I got it again at a social function by a lady that some time ago split up with her boyfriend of many years because he would not communicate or show his feelings.
Well, I have run men’s groups and have no problems with men communicating. They may communicate differently to women but do communicate in the right environment and in the methods, they find comfortable. Like many women, the environment needs to be supporting and non-judgemental but for the area I facilitated, they also needed to be with people that can relate to them. They will enter the room with enormous apprehension and after hearing what others are experiencing the barriers drop and we hear what is going on. This may be because men want people that have “walked in their shoes” and have something in common so that an exchange of their experiences will result in the growth of their knowledge and handle their situation better. If men are in a family environment where they feel the love they receive is dependent upon that “stoic strength” and ability to “provide” then perhaps the environment is not right for communication.
There is also differences in teasing out communication and we need to remember people, both men and women (and if politically correct all the others) are individuals. One organisation found men that when:
- electronically logging into group meetings would admit they had suicidal thoughts yet
- Logging into a paper-based system would not state suicidal feelings (possibly because others could see) or even
- Express verbally until others volunteered their own feelings or were directly or indirectly asked. They want to hear from others so they know they are with others that they can feel comfortable with and demonstrates a variation in preferred communications and the need to feel secure.
I will give a couple of practical and actual recent communication examples:
- I was attending a service club meeting recently and asked a friend “how are you going?” Response: “OK”. I then asked “You were getting some medical tests around now so what did they show?” Response: “No bloody good and start Chemo tomorrow!” The conversation then progressed. Would I have needed to go that extra step with a woman? Maybe … or maybe not!
- The second example was after a family breakup and the couple went to mediation (initiated by the man and before instructed by lawyers so he was proactively trying to communicate). The mediator heard the usual complaint of the man not communicating so set up the meeting rules with couple and the woman agreed that she wanted to hear what the man had to say and would not interrupt. The man started and before the first sentence was complete the woman interrupted and took over. Naturally the mediator (whom happened to be female) got involved at this point stopping the women as it was clear that this behaviour was typical, the personalities were such that the man’s voice had never been heard in much of the relationship and that the communication dynamic extremely poor. One has to ask if the man had been trained by the woman not to communicate or had the women never been trained to listen?
There is no doubt that people communicate in different ways. A common theme is that only 7% is by words, 38% by tone of voice and 55% by body language however you may hear vastly different figures. Tone is absolutely critical and often lost when not speaking your native language, sarcasm is usually missed and forget about most jokes. How many of you as a child have had a parent speak your full name and you just knew, you were in trouble? It shows that communication can be complex.
If the woman (or for that matter a man) changes the tone of their voice what does that mean. If the man (for example) changes the subject or walks away during a conversation has the man communicated? From the perspective of most women the answer is no but from the man’s perspective then maybe it could mean various things such as:
- I do not want to talk about this now (sometimes ever)
- You are angry and this exchange is only going to get worse. I do not like arguments!
- What you were talking about triggered a bad memory and wanted to retreat?
- In the worst case it could be the woman is trying to provoke and argument and the man is having none of it till she settles down!
As he left, did she think about what she said, how it was said and approach at a quieter time and ask about what caused that reaction or simply stew over it and bank it up for the next confrontation? Communication is not one-way and we need to look at it from both sides.
There is also the old saying that “we have two ears and one mouth for a good reason” but we also have two eyes. Perhaps we need to listen, watch and learn to read the non-verbal cues, take notice of when people withdraw from a conversation and try another tact.
Perhaps rather than training men to communicate like women, we should be training everyone to listen and add empathy to our skills.
