For as long as we have been married, I have been able to silence (into deep, utter, uncomfortable, frozen silence) my normally upbeat and energetic husband with just five little words.
Honey, we need to talk.
Why Do Men Hate Talking?
It doesn’t matter what we need to talk about. It could be a good thing, or just a circumstancial thing I need help sorting out, or just my own feelings about… whatever. Not necessarily marriage-related, you understand. But it has never failed that when I utter those words, or something like them, Joe’s handsome, happy face morphs into this deer-in-the-headlights terror. I can see an inner struggle. He’s enough of a man that he tries – really, really tries – to respond positively. But I can see that he has to make himself.
For a while, that fact itself hurt my feelings. Why doesn’t he want to talk? If he loves me, why wouldn’t he want to spend time with me? I’m not mad at him. I just want to spend some time together. I just want to share. I just want to connect.
Why Do Women Lo – o – o – ove Talking?
So I did what any rational woman would do. I said, Hey, we need to talk about talking.
Wow. What a perfect solution. I’m sure that idea lit my husband’s heart with cheer and anticipation.
Hey, since you don’t like this whole talking thing, let’s take an hour or two to just talk through that dislike and once we talk enough (about talking) I’m sure we’ll get past it and you’ll probably like talking! And then we can just talk some more! All night, even! Wow! Won’t that be great?!
Bless him. He didn’t run away, screaming.
Recently I picked up this book at the library because, well, because of what I’ve just described above. The title: How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It.
The funny thing is, we’ve come a long way in our talking (or not talking) and how we approach it and why we both react the way we do to each other. Joe was able to finally help me understand that my phrase and tone and even my facial expression all made him feel like he was thirteen again and just got called into the kitchen for a lecture from Mom. Wow, that’s not what I was trying to do… (Was it?) And I was able to help Joe understand that when he avoided talking to me, it made me feel instantly and unequivocably rejected.
Blame the Cortisol!
But this book – seriously – everyone who is married should read this book. Some of it I skimmed over, but a few sections I stopped and reread. Like this one:
“When it comes to relationships, women often mistake this guarded response, which many males retain throughout life, for lack of interest or even loss of love. Most of the time, he hasn’t lost interest; he’s merely trying to avoid the overwhelming discomfort of a cortisol dump… Cortisol is a hormone secreted during certain negative emotions. Its job is to get your attention by making you uncomfortable so that your discomfort drives you to do something to make the situation better. The pain a woman feels when her man shouts at her is caused by the sudden release of cortisol. A man feels this same discomfort when he is confronted with her unhappiness or criticism. He may look like he is avoiding her, but he is essentially trying to avoid a cortisol hangover for the next several hours” (1).
The whole situation of talking in our marriage is so stereotypical it’s kind of embarrassing. But this information is news to me. If it’s true (and their research seems valid), then Joe is actually made physically uncomfortable by my “we need to talk” statements because he interprets them as unhappiness and/or criticism (which, let’s be honest, a lot of times they are).
Not that this means he gets out of ever having one of those talks again… but maybe I will be a little more sympathetic. Or maybe I will tie him to a chair first…
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Images
1. Couple kissing courtesy of Jolien Vallins on Flickr.
2. Couple almost not kissing and talking instead courtesy of Jolien Vallins on Flickr.
Sources
1. Patricia Love, Ed.D, and Steven Stosny, Ph.D. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It. New York: Broadway Books, 2007. Pages 12-13.
You’ve always got such interesting points to ponder!
It’s so crazy how differently wired men/women are isn’t it? We want so badly to be understood by them and we still have so much to learn/understand about them as well.
I loved your husbands honest response about feeling like he was thirteen again and just got called into the kitchen for a lecture from Mom…probably SO true of many husbands being requested to ‘talk’ –
Wonder how we wives could bring about the same request in a different way to lower that cortizol dump…