The Magical Ingredient to Good Communication
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- jerrib
- Zanzi
- Dan_Ellsworth
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» Dan_Ellsworth - Whose turf?
It's easy for a man to feel that "communication" is a woman's home turf, and any time he ventures out there he's going to get wasted, or as one of my kids said years ago, "burned, fried, and set aside."In our marriage, I am the acknowledged writer, the vocabulary giant, the walking thesaurus, and Judy has expressed that she felt like she could never "hold her own" in conversation with me.
But it's not a simple reversal for us.
After all these years, I still have this feeling that I'm venturing out on thin ice to communicate. I think there's a sort of cultural assumption that, in domestic life and family relationships, the woman's version is the official version, and the man's opinions are just troublemaking.
If, with my acknowledged gifts, and 37 years married to a better-than-average human being (That might be a huge understatement.), I still feel like I'm in alien territory communicating, I can hardly imagine what it's like for the average man, often with a wife more gifted in communication skills.
As for the socks, though, it becomes a matter of communicating with oneself: How can I remember -- at the right time? I have actually learned to switch the shower from "shower" to "faucet" with a visual cue I always notice. (Communicating with myself -- tricky but helpful.
Apparently this was an important article, because it got me chattering. I only hope some of it was actual communication.
-- posted by Dan_Ellsworth
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