We’ve all seen the caricature in movies and TV shows of women talking and the husband not listening. It happens in real life too. I’ve heard lots of women accuse their husbands of not listening or switching off. Hey, I might have even been guilty of that one myself.
It’s a known fact though, that men have ‘selective hearing.’ Any woman can tell you that.
But could we women be part of the problem? Is part of the problem that we women talk too much? Do we expect our men to communicate when they don’t really want to?
On the weekend I read a Sunday paper, something I rarely do as we don’t normally buy them. This was a newspaper handed out free at the footy and it happened to be lying around the house, so I picked it up to flick through over breakfast. Mick wasn’t up. Mia Freedman raised the point in her column the big ask about the fact that women apparently ‘ask a lot of pointless questions.’
She went on to suggest men and women may differ about what is pointless. Maybe it is just a case of trying to connect that sees women asking questions and making conversations. Or maybe it’s just that men are not as good as sharing their thoughts. Maybe they’re happier with long silences.
Maybe there are times when men don’t want to share what they’re thinking, because he knows it’s going to start an argument or she’s not going to like the answer. Yet his wife is pushing to know what he’s thinking. Hey, sometimes we might even be better not knowing. Maybe he’s thinking ‘I wish she would be quiet and stop asking stupid questions.’
No matter how close we are to our spouse and how well we communicate, don’t we all have times when we don’t really want to share what we’re thinking because we know if we do it could lead to an argument or being taken wrongly? And maybe we’re just talking and asking questions at the wrong time, like when he’s watching something on TV or involved in some other project.
Do women talk too much? Do we want too much communication? Do men want to keep things to themselves? Come on guys, your chance to have a say. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this.
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