It’s probably a safe assumption to say that those of you who know John Gray (Wood mentions in the text) are married—or were! For those who don’t, he’s the guy who’s made a gazillion dollars talking, writing, and selling millions of products about how men’s & women’s communication is different through his book called “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” (and a whole assortment of similarly named media). I’m not a Gray disciple, but I was stuck in the car once on a very long ride to a customer while the Vice President of the company was driving/multi-tasking on the way by listening to Gray’s book on audio in an attempt to save his marriage. (Interestingly enough, the VP came out of the closet and moved in with his gay lover from New Orleans shortly before the company was bought out by a huge multi-national corp.) Though Wood seems to discredit John Gray in our text, most of her points are the same that Gray makes only worded differently.
One of the biggest male-female communication misunderstandings used to happen weekly, if not daily at our house. Because I know this, I try desperately to avoid it. It’s the “I just want to vent because I’ve had a hard day and I’m a woman and venting is my preferred method of stress management and I’m going to vent to you because you’re my husband and you’re standing in front of me but just listen to me and let me roll on with it or you’re going to force me to call my best friend but while I’m talking just listen and look like you care and when I’m done don’t offer up some primitive piece of advice like “just ignore it” to make yourself feel better for “fixing it” because then I’ll know you weren’t listening and all I want is to vent, feel better, and move on and not fix anything at all which you can’t understand because you are a man.” So to summarize: Women are from Venus and want to communicate by verbally throwing up all over you and will feel better for it (dontcha always feel better after puking?) and men are from Mars and want to fix things and won’t feel better until they do. And when we refuse their help and accuse them of not communicating they don’t get it and we get hurt. Soooooooo….I’ve learned to vent to my friends and speak to my husband like I would one of the guys. For instance, I skip the complaining and what should I do about “x” conversation (that’s for the girls) and start with him at the point of “I’m thinking of doing x”, “what do you think? Would that work for us?” and let him fix it. So I’m not ignoring the fact that this is a marriage and it’s important to both of us and we do need to communicate—but I’m putting it at his level. Trust me, it works. Get over the fact that he’s not the one to dump on when he walks in the door. This leads me to the next point…
When we vent all over them, we give them the fodder for calling “us” nags, bitches, complainers, never happy, just like our mothers, etc. etc. Stereotyping at its worst! I want my husband to like me as much as love me. And I want to like him back just as much. We are different, that’s why we’re in this class after all. But all it takes is just a little practice and you’re whole galaxy will be a happier place.
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Suzanne,
What about middle ground? Can that exist? What about understanding how each gender thinks or taking into consideration their frame of reference? I can tell you being married to a communication professor as been a challenge for my husband! But, he has learned to understand and even, apply the idea that there is more than one way to communicate or deal with issues in our marriage. Don't we really do that in the other siutations in our lives that we deal with the opposite gender? Home and marriage, I understand are much more emotional and we tend to me close to the situation that we can't see clearly past our learned gender communication patterns, but, I like to think that with enough patience, we can grow and learn, and not just have to accept it for what it is on the surface. What would Julia T Wood say here?
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