Female Misunderstanding
One morning I dragged myself out of bed, to what I knew would be a tumultuous morning. I had a million things to do before I needed to leave to get to class and work for the day. I was in complete disarray. I was trying to get myself ready, get breakfast on the table, do unfinished homework, answer necessary emails, do some housework, and the list goes on and on. When I got married to my husband we had previously talked about helping one another out when the other one seemed overwhelmed. I needed to hastily get out the door, but the dishes still needed done and the trash taken out.
Before leaving, however, I decided to ask my husband if he could do those things since he did not need to leave until later in the day. “Craig,” I said, “could you please do the dishes and take out the trash before you leave today?” He was staring at the computer screen and did not utter a single response. I left out the door, thinking to myself, “Great, now I am just going to have to do those things when I get back because he did not even listen to me.”
When I got home later that evening, the dishes were done, the trash had been taken out, and above and beyond; he had started dinner.
In her essay “Sex, Lies, and Conversation,” Tannen gives an example of a couple where a boyfriend laid down and closed his eyes to fully listen to what his girlfriend was saying, but she misinterpreted it as him not listening (Tannen 242). I had not even realized that my husband had minimized all of his web pages of homework in order to fully and explicitly listen to what I was saying until later that evening when I asked him about it. Tannen goes on to say that, “. . . at every age, the girls and women faced each other directly, their eyes anchored on each other’s faces” (242). It would have been beneficial for me to have taken in to account that males do not make direct eye contact when they are communicating, but that does not mean they are not listening.
Another point that Tannen makes is that “. . . women make more listener-noises” (243). With my husband, I was waiting for anything, an “okay” or “uhuh,” but when I got nothing, I immediately took that as him not listening. There is such a vast difference in the ways that males and females communicate. Had I applied the principles and ideas that are presented in this essay, I could have completely avoided the frustration I felt with him all that day.
Work Cited
Tannen, Deborah. "Sex, Lies, and Conversation" Academic Communities/Disciplinary Conventions.Ed.Bonnie Beedles and Michael Petracca. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001. 240-245.
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