Marriage Teaching of the Month

What Did You Say?
September 2000
by Rich Murphy

What can $1 do?

Have you ever had a conversation with your spouse where you knew what you said, but your spouse didn't? You were both using the same language, but somehow the meanings of the words weren't coming out the same. How is it that we can use the same words, but not mean the same things?
The idea that we all speak the same language is an erroneous one. We actually speak two different versions of the same language. There's a "male-ese English" and a female-ese English." Both languages use the same words, but not the same definitions for those words.
This concept really came to light for us a number of years ago while we were traveling. My wife and I ended up having a three day conversation about what it meant when I said to her "I prefer you in a dress."
To me, of course, it was obvious what I meant. But to her, I may as well have spoken in Martian. We both understood the words "I" and "you," we even had the same idea of what a "dress" was. The problem came with the word "prefer."
To my wife, the word "prefer" could mean two different things. One possible definition was that I didn't care either way. She could wear anything she wanted and I'd be equally as happy with it. The other definition was that if she didn't wear a dress, I didn't want anything to do with her. There was no room in her mind for any definition in between those two extremes. The question to her was which one of those did I mean.
However, my definition of "prefer" wasn't either of the definitions that my wife understood. My definition was a little more like what you'd find in the dictionary: "to like better." I know that there's probably someone out there that'll think I'm a male chauvinistic pig for even thinking it, let alone writing it, but I think women look better in dresses. They're more feminine, and attractive that way than in pants. In my mind, the dress enhances the difference between men and women more than pants can.
It took us three days of talking to get to the point where we both understood this one word the same way. Not because either of us is stupid, not because we don't know how to communicate, but because we think and communicate differently.

A woman's definition of a word is more likely to be affected by her experiences involving that word. In our case, my wife had previously been in an abusive relationship. Before that, her parents didn't discipline her for anything. So, her definitions of prefer came from those two experiences. To her, I obviously must have meant the same thing that those other people did (but I didn't).
Actually, men and women don't speak the same language. Men speak a language called "male-ese," and women speak "female-ese."
In "male-ese" the idea is to have a whole conversation in your head, and only tell the other person the concluding line. Don't bother them with all the details, just give them the main point. Since all men speak the same way, they can easily follow what's going on in the other person's head. The only problem with this is that if the other person is a woman, she can't put all the rest of the words into that conversation. She won't understand what the conclusion has to do with anything, nor will she understand how that conclusion was reached.
In "female-ese" the rules allow for changing subjects mid sentence, and leaving the subject totally out of the sentence. Females communicate great with each other in this language, having no problem understanding the implied subject, and even following the leaps from subject to subject without blinking an eye. Unfortunately, men get lost at the first sentence, and never manage to get out of the maze.
Not only do "male-ese" and "female-ese" function differently, but they say different things. Men have much more of a tendency to talk about cold hard facts, with very few vague allusions to how they feel about them. On the other hand, when women talk, the whole conversation can center around how they feel about something, totally leaving out what the men would call "the meat of the issue."
Obviously, God knew about this difference in communication when He designed us. As a loving God, He didn't make these differences in order to cause problems, but so that the abilities of one could compliment the abilities of the other.
The point of all this is that we need to be sure that what we say is understood in the way we meant it. Many disagreements within a couple come from misunderstanding rather than from intent. It isn't the hearer's responsibility to understand, but the speaker's responsibility to be sure they are understood.