Just FYI this is kind of a ruff draft. I usually read over stuff about 1000k times before I post, this I have not, but I wanted to get it up. So you may see some language that needs fixing. Only human I am. :0)
It is true what they say that men and women are different creatures. We have same innards: a brain, lunges, stomach, and heart, but the rest well…lets say we are different. We both want success, we both want to feel important, we both want love, but how we go about endeavoring to achieve these goals are remarkably different. And let me say that it is OKAY that we are different; we don’t have to embrace the cultural wind blowing in our society that says that men and women have to be the same, do the same, think the same, to be equal (but that is another article, for another day). Our difference are most keenly manifested is way we use lexicon. Men and women speak a different language.
Coupes will often report to me in session, or I will hear them express, that they have the same goals, similar expectation, even the same sexual desires, but they all struggle to meet in the middle, or on the same page. They each struggle to feel loved, to feel supported, to feel understood, or to feel acknowledged and safe. The problem is not that they don’t have the love, the commitment, the attraction, the passion; the problem is they don’t know how to communicate, they are speaking a foreign language and the love, commitment, and the passion get horribly lost in the translation from speaking man to woman.
This crux in communication is no accident. Feeling connected emotionally and relationally to other human beings is meant to be difficult, it is meant to be work. The fantasy that loves comes without effort and with ease is nothing more than a fantasy. The belief that someone can understand you perfectly and then therefore act in perfect ways to support your needs perfectly is a nice idea for the movies, but not found in reality.
It is true that falling in love produces these types of experiences. It is true that there can be times, moments that our certain some ones gets us and acts in ways of great love and thoughtfulness. But an expectation that these moments and times will endure each day, every day for the eternity of a relationship is an expectation that will always go unmet. Why? Because you married to another human!
Men and women, husband and wife are meant to have a struggle. The process of becoming one, of becoming connected, is the process of individual and relational growth. The processes of being vulnerable and open, finding and feeling love, of trusting and changing is the process of becoming emotionally mature. This is the process of how we become a good soul, which each and every one of us want and need to do to have joy and happiness. Each and every human I have ever known wants to be good and wants to feel loved for who they are. Each of us needs to be loved (and feel loved) despite our weakness. Even the wicked horrible humans on our planet want love; they have just given up and falsely accepted or decided they are evil and so they become evil (and then there are sociopaths and attachment disorder and that is a whole other thing, but based on developmental experience void of love).
The difficulty in communication is experience of conversation. A perfectly tuned conversation is where you have the experience of sending a message, a thought, or a feeling and that communication is understood and confirmed. It is a situation where one feels sane. It is “a ratification of one’s way of being human and one’s place in the world” (Tannon, p. 5, 1987). It is the definition of acknowledgement. It is at the heart of feeling accepted and loved. The antithesis of this experience is the conversation gone bad; the conversation where you feel misunderstood, misrepresented, attacked, hurt, and ultimately isolated, alone and crazy. No one understands your heart, your motive, your fear, your pain; NO ONE understands what it is like to be you.
That is true to a point. The point where we can all identify with what I just said. That all of us struggle to be heard, acknowledged, and understood. We all feel alone, isolated, and unloved or unlovable. That is the human experience. That is an experience that can be swallowed up in the joy, confirmation, and connection found in a relationship of love and charity. One defined in these terms, love “suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (Moroni 7: ) It is also, meek, gentle, and un-pretended. It is based on pure knowledge, which enlarges the soul without hypocrisy and without guile, and it cannot be manifested without sacrifice - love.
Both men and women want status and connection in the worlds they live. Men’s communication and relational focus is around a world context of trying to be the top dog, or negotiating survival in the pack or pecking order. Our communication is based on being one up on whomever we are conversing with. This is not necessarily meant to put down, or to make one lower then ourselves, its not about have some narcissistic need to be the better or the best, it is just cultural fact that we as men live in a world of competition and comparison. Our relational training and verbal and non verbal language is to lead (for the strong, protecting, providing man is the valued man) and by nature makes it difficult to be emotionally and relationally close to both women and men.
Women’s communication and focus is around a world context to achieve cooperation and connection. “In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and reach consensus” (Tannon, 2001, p. 25). They work to preserve intimacy and protect themselves from isolation. They are the caregiver, the care taker, and women’s value is based on how well they are able to understand others and have intimacy with those in their world.
Is it clear from these scientifically proven strategies that there will be a fundamental conflict in opposite sex relationships especially romantic ones? This conflict is a natural extension of our cultural training. The question then is what do we do to make our relationships work when we speak such different languages?
The most basic, we do the work of creating a new language in our relationship. We take the time to talk about what we are talking about. This is called meta-communication. We take the time to have some pillow talk and try to express our motives, needs, and goals. We seek to understand what are partner wants and needs and we develop new phrases, new words, or come to redefine what words mean. I had couple I knew where if then husband said “that’s fine” it meant things were not fine, that it was a way of saying “whatever you want you selfish, self centered jerk will do it your way, like we always do.” For the husband it was just a way of saying, “okay dear that is how we can do it and I have no problem with us doing it that way.” They had to come up with a new word/phrase, one that meant to them both that the course of action that they were going to take on the bills or the dinner plans meant that they were both in agreement and both happy to go forward with a said course of action. That word could have been: “okay,” “I am happy with that,” “sounds good,” “awesome,” “agreed,” “let’s go,” etc. All that would have mattered is that they picked it and they defined it together.
This essentially has to be done on every level for a couple to really be on the same page. It is also, interestingly enough, a process that promotes intimacy. In the struggle for shared communication or understanding something magical happens. A in group is created, an identity is formed, for the couple. Something that makes the relationship unique and special, it becomes a place of safety, a place of connection, and understanding, a place of acceptance, a place for love. A marriage.
Tannen, D., (2001). You Just Don’t Understand : Women and Men in Conversation. First Quill.
Tannen, D., (1987). That’s Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships. Ballantine Books: New York.
