How Men and Women Communicate

By: Connie Earl Robertson

You may have noticed over the years that your man doesn't seem to be interested in what you have to say. As a result, you have felt frustrated and many times unloved. Could it be that this is simply the difference between how men and women communicate?

Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. deals with this particular issue in her book, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. As she studied videos of best friends talking together, she made an interesting discovery. Men and women simply do not communicate in the same way.

How men communicate

For men, conversation is the way they get and maintain their status within a group. They often discuss a variety of topics that center on their experiences. Men consider the activities that they do together a more important part of friendship than talking.

How women communicate

For you as a woman, conversation develops intimacy and closeness with your friends. As a result, you enjoy sitting around, talking and discussing a friend's problems. You not only want to know the facts of a given situation, you want to know the details, too.

How this affects men and women in relationships

For couples who don't understand these differences in communication, it can spell disaster. The man feels that all his wife wants to do is talk, talk, talk, and he often begins to tune her out. The woman on the other hand sees her man as uncaring, unloving, and not interested in her.

Bringing it all together

By this time, it is obvious that if a relationship between a couple is to be successful, both of you are going to have to make an attempt to understand the other one and give of yourselves to meet each other's needs in the area of communication. Your man will need to realize that when you talk and talk, you are really trying to get closer. On the other hand you need to realize that you don't need to talk all of the time and that your man would enjoy you much more if you would talk less and do more things with him.

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