Couples Communication

The most common complaint that women have about their mate is his lack of communicating. Yes, we men are not very communicative, but it’s not our fault. And I intend to prove this premise, or look really stupid trying.

Many women have the knack of picking the most inopportune time to talk to their man and expect him to listen, for example, after he has gotten into bed and is drifting off to sleep. Ladies, please do not try to squeeze conversation out of us men late at night unless the house is burning down, and even then only if a major limb has caught fire (ours, not yours).

Men are not incapable of communication – it’s just that there is usually something else they’d rather be doing. They focus on hobbies and television shows to the point of neglecting their mates. A man changing a water pump finds his wife annoying when she tries to talk to him, and she thinks he’s a putz for considering his car to be more important than she is. That’s ridiculous. Nearly half the time, a man does not consider his car to be more important than his woman. More pleasant maybe, but not more important.

Men are often insensitive to other people’s problems – even those of their mate. Why? Because men are often insensitive to their own problems, so how can they empathize with anyone else? For example, if a typical man gets pushed to the ground and fractures his arm during a basketball game, which of the following do you think he’ll do?

A) Scream hysterically.
B) Call 911.
C) Take his two foul shots.

The correct answer is C. So, given that a man does not consider a broken limb serious enough to cause any concern, how can he be expected to care about his wife’s questionable mammogram?

If it is so difficult for men and women to communicate and thereby stay together, then how did our species ever survive? Simple: sex. As much as they drive each other crazy, men and women still lust after one another. And their procreative activities ensure that there will always be succeeding generations of sex partners who experience the same problems as their predecessors. Mankind evolved way before the advent of language, so all that our early ancestors had to do was obtain food, find shelter, and screw. Once language was invented, each gender used it mainly to talk about what they were genetically inclined to do: men hunted animals, fought enemies, pursued women, and built dwellings; women cooked food, bore and raised children, and picked out clothing for their men (“You’re not going to wear that bear skin, are you?”). Since neither men nor women were interested in what the other gender had to say, women talked to women and men talked to men, and everyone was happy. Men did not sit down with women to discuss feelings, and in fact any man who did this was unable to pass on his genes because either 1) he could not provide food and protection for a woman and children; or 2) the other men killed him.

Let’s look more closely at the history of our species. Man evolved in packs of 10-20 members, with the men hunting and protecting, and the women gathering and nurturing. Thus, out of necessity, men and women are different. Men have good spatial and reasoning skills. They are able to concentrate on a single task. They communicate best with hand signals and grunts, not lengthy sentences. They have good tunnel vision that enables them to see an object far away, but their peripheral vision is not very good, which is why they can navigate their way to a place they’ve never been before, but they can’t find the mustard in the fridge. They thrive on competition and power. Women can multitask. They have very good peripheral vision. They talk and listen well. They can sense people’s moods. They thrive on cooperation and support.

Modern society has removed the need for these differences. Laws and police mean that men no longer need to fight off enemies. Nuclear family rather than communal living means that women no longer have a cave full of other women to talk to while their men are gone. Grocery stores and restaurants mean that men no longer need to hunt and women no longer need to gather. But evolution has not kept up; those biological differences are still there, and will be for a long time. Society has given men and women the ability to spend a lot more time together, and we often find that we don’t get along because our minds work so differently. Each thinks that there’s something seriously wrong with the other because we can’t or won’t see the other’s point of view.

So what can we do? Well, one solution is to live like our ancestors. Get rid of the minivan, the Internet, the digital cable and the air-conditioned home. Band together with a few other families and live off the land. The women can take care of the children and talk incessantly to each other while the men hunt neighborhood pets and the occasional UPS man. In this way, men will get to silently hunt without being berated for not sharing feelings, while women will get their emotional needs met.

Or we can learn how to alter our behavior in order to get along better. After years of reading and marriage and arguments and therapy, I have concluded that the vast majority of behavior alteration has to be done by men. Now before you men show up at my door carrying torches and pitchforks, let me explain. I am not saying that men are wrong. It is only because of society that we have to change. If we lived in a world where we still had to hunt and protect, and there were no such thing as babies, then women would have to severely modify their behavior. But this is not the way it is. The skills that we developed during the first 99.999% of our existence have been rendered useless by the very institutions and technologies we have invented. We seek ways to keep using our biological skills: we play or watch sports and go on occasional hunting or fishing trips, but these are merely outlets designed to appease our now outdated brains. Furthermore, the need to raise offspring is still with us, and women can still “gather” at department stores, so women’s brains are well-suited to society. Conclusion: if men are to have harmonious intimate relationships, they have to behave more like women.

That said, both genders need to realize that our brain and hormonal differences make us communicate differently. For example, let’s say you need to give someone directions to your house. A man would do it this way:

Go north on Route 85 to exit 12B (Jones Road South). Go 4.3 miles and take a left on Greenhill Street. Take 3rd right on Wilson Drive. My house is the 4th on the left, #24.

Now let’s look at those same directions given by a woman:

Drive toward Minneapolis on Sheridan Parkway. Take the Jones Road exit; it’s the one with those nice chrysanthemums and snapdragons growing in the middle of the off-ramp. Head toward the Westview Mall (the one with both a Victoria’s Secret and a Gap). As soon as you see Payless Shoes, turn left onto Greenhill Street, but be careful! I was broadsided there two years ago because those poopyheads at City Hall won’t install a green arrow for those of us making the turn. Now, you’ll pass a dry cleaner, a Safeway, and the cutest little Cape Cod with green shutters. Turn right at that house. My house is about halfway up the street. You can’t miss it – it’s chartreuse with mauve trim.

Note that both sets of directions are correct; they’re just presented differently. The female version might be over three times as long and use words like “chartreuse” and “poopyhead” instead of numbers, but women will understand them. A man will not. He’ll be out there looking for chrysanthemums and end up in Winnipeg.

So both men and women communicate. They just do it differently. Men want the least amount of information possible, while women want the most. For example, when a man hears that someone gave birth, that’s all the information he needs. He does not need to know unnecessary information such as the baby’s weight, height, hair color, gender, etc. Women, on the other hand, need to know EVERY SINGLE DETAIL, including the baby’s length. This is why birth announcements always read like a technical manual:

Herbert and Edna Kaboodle announce the birth of their new baby girl, Kit Ann, who arrived on June 12th, 2005, at 7:03:37 a.m., under the sign of Capricorn, during the full moon, with light northeasterly winds. She weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces, and 4.7 grams. Her length is 19 inches, 5 millimeters, 23 microns, and 2 Newtons, with a head circumference of 42.726 centimeters. Her hair color is burnt umber with a slight maroon tinge. She will attend the Plenty Pricey Preschool, and has plans to go to Harvard where she will study to be a lawyer.

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The preceding was an excerpt from my book, Relationships for Morons. Look for it on http://www.bn.com and http://www.amazon.com. Or e-mail me at fitandfun@yahoo.com to order a signed, discount copy.