Male-female conversation is
cross-cultural communication. Culture is simply a network of habits and patterns
gleaned from past experience, and women and men have different past
experiences. From the time they’re born, they’re treated differently, talked to
differently, and talk differently as a result. Boys and girls grow up in
different worlds, even if they grow up in the same house. And as adults they
travel in different worlds, reinforcing patterns established in childhood. These
cultural differences include different expectations about the role of talk in
relationships and how it fulfills that role. Everyone knows that as a
relationship becomes long-term, its terms change. But women and men often
differ in how they expect them to change. Many women feel, “After all this
time, you should know what I want without my telling you.” Many men feel, “after
all this time, we should be able to tell each other what we want.” These incongruent expectations
capture one of the key differences between men and women. Communication is always
a matter of balancing conflicting needs for involvement and independence. Being
understood without saying what you mean gives a payoff in involvement, and that
is why women value it so highly. If you want to be understood
without saying what you mean explicitly in words, you must convey meaning
somewhere else—in how words are spoken, or by metamessages. Thus it stands to
reason that women are often more attuned than men to be metamessages of talk. When
women surmise meaning in this way, it seems mysterious to men, who call it “women’s
intuition” (if they think it’s right) or “reading things in” (if they think it’s
wrong). Indeed, it could be wrong, since metamessages are not no record. And even
if it is right, there is still the question of scale: How significant are the
metamessages that are there? Metamessages are a form of
indirectness. Women are more likely to be indirect, and to try to reach
agreement by negotiation. Another way to understand this preference is that
negotiation allows a display of solidarity, which women prefer to the display of
power (even though the aim may be the same—getting what you want). Unfortunately,
power and solidarity are bought with the same currency: Ways of talking
intended to create solidarity have the simultaneous effect of framing power
differences. When they think they’re being nice, women often end up appearing differential
and unsure of themselves or of what they want. When styles differ,
misunderstandings are always rife. As their different styles create
misunderstandings, women and men try to clear them up by talking things out. These
pitfalls are compounded in talks between men and women because they have
different ways of going about talking things out, and different assumptions
about the significance of going about it. Why are women more attuned to
metamessages? Because they are more focused on involvement, that is, on
relationships among people, and it is through metamessages that relationships
among people are established and maintained. If you want to take the
temperature and check the vital signs of a relationship, the barometers to
check are its metamessages: what is said and how. Everyone can see these signals,
but whether or not we pay attention to them is another matter—a matter of being
sensitized. Once you are sensitized, you can’t roll your antennae back in; they’re
stuck in the extended position.
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