Thinking Out Loud » men and women

Stonewalling

Bob — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:37:10 +0000

In short, stonewalling is an attempt to avoid discussing or doing something. We build walls to protect ourselves, and the purpose of stonewalling is to protect. Generally, stonewalling is not intended to hurt the other person but it can and would be when perceived to be disrespectful or contemptuous. Unless you’re dealing with something extreme or dangerous in a relationship, assume good intentions on the part of a “stonewaller,” even if at first that’s hard to accept.

So many men and women I work with don’t immediately acknowledge it but they are afraid of open communication in their intimate relationships, so they stonewall. Here are some reasons why:

She/he will talk circles around me and I won’t be able to articulate my views. I’ll feel foolish.
I don’t want to hurt her/him or the relationship. If I get frustrated, I’ll get angry and say something hurtful just to protect myself.
My partner claims to want me to open up, but when I express vulnerability she (or he) seems uncomfortable. Am I getting a mixed message?
He/she holds all the power in the relationship but won’t admit it. It’s too dangerous to talk about.

We avoid things because we are worried and/or afraid. When our kids avoid talking with us about something important, we intuitively understand that it must be really hard for them. They are afraid of something. Is it really any different for us as adults?

Many adults—men and women—find it hard to admit they are afraid, especially when it comes to talking intimately. If you can accept the idea that your partner has good intentions, is probably afraid of something, and is worried about how to talk effectively concerning a difficult situation, you will set a better tone for the conversation. Acknowledging your own worries and good intentions up front helps, too. In fact, it’s always a good idea to state upfront your own intentions and goals when beginning any important conversation. This puts the other person at ease, which makes it easier for him or her to respond in kind.

Keep in mind that discussing a sensitive issue is difficult. It’s not a one time conversation and if/when we expect it to be, we’re in trouble. Sometimes it’s better to express your intentions, acknowledge that it’s also difficult for you to talk about, and you just want to get some thoughts on the table for the two of you to think about. Then after you’ve had a chance to mull it over, you can get back together for a real discussion.

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Men & Women, Again!

Bob — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 03:07:59 +0000

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A common perception is that women have a positive association to relationship talk and men don’t—that women feel better connected through relationship talk, whereas men are distressed by it and tend to feel criticized. I think this is another myth perpetuated in the popular culture, based on stereotyping and misunderstanding of individual communication styles. I’ve written about this before and suspect I’ll continue to write about it from time to time because it’s a complex and confusing topic, simply because humans are complex and confusing. No one has quite figured us out yet. So when you put two of us together in an intimate relationship, it’s bound to be . . . confusing.

So, let me be clear and definitive about one thing: There is no general female or male communication style. There are plenty of women who find it very difficult to discuss relationship issues and there are many men who wish their female partner would be more open to discussing them. Also, there are as many communication styles as there are individuals. Those styles are influenced by personal history, culture, and how each of us is wired. How we are wired gets to the heart of the model I presented in Do You Know What I Mean?—Discovering Your Personal Communication Style, published in 2009.

The book has a thorough discussion of the seven communication components that come together uniquely for each of us. Through an understanding of this process, individuals (men and women) can learn about their communication strengths and challenges and how to use them to develop communication skills and solve problems in relational communication. This problem solving is based on an understanding of the actual processing strengths and challenges of each individual, not on the so-called “issues” of gender.

Our sex does not predetermine our communication proclivities. Our willingness to understand the communication process and improve our skills, as individuals, is what’s important. Better to avoid the stereotypes and take personal responsibility for how we relate to one another, person to person.

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Men Have Feelings

Bob — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:35:52 +0000

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I don’t like to promote (directly or indirectly) the stereotypes in the popular culture about how men and women communicate differently. I approach communication style differences based on the individual, not the sex. Because I have addressed this in other posts, I won’t get into it here, except to say that looking at the interpersonal/intrapersonal axis offers a helpful perspective on what typically is seen as sex differences.

My purpose, here, is to explore a common occurrence in counseling men about the expression of feelings. Here’s how the typical conversation goes:

Client: I don’t seem to be in touch with my feelings. When my wife asks me how I feel, I can’t seem to say anything. She can say how she feels anytime you ask her. I guess I never learned how to identify or talk about my feelings when I was a kid. Sometimes I think maybe I don’t have any feelings.

Me: You seem pretty down about this.

Client: Yeah, I really am. I don’t know what to do about it. My wife’s about had it with me. And I guess I don’t blame her.

Me: Do you and your wife talk about stuff very much.

Client: Yeah, pretty much. We talk about work, the kids, whatever’s going on. But when she asks me how I’m feeling, I just seem to shut down. I guess I need to figure out why I do that, right? My wife says lots of men are like this. Is that so?

Me: Well, I’ve talked to many men about this very thing. It can be very confusing. So, what do you go through when your wife expresses her dissatisfaction about all of this?

Client: I get this tightness in my chest and sometimes it feels like my hands are shaking, although they really aren’t. I guess I’m a failure at communication . . . and I don’t want my kids to be hurt by my lack of feelings.

Me: Do you get to spend much time with your kids?

Client: Not as much as I would like to. But I go to most all their events. I help with homework in the evenings, and we do family stuff on the weekends.

Me: Do you tell your kids that you love them and are you physically affectionate with them?

Client: My twelve-year-old boy always seems to be hugging me, and my ten-year-old daughter still sits in my lap, and we always say, “I love you.” Never did that with my dad, though.

Me: Being close with your kids is obviously important to you. You sound sad about your dad.

Client: Yeah, I am. I know he loves me but never heard him say it. Not once.

Me: What are you thinking when you say that?

Client: Well, I’m thinking that it really hurts when he won’t tell me he loves me.

Me: Sure it does.

It’s clear from the conversation that this man has plenty of feelings, is very aware of them, and can more than adequately express them. We need to remember that feelings are not words and words are not feelings. Feelings are experienced in the body. Words are descriptions. They’re just attempts to give abstract expression to our internal sensations. I never asked this man what he was feeling. I asked him to describe his experience, to tell me what he was going through, and I reflected (in words) the obvious feelings he was having.

Too often we get hung up on the belief that if someone can’t respond to the request, “How do you feel about this or that?” they must be out of touch with their feelings. But feelings can be expressed in many ways, and this man, for example, readily expressed how he felt about his family by responding to the affection shown by his children, by helping with homework in the evenings, by participating in regular family activities.

We do, however, sometimes need to have a direct discussion about feelings. When asking someone else about his or her feelings, it may be best to take the communication style approach and tap into the natural language of the individual. Here are some suggestions.

What are you going through?
Have you ever been through something like this before?
What does the situation look like to you?
What do you think might be going on here?
Is there some word or phrase that captures the experience?
Can you describe the sequence of events for what happened to you?

For some people (both men and women) it is hard to respond directly to a question about how they feel. Yet, by approaching the question from other angles corresponding to different communication styles, you have full access to the feelings of the other person. Also, you don’t need to know the specifics of the other person’s communication style to explore the above suggestions. Try one or two and see how it works.

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We’re All From Mercury (the planet of communication)

Bob — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:41:57 +0000

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Each day, I receive news updates on issues relating to communication. Without fail there is at least one article that refers to the differences between females and males. The articles and blogs are written by people from all walks of life, lay people and professionals of many disciplines. Although I’ve found value in what has become common, accepted knowledge about how men and women operate, I’m also getting increasingly irritated.

Like many I’ve tended to accept the stereotypes. Yes, men seem to go into problem solving mode immediately and women seem to first listen and connect to the emotional content of the communication. Those who experience these patterns consistently in their lives end up being the enthusiastic spokespersons. The others remain uncertain and quiet. But how true is all this?

Recently, I gave a talk on communication to a local college class of sixteen students: ten females, six males. Halfway through the talk I passed out my Communication Component Inventory, which they filled out. I asked how many identified more with the interpersonal or intrapersonal component—the interpersonal being more allied with the “female” style, and the intrapersonal with the “male.” Oops, there I go stereotyping.

Of the ten women, six identified with the interpersonal, four with the intrapersonal. Of the six men, four identified with the intrapersonal and two with the interpersonal. This is hardly science but it is typical of the breakdown when I take this survey in workshops and training sessions. Enough men and women fit in each category that it behooves us not to generalize.

Back to my irritability . . . I’m troubled by the stereotypes promoted by the men-are-like-this and women-are-like-that movement. There is some comfort in it but it leaves no room for individual differences. Remember, we are more alike as human beings than we are different. Recognizing the ways in which men and women are different is important but pigeonholing is dangerous.

My wife and I are different from the stereotypes—perhaps another reason for my irritability—and there are a lot of people who just don’t fit the way men and women are supposed to be. From the communication styles perspective we all have a mixture of the interpersonal and intrapersonal elements. We all think out loud and think on the inside; the proportion of each is dictated less by gender and more by other constitutional and cultural factors.

The range of human communication behavior extends beyond gender differences and includes the same elements for both women and men. How those elements arrange depends on so many factors it is impossible to account for them all. What is important, though, is that we develop communication skills that allow us to be effective with one another in listening and understanding.

When we take care not to stereotype male and female communication, it automatically puts more responsibility on us as individuals. In our human relationships we must be accountable to ourselves and each other and recognize what we can do to foster better communication. It is the path forward to changing the world one conversation at a time.

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Girls or Boys: Who is worse off?

Bob — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:39:31 +0000

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Like many, I’m drawn to reading research and opinions about the state of boys and girls in today’s world and which sex is struggling more. It’s a question I’m not going to answer both because I don’t think it’s a particularly helpful question and because I don’t think it can be answered.

To see the differences clearly, we could make a chart showing the good and bad elements for both girls and boys. For example: More boys have ADHD, more girls have low self-esteem. Boys have higher SAT scores in math, girls have better verbal communication skills. Let’s not take our foot off the feminist accelerator or girls will get marginalized. Let’s not forget the high school drop out rate for boys. . . . To do this thoroughly, we’d need to weight the elements to find out which sex has it worse, but doing that, I’m sure, would devolve into some kind of political warfare. How could it not?

Answering the question doesn’t help us focus on the real issue: What is it that all kids need to thrive in today’s world? Is it really so different, what boys and girls need? I don’t think it is. Should we pay more attention to our girls’ evolving self-esteem than our boys’? Should we work harder to keep boys in school than girls? Of course not. What we do need to do is pay careful attention to the individual needs of each child.

I recognize that there are differences between males and females, but we are more similar than we are different. I’ve seen numerous charts that list the characteristics of men and women that focus on opposite needs. For example, in the male column it might say “autonomy,” and in the female side “connection.” But don’t we all need connection and autonomy? The only difference is the amount and the type—and those are individual differences, not gender ones. Putting all men and all women in classes by themselves discounts the commonalities and sets up an us/them mentality, . . and don’t get me started there.

Girls and boys: they need the same basic things when it comes to their home and school lives. The kind of care and education they need is not the rocket science part of it. The really hard part has to do with the negative forces in society that interfere with meeting those needs.

We know a lot about child development, good parenting and good teaching but we haven’t found a way to systematically implement these best practices. Politically and economically we have not found the will to do what’s right. If improving the lives of our children was important enough in our society, we would not be competing for resources on behalf of boys or girls. There would be no need because we would identify the individual needs of kids and help them in whatever way is necessary—male or female.

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