In many, many ways women I find, are different from men. Not a startling revelation for anyone, I’m sure. The way that we communicate can be very different too. I have had many a conversation with my female friends about the challenges of communicating with our men.
Women, I feel, tend to be more intuitive in the way that they receive information and can usually understand what was intended. A good example is text messages. If you use predictive text – which I do – it can throw up some pretty interesting words that were not at all what we intended. Or perhaps there is a bit of a typo and the words are misspelled. For the most part, I have seen that if I send a text to a female friend and there is a spelling mistake, they will tend to work out what I had meant to say and respond accordingly. The same goes for if there is a completely wrong word care of predictive text. The women I know would again figure out what the word should have been. My husband, however and other men that I have known will probably come back with a “Huh?” or “what” or simply “?” and have no concept of what I had intended to say.
Then, there is the art of conversation.
You would think without the vagaries’ of text messages and predictive that a conversation – an actual conversation – would be easier to achieve. Not so. Not so, in our house at least and I explain it all in the poem below.
Conversation with my man
One minute he’s there and then he is not
I’m talking to him, but he’s left the spot
When I am cooking or hands in the sink
We start off a convo, least that’s what I think
Because there’s no eyes in the back of my head
I don’t know he’s gone, he’s such a soft tread
When he starts a sentence, I start to reply
He’s just left the room as I note with a sigh
Yes, it has happened again and again
A chat must be shorter perhaps for our men?
And when he does stay his replies can be strange
Mishears first four words and meaning will change
Perhaps I should always talk face to face
Then I would know he’s still in my space
And the words that I’m using would be received
The discussion I wanted may then be achieved
I do love him dearly, for he’s hardly a flaw
But I wish that I knew when he’s gone out the door
A little bit of silliness to brighten a gray and rainy day.
My journey with Parkinsons 