is a not-
very- convincing “no,” how do you respond? One common response is to
say “You don’t look fine.” This may be intended as an invitation, but it
doesn’t come across that way. Pressing a reticent person to open up or
getting annoyed at the person for not doing so presumes that he or she
has no good reason for not telling you what’s wrong. People don’t do
anything for no reason.
When someone seems reluctant to tell you what’s bothering him, you
might make an informed guess about why the person is reluctant to say
what’s on his mind. “Are you afraid of how I might respond?” If you think
the person just doesn’t want to get into it, you can ask “Is it something
you’re hesitant to talk about?” Don’t push too hard, though. If someone
tells you she doesn’t want to talk to you about something and you keep
pushing, she might decide she was right to think you can’t be trusted to
accept her feelings.
Does the person who isn’t very forthcoming with you have reason
64 THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD
to believe that you’re interested in what he thinks and feels? That you’ll
listen without interrupting? That you can tolerate disagreement? Anger?
Openness is a product of interaction.
Men Are from Mars?
As we head further into the twenty-first century, the social construction
of gender—men do this, women do that— polarizes relations between the
sexes as never before. As the old complementarity gives way to a new sym-
metry, conflict seems to be the price for equality.
Several books in recent years gained enormous popularity by telling
us that men and women communicate differently and then explaining
what those differences are. Among the most popular was John Gray’s Men
Are from Mars , Women Are from Venus , in which the author argues that
men need space while women crave company. If we learn to respect the
inevitable differences that crop up between two people who live together
by attributing such differences to gender rather than to stubbornness or ill
will, maybe that’s a good thing. And if we learn not to react unsympatheti-
cally to what our partners say, that’s certainly a good thing. But perhaps
the most important thing is not so much learning how to react to these
other, alien creatures, but learning not to overreact and learning instead
to listen. Perhaps the best response to Freud’s famous question “What do
women want?” might have been “Why don’t you ask—and then listen?”
Once, differences between men and women were thought to be bred
in the bone, and this biological determinism was used to justify all man-
ner of inequity. After years of effort to break down these separate but
unequal categories, a new wave of feminist scholars reasserted what they
once fought: gender differences. Jean Baker Miller emphasized responsive-
ness and mutuality as especially important to women in relationships,5 and
Carol Gilligan argued that for women the qualities of care and connection
are fundamental to selfhood, organizers of identity, and moral develop-
ment.6 According to Gilligan, men build towers and women build webs.
Thus far the greatest impact of the new work by feminist psychologists
5Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).
6Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
How Communication Breaks Down 65
has been a reaffirmation of gender differences—but this time with a positive
construction of the psychology of women. In her book, The Reproduction
of Mothering , Nancy Chodorow pointed out that because boys and girls are
parented primarily by mothers, they grow up with different orientations to
attachment and independence.7 Boys must separate themselves from their
mothers to claim their masculinity, which is why boys of a certain age start
shrinking from their mothers’ hugs and why “sissy” and “mamma’s boy”
are still
very- convincing “no,” how do you respond? One common response is to
say “You don’t look fine.” This may be intended as an invitation, but it
doesn’t come across that way. Pressing a reticent person to open up or
getting annoyed at the person for not doing so presumes that he or she
has no good reason for not telling you what’s wrong. People don’t do
anything for no reason.
When someone seems reluctant to tell you what’s bothering him, you
might make an informed guess about why the person is reluctant to say
what’s on his mind. “Are you afraid of how I might respond?” If you think
the person just doesn’t want to get into it, you can ask “Is it something
you’re hesitant to talk about?” Don’t push too hard, though. If someone
tells you she doesn’t want to talk to you about something and you keep
pushing, she might decide she was right to think you can’t be trusted to
accept her feelings.
Does the person who isn’t very forthcoming with you have reason
64 THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD
to believe that you’re interested in what he thinks and feels? That you’ll
listen without interrupting? That you can tolerate disagreement? Anger?
Openness is a product of interaction.
Men Are from Mars?
As we head further into the twenty-first century, the social construction
of gender—men do this, women do that— polarizes relations between the
sexes as never before. As the old complementarity gives way to a new sym-
metry, conflict seems to be the price for equality.
Several books in recent years gained enormous popularity by telling
us that men and women communicate differently and then explaining
what those differences are. Among the most popular was John Gray’s Men
Are from Mars , Women Are from Venus , in which the author argues that
men need space while women crave company. If we learn to respect the
inevitable differences that crop up between two people who live together
by attributing such differences to gender rather than to stubbornness or ill
will, maybe that’s a good thing. And if we learn not to react unsympatheti-
cally to what our partners say, that’s certainly a good thing. But perhaps
the most important thing is not so much learning how to react to these
other, alien creatures, but learning not to overreact and learning instead
to listen. Perhaps the best response to Freud’s famous question “What do
women want?” might have been “Why don’t you ask—and then listen?”
Once, differences between men and women were thought to be bred
in the bone, and this biological determinism was used to justify all man-
ner of inequity. After years of effort to break down these separate but
unequal categories, a new wave of feminist scholars reasserted what they
once fought: gender differences. Jean Baker Miller emphasized responsive-
ness and mutuality as especially important to women in relationships,5 and
Carol Gilligan argued that for women the qualities of care and connection
are fundamental to selfhood, organizers of identity, and moral develop-
ment.6 According to Gilligan, men build towers and women build webs.
Thus far the greatest impact of the new work by feminist psychologists
5Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).
6Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
How Communication Breaks Down 65
has been a reaffirmation of gender differences—but this time with a positive
construction of the psychology of women. In her book, The Reproduction
of Mothering , Nancy Chodorow pointed out that because boys and girls are
parented primarily by mothers, they grow up with different orientations to
attachment and independence.7 Boys must separate themselves from their
mothers to claim their masculinity, which is why boys of a certain age start
shrinking from their mothers’ hugs and why “sissy” and “mamma’s boy”
are still
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