How men and women communicate

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I like to hear about my husbands work, in terms of strategy especially. I like to listen to how he thinks, and how he goes about getting what he wants to get done. But I do remember a time, at the beginning of the marriage, when he never spoke to me about it and assumed I didn't want to know.

I find he is very good at making things happen as he wants them to, so I try to learn from him there.

But when it isn't happening as he expected and he is frustrated, we need to examine how he feels about it all, in depth, because we usually find there is some feelings he thought he could ignore and they would not effect his plan, but they always do- they sneak in subtly and influence events. The repressed emotions can be a source of self- sabotage. Even he has learned that.

LOL, my biggest problems are usually related to "i can't get that inner join function to work on that new SQL query i was building, and its driving me nuts. I've checked the forum, the help menu, Google...."

She glazes over and starts watching TV. She learned that usually just leting me talk through it will get the job done. Like that "a-ha" moment. WIthout her, i just talk to myself (which is somewhat off putting to the sane folks around me)

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
WIthout her, i just talk to myself (which is somewhat off putting to the sane folks around me)

You have sane people in your acquaintances? Lucky you.

a reply to: Bluesma

I disagree... You don't have to feel discomfort emotionally to decide something needs to be changed or a problem needs solved. Let me give you a simplistic example. In my small town, there is a college that had a parking lot on one side of a main road and the classroom on the other. There were crosswalks that were push button activated to change a stoplight for the sole purpose of allowing students to cross. To my knowledge (I work with emergency management locally), no students have ever been hit or killed in the crosswalk. However, the city decided to put in an underground walkway to remove the traffic disruption.

This decision was made based upon a series of events including cost to the local economy and efficiency. Emotions didn't play into the needs, but a series of rational thought and deciding factors.

I don't need to analyze and over analyze my feelings on a problem or decision in order to take action, which is what the woman in the video is doing. It's paralysis by analysis. I see people doing this in counseling all the time. They become so consumed by their emotions to a traumatic event that they prefer to hold onto it and relive it rather than process it and let it go. It's like they feel they can only validate their feelings by holding onto them.

I'm about moving forward. Understand it. Process it. Accept it. Make changes or learn from it. Then move forward....

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Well, they claim to be sane.

But they still vote and participate in our electoral system, for the most part. So maybe they aren't?

originally posted by: CIAGypsy
You know...I keep checking my bits to make sure a woman....lol. Nope...definitely female. But I have NEVER EVER....let me repeat.....N.E.V.E.R. E.V.E.R......communicated like that...ha ha. In fact, I'm pretty practical to a fault. I make a quick assessment of the facts and make a decision. Emotion never plays into it. Yes, I have feelings but they are things that are usually processed later and from an objective perspective. I'm driven by rational thought, not emotion.

So I can't say that I relate to this woman in any fashion....except the lady bits...lol....

And I refuse to drive around blindly when I'm lost. Why the hell WOULDN'T I stop and ask for directions? What is with guys not wanting to do that? I want to get to my destination. If I'm lost, you're damned right I'll ask someone. It doesn't make logical sense to waste time pretending to know where I'm going.

a reply to: Bluesma

Well put.

Selfishness is an insidious poison that seems to be epidemic in our era.

Folks have this delusional fantasy that it won't come back and bit them in the butt. But it will. No one has a 'get-out-of-jail-free-card' from REAPING WHAT YOU SOW.

And, I believe we'll all see the day when that reaping will occur increasingly close in time to the sowing.

Besides . . . it REALLY IS much more blessed to give, than receive.

That's not just a cute proverb. It's true. It's REALLY true.

And often, such selfLESS giving is it's own reward, with more to accrue in eternity. What a deal.

Thanks for a great post.

a reply to: CIAGypsy

I like this one, too:

MEN'S BRAIN VS WOMEN BRAIN:

www.youtube.com...=424.10925

--men have lots of little boxes
--everything in women's brains is connected.
--men have a NOTHING box.
etc.

originally posted by: CIAGypsy
a reply to: Bluesma

I disagree... You don't have to feel discomfort emotionally to decide something needs to be changed or a problem needs solved.

Exactly. Apparently you read my post too fast or something- you are agreeing with what I said, and what this whole discussion is saying about women in general.

I don't need to analyze and over analyze my feelings on a problem or decision in order to take action, which is what the woman in the video is doing.

No, that is NOT what she is doing. That is why the men ask, "why is she not taking action?"
The woman here has no intention of making a decision to take action.

Her decision is already made, it is not up for question. She chose to have that nail there, and she is choosing to keep it there.

What she is doing has NOTHING to do with action, and EVERYTHING to do with endurance.

The fact that it causes discomfort, emotionally or physically, is irrelevant to the decision to do it.
A lot of women cannot afford to make choices according to pain avoidance- the human race would die out.


But when you make a choice that you know will be a source of discomfort, you better have some skills at endurance, and knowing how to release effectively the emotional stress and fatigue.
Verbalization of emotions has two great uses-

One- catharsis. Like a steam vent, it allows for purging of emotion. Everyone knows you actually feel less upset once you get it out. It frees up your intellect from the flood of hormones and enables you to think more rationally afterwards.
It gets the emotion out as something that can be observed objectively instead of lived subjectively.

Two- adjustment of perception. With the intellect less clouded by emotion, it is freed up to search for different perspectives to adopt which might lessen the emotional production in the future, without changing the situation.

A very elementary example is the age old advice of what to do if you have to speak in public and are anxious- you imagine all your public is sitting there in their underwear. For almost any very hard situation, choosing a certain way of thinking can change your emotional reactions to it. This is how I had three deliveries without a epidural- working on choosing effective perspectives to focus on at those moments.

In the example of this video- the woman is trying to separate the sensation from the object, trying to find a different way of thinking about it that would make it easier to sustain. That is why his insistance on attaching it again is counter productive. She has chosen that nail there (why, I don't know, maybe someone dared her and she stands to win a million bucks if she can keep it for a week? ) she is looking for a way of processing that sensation effectively.

If he was any good at this, he would suggest being in the moment and experiencing it as if it was a "momentary" pain. There are some ways you can adjust your thoughts to not be bullied and run by your sensations or emotions...

It's paralysis by analysis. I see people doing this in counseling all the time. They become so consumed by their emotions to a traumatic event that they prefer to hold onto it and relive it rather than process it and let it go. It's like they feel they can only validate their feelings by holding onto them.

I believe this happens because there is some reason they have chosen to be where they are. The emotions and perspectives are not the source of the inaction, they are the excuse. They are the perspective chosen to facilitate and make possible this position. Even if there is a part that claims "I don't want to be here/like this" there is another part which disagrees and sabotages that plan.

Even therapists will encourage a person to continue reinforcing the current mode of processing, because despite their conscious claim of wanting to aid the person to change or move on, there is the subconscious conditioning they have, to keep their client and income... (I hate to bring that up, but both of my parents were shrinks and this eventually became painfully obvious even to them).

a reply to: Bluesma

I think you answered this quandary of critical thinking with your quote of John A Morrison, let me explain...

When a person finds them selfs in peril unfortunately in a lot of cases, most cases in fact it is often needed to relive the tragic events over and over by taking things apart piece by piece so you can indeed analyze what the heck happened who did what and then put the puzzle together to fully explain why these events occurred and if anyone caused them.

Only then can we put the past behind us, however depending on the pain and damage this can take a long time, and one must relive aspects of the horror over and over in the mind in some cases if the correct puzzle is to be solved, also reliving the pain enough times within the human mind can lessen the damage of events also, but of course it's a case by case basis.