I am always prejudiced against required reading for classes. I automatically assume whatever book assigned will be an out of date novel written by a dead white man or the academic word vomit of someone that knows how to research but not how to write. So, it is an anomaly that a month after I was given You Just Don’t Understand by Deborah Tannen I am still raving about it. This book is a research book, not about abstract scientific concepts but about the reasons why men and women often fight. There is a reason that immediately after reading it I sent a copy to my boyfriend.
In the book, Tannen ends up generalizing and categorizing common types of quarrels people of opposite genders frequently find themselves in. One of these is “troubles talk.” According to Tannen, women engage in troubles talk in search of sympathy and intimacy while men engage in troubles talk to actually solve the problem. Some ways women might respond to others’ problems according to this theory are by matching their troubles; “I’m sorry, I know what you’re going through” or “a similar thing happened to me when….” Anything to communicate to the other person “you are not alone.” However, men will find this insulting because they will interpret these responses as belittling or invalidating. They are likely to respond to others’ troubles with logical ways in which the other person can solve the problem. In turn this is insulting to women because they are looking to be comforted, not solved. These differences in communication styles are what cause the fights. It is not personal, men and women just often don’t realize they are trying to achieve different goals in the ways they talk. Simply knowing that scientifically we have different goals could help couples avoid fights to begin with.
Troubles talk is just one example of how the different goals of men and women in talking lead to fights. Tannen also goes into detail about why these differences exist to begin with. She closely interprets the ways young boys versus girls play together, are raised and interact with adults. She argues that the differences between boys and girls in all of these categories leads to the eventual difference in the way men and women communicate.
These points are just a small portion of what Tannen talks about. To cover all bases I would run, not walk, to the bookstore to grab this book. It is a relatively quick read and one of the most applicable and interesting books I have read in a very long time. Tannen does a great job in breaking down advanced research into digestible language and examples, and it was hard not to relate to the experiences she portrays that I didn’t even know were universal. So, instead of starting an argument with your boyfriend for being entirely incompetent and insensitive, maybe consider the fact that he actually, literally might not understand.