Directed Freewrite p. 246
Early on in my marriage I felt the communication gap. Truthfully, it was more like an abyss. We stepped in and never got out. My conversational expectations during marriage and after fail to meet with my male counterpart, and I am sure I fail to meet his. We no longer conflict about our marriage, since it is over; but we still have not taken Tannen’s ideas and put them to practice. Hence, the conflict!
One Sunday evening “he” dropped the girls back off to me, in his customarily silent way. As Tannen so eloquently puts it, he was “free to remain silent” (Tannen 244). I notice the youngest has a bandage wrapped around her hand as I am kissing her hello and the door is closing. I say ‘Wait’ and I ask him what happened to her hand. He nonchalantly recounts the evenings events with an “oh no big deal” flare that involve smores, fire and a hot coat hanger. The key ingredients for a burnt hand. I add in my listener noise of appropriate uh-huh’s and my probing questions: did you give her any pain medication, how long did you run it under water, what is on it now, how long ago did it happen, did it blister. His physical alignment is typical for a male listener as described by Tannen, especially when he avoids my direct eye contact. And then he is gone.
Since the “he said” part is unavailable for Tannens recommendations to resolve the conflict, I have used Tannens ideas to instead, explain the conflict. But this is only the “she said” perspective. Tannen’s theory that “male-female conversation is seen as cross-cultural communication” is the best analogy yet. The author’s research rings true to real life male-female
communications. The ability to recognize our communication differences and accept these differences as a unique culture may prove fruitful to the insitution of marriage. Now if we can only get the men off Mars and the women off Venus and back to Earth to communicate using the “solutions without blaming either party” (Tannen 244).
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