with marriage.

Deborah Tannen, a best-selling author and expert in interpersonal communication, explains that this crisis is best represented by “the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.” It is observed that although men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less when with girlfriend or wife and not with other people. This often becomes a crucial problem because “most wives [and girlfriends] want their husbands [boyfriends] to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few [of them] share this expectation of their [partners].”

So how can women and men have such different impressions of com­munication in relationship? Why the widespread imbalance in their inter­ests and expectations? These issues were scholarly addressed in Tannen’s book That's Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations with Others (1986). The following explications were excerpted from the summary of her work published in The Washington Post in 1990:

Linguistic Battle of the Sexes

“… Boys and girls tend to play with children of their own gender, and their sex-separate groups have dif­ferent organizational structures and interactive norms.

“…[T]hese systematic differences in childhood socialization make talk between women and men like cross-cultural communication, heir to all the attraction and pitfalls of that enticing but difficult enter­prise…

“For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven. Little girls create and main­tain friendships by exchanging secrets; similarly, women regard conver­sation as the cornerstone of friendship. So a woman expects her hus­band to be a new and improved version of a best friend. What is important is not the individual subjects that are discussed but the sense of closeness, of a life shared, that emerges when people tell their thoughts, feelings, and impressions.

“Bonds between boys can be as intense as girls', but they are based less on talking, more on doing things together. Since they don't assume talk is the cement that binds a relationship, men don't know what kind of talk women want, and they don't miss it when it isn't there. Boy's groups are larger, more inclusive, and more hierarchical, so boys must struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group. This may play a role in women's complaints that men don't listen to them. Some men really don't like to listen, because being the listener makes them feel one down, like a child listening to adults or an employee to a boss.

“But often when women tell men, “You aren't listening,” and the men protest, “I am,” the men are right. The impression of not listening results from misalignments in the mechanics of conversation. The mis­alignment begins as soon as a man and a woman take physical posi­tions. This became clear when I studied videotapes made by psycholo­gist Bruce Dorval of children and adults talking to their same-sex best friends. I found that at every age, the girls and women faced each other directly, their eyes anchored on each other's faces. At every age, the boys and men sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere in the room, periodically glancing at each other. They were obviously attuned to each other, often mirroring each other's movements.

But the ten­dency of men to face away can give women the impression they aren't listening even when they are. A young woman in college was frustrated: Whenever she told her boyfriend she wanted to talk to him, he would lie down on the floor, close his eyes, and put his arm over his face. This signaled to her, “He's taking a nap.” But he insisted he was listening extra hard. Normally, he looks around the room, so he is easily dis­tracted. Lying down and covering his eyes helped him concentrate on what she was saying.

“Analogous to the physical alignment that women and men take in conversation is their topical alignment. The girls in my study tended to talk at length about one topic, but the boys tended to jump from topic to topic. The second-grade girls exchanged stories about people they knew. The second-grade boys teased, told jokes, noticed things in the room and talked about finding games to play. The sixth-grade girls talked about problems with a mutual friend. The sixth-grade boys talked about 55 different topics, none of which extended over more than a few turns.”

Listening to Body Language

“Switching topics is another habit that gives women the impression men aren't listening, especially if they switch to a topic about them­selves. But the evidence of the 10th-grade boys in my study indicates otherwise. The 10th-grade boys sprawled across their chairs with bod­ies parallel and eyes straight ahead, rarely looking at each other. They looked as if they were riding in a car, staring out the windshield. But they were talking about their feelings. One boy was upset because a girl had told him he had a drinking problem, and the other was feeling alienated from all his friends.

“Now, when a girl told a friend about a problem, the friend responded by asking probing questions and expressing agreement and understand­ing. But the boys dismissed each other's problems. Todd assured Richard that his drinking was “no big problem” because “sometimes you're funny when you're off your butt.” And when Todd said he felt left out, Richard responded, “Why should you? You know more people than me.”

“Women perceived such responses as belittling and unsupportive. But the boys seemed satisfied with them. Whereas women reassure each other by implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because I've had sim­ilar experiences," men do so by implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because your problems aren't so bad."

            “There are even simpler reasons for women's impression that men don't listen. Linguist Lynette Hirschman found that women make more listener-noise, such as “mhm,” “uhuh,” and “yeah,” to show “I'm with you.” Men, she found, more often give silent attention. Women who expect a stream of listener-noise interpret silent attention as no atten­tion at all.

            “Women's conversational habits are as frustrating to men as men's are to women. Men who expect silent attention interpret a stream listener-noise as overreaction or impatience. Also, when women talk to each other in a close, comfortable setting, they often overlap, finish each other's sentences and anticipate what the other is about to say. This practice, which I call "participatory listenership," is often per­ceived by men as interruption, intrusion and lack of attention.

            “A parallel difference caused a man to complain about his wife, “She just wants to talk about her own point of view. If I show her another view, she gets mad at me.” When most women talk to each other, they assume a conversationalist’s job is to express agreement and support. But many men see their conversational duty as pointing out the other side of an argument. This is heard as disloyalty by women, and refusal to offer the requisite support. It is not that women don't want to see other points of view, but that they prefer them phrased as suggestions and inquiries rather than as direct challenges.

The Sounds of Silence

“These differences begin to clarify why women and men have such different expectations about communication in marriage. For women, talk creates intimacy. Marriage is an [element] of closeness: you can tell your feelings and thoughts, and still be loved. Their greatest fear is being pushed away. But men live in a hierarchical world, where talk maintains independence and status. They are on guard to protect themselves from being put down and pushed around.

The significance of understanding these cross-cultural differences

“Once the problem is understood, improvement comes naturally, as it did to the young woman and her boyfriend who seemed to go to sleep when she wanted to talk. Previously, she had accused him of not listening, and he had refused to change his behavior, since that would be admitting fault. But then she learned about and explained to him the differences in women's and men's habitual ways of aligning themselves in conversation. The next time she told him she wanted to talk, he began, as usual, by lying down and covering his eyes. When the famil­iar negative reaction bubbled up, she reassured herself that he really was listening. But then he sat up and looked at her. Thrilled she asked why. He said, “You like me to look at you when we talk, so I'll try to do it.” Once he saw their differences as cross-cultural rather than right and wrong, he independently altered his behavior.

            “Women who feel abandoned and deprived when their husbands won’t listen to or report daily news may be happy to discover their hus­bands trying to adapt once they understand the place of small talk in women's relationships. But if their husbands don’t adapt, the women may still be comforted that for men, this is not a failure of intimacy. Accepting the difference, the wives may look to their friends or family for that kind of talk. And husbands who can’t provide it shouldn't feel their wives have made unreasonable demands…

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