Differences Between Men and Women?

If there is a conflict, women want to talk about it. Men, however, tend to pull away.

When a woman reaches out and tells her man she is feeling isolated from him – on the assumption that this will foster closeness – he gets defensive or withdraws. Do verbal attempts to reestablish intimacy make him feel inadequate?

When a man feels shamed by a woman’s criticism, he withdraws.

Everyone – men and women – needs to learn that before they can communicate with words, they need to connect non-verbally. They can do that in simple ways – through touch, sex, doing things together. The deepest moments of intimacy occur when you’re not talking.

When couples feel connected, men want to talk more and women need to talk less, so they meet somewhere in the middle. Being aware of the fear-shame dynamic helps.

Men and women must empathize with vulnerabilities they don’t feel to the same degree – namely fear and shame. To do this requires “binocular vision,” in which each partner makes a conscious effort to consider the other’s point of view. The problem is that when you’re angry, you’re wrong even when you’re right because you can’t see the other person’s perspective. That’s when you lose what you long for the most, the connection.

It’s hard to imagine most people being capable of reaching out to their partners in the heat of an argument. It helps to have a previously agreed-upon signal such as a hand gesture to keep disagreements from spiraling out of control. This doesn’t mean they should try to ignore their feelings, but instead find a way to convey that the other person matters more than whatever they’re resentful or anxious about – and then talk. The beautiful part is that it takes only one person to make the gesture. The partner will feel the impact, even if he or she can’t drop the anger right at that moment.

This approach is most effective for couples in a precrisis state, when there’s still time for the man to step up to the plate and stop withdrawing or being reactive, and for the woman to understand that her husband really does want to make her happy and to stop being so critical. Men are better able to stay in the room and listen to women if they don’t think they’re being blamed for their distress.

Ultimately couples have to decide that their relationship is more important than all those things they do that annoy each other.

When she was distraught over a potentially scary mammogram report and he jumps in too quickly to reassure her that everything will turn out fine (it does), she decides to try out the binocular vision. That’s when she sees that he feels like a failure because he wants to make things better and he can’t.

So instead of her knee-jerk irritability at what she perceives as his lack of sensitivity, she says, “I’m terrified and I just need you to listen.” Which he does, patiently, lovingly. After she’s finished reciting her laundry list of fears, he holds her close and neither says anything for a long time. They don’t need to.

- - Barbara Graham (O Magazine 2/07)