That is definitlely true. I made the mistake of sometimes telling my Ex just how bad of a day I had. As a Medic, your average bad day ruins dinner and next day’s breakfast for the other person.
As for the research, I’d be interested in the statistical methods used to analyze the data. I know nothing about Sociology methodology, but statistics stays the same scross the board.
Well, not always. People who work in emergency medicine can plan their dinner party while* performing* gastric lavage. Family just has to be able to eat while hearing about it. (If I couldn’t stand that, I’m afraid it would put a huge crimp on our social life.)
BioCatholic:
We might be on a roll here! Let me try this one on the ladies. This really happened. Once my wife asked me what I was thinking. I must have looked preoccupied. It went like this. “Well, I was thinking instead of getting one of those expensive cyclone fences for the yard, I could rent one of those posthole diggers; then dig three foot holes, eight inches across; then run down to the farm supply store where they have a few ten-foot posts, six inches in diameter and enough rolls of game fence and several pounds of fence stapes; (be hell to lift. Have to get my son to help) then to the concrete contractor for limestone gravel to pack around the posts, (I’ll need a tamper. Saw one at the hardware store) and I’ll have a better fence than any cyclone fence, especially if I bury some thick stems of grape ivy right next to it; maybe alternating with morning glories. In a few years, there’ll be nothing like it…see, morning glories grow faster than grape ivy and…etc”
My wife’s eyes glazed over; she started getting kind of antsy and messing around with things on the table with her hands, then I realized she really didn’t want to know “what I was thinking” after all.
If my husband had said that, we’d have a conversation about hardware, prevailing wind, maintainence costs, the neighborhood association rules, and so on. (I know this, because we had this conversation before our fence went up.)
OK, now I get it. You guys may be right. I am a woman who was raised by boys (lots of brothers, small school with only boys in my class). It is possible that my experience is just too different from the norm.
…
Having admitted that, though, I still maintain that a great many people do not stay in gradeschool when it comes to their communication skills. Not all women stay in the fifth grade where a social faux pas can be punished by months of emotional abuse. Men do not all stay in the fifth grade where it is all but punishable to admit there
is such a thing as a social faux pas.
Men can learn tact.* Women can learn not to be so thin-skinned. Any emotionally-healthy adult can learn that the world does not revolve around their way of doing things.
The difference between good marriages and poor marriages isn’t that people in good marriages learn to never have a fight. People in good marriages know how to have conflict without willfully doing damage and how do repairs if a conflict causes damage.
*To be fair, men do know tact. They know the kind of tact that guys want…which is mostly about what you don’t say and do in order to spare somebody else’s pride and autonomy, rather than what you do say and do in order to include someone in your emotional and social life. And to be fair, women
do not always tell each other what they are thinking, not the ones who keep their friends, anyway.
Let’s face it, there are some things that cannot be said with kindness. If you can’t say it kindly and you don’t have to say it, if letting loose with your tongue will bring about no good result, there is no sin in leaving something unsaid.
