Excerpted from “Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget”
Ch. 4 pgs. 80-81
Perhaps our difficulties in successfully talking to one another have to do with inaccuracies in the way we analyze the information we’re given.
My patient Sarah described to me a conversation she’d had with her husband, Bill, as they were filling out an application together for a special gifted program for their son. In order to illustrate one of Liam’s finer qualities. Sarah launched into an anecdote. Bill cut her off, wanting “to get to the point,” which for him was how they could describe that quality in a sentence that would satisfy the application requirements. The interruption hurt Sarah’s feelings, which irritated Bill. Needless to say, the application didn’t get finished that night.
What we have here is pretty much a textbook. Sarah answered a question with a story; Bill simply wanted to draw the shortest line between points A and B. their inability to communicate properly left them each with hurt feelings and compromised their effectiveness as a team in completing the application.
It’s humiliating to be interrupted, and there’s really no excuse for it, no matter how pressing the deadline or how inappropriate the digression. That’s something Bill is going to want to correct in the future. But when I did a little digging, I discovered that the interruption wasn’t really what was bothering Sarah. It was her interruption of what lay behind it. “Liam is his son too, “ she said. “What’s more interesting and important to him than talking about our child?”
In my opinion, Sarah simply drew the wrong conclusion from the data. She thought Bill’s disinterest Bill’s disinterest in her anecdote betrayed a lack of interest in Liam. I’m not so convinced. In fact, I think Bill might have been acting in what he perceived to be Liam’s best interests, by trying to finish the application. Rude? Yes. Disinterested? Probably not. But given Sarah’s “translation” of Bill’s behavior, of course, she felt threatened and hurt!
Legato, M.J. (2005). Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget. Rodale Press