Men-Women Interpersonal Communication Both Men and Women

¶ … Men-Women Interpersonal Communication

Both men and women want happy relationship. It is one of the most wanted qualities of life that anyone in the world would like to achieve in their life. Expectations and achievements however do not always come in accordance as the cause-and-effect or results of long time efforts. Many men and women work hard to build their relationship and shape it up to meet their quality exactly like they dream of for a long time, just to find that some simple miscommunications would ruin it and end it up in disappointment to their partner. Or, in the not-so-extreme cases, some couples have found the person that they thought would be able to fulfill their dreams and become an ideal soul mate, but after a series of some hard works and nerve-racking conversations to understand what each other's wants.

Experts and psychologists continue to work out on finding possible causes and their connection with personalities to entangle the gender communication issue. It is believed that men and women differ in perceptions of their relationships with their significant other. A survey was conducted that revealed that most women think their relationship is going better than their boyfriends do, while men tend to list more changes he would make in the relationship. Personalities, the nature of thinking process, and different goals in life could be the possible reasons why both parties have different perception towards the same relationship.

The Different Ways of Thinking

Naturally, men and women were built to develop the different ways in dealing with their life, including making an analysis when they are seeing a problem and anticipating the events and incidents that will give important impact for them.

Psychological Self-help citing Carol Gilligan in her book "In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory And Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982) explained, "Females often remain concerned with relationships." It means that women often see relationship as mental involvement. They would develop the love and caring rituals as a process to build "close, intimate" relationship. Women tend to think that relationship requires them to cater for the partner, and it is a moral principle.

It is probably explaining why they tend to relate their relationship's growth to anything that is spiritually related. When they feel like they have devoted the time and affection to their partner, they would feel that the partner would enjoy the relationship they way they do, inasmuch every little thing that does not cause a problem would be able to indicate the healthy escalation of the relationship to the next level.

Women believe their expression of love would give an accentuation of the relationship itself, therefore, they would consider the process is getting better if they can work to develop it, as a part of moral principle. They see the responsibilities in a deeper intention to On the other hand, most men do not see things that way. Men develop different pattern that they are more interested in individual issues, such as defining what is fair and what they can do to have the important role in the family. In nature, traditional family values have great influences in the process of bringing up a boy and developing his characters to be capable in handling individual rights.

Men see that "logic and law or rules" are the common (reasonable) way to solve an argument. Conversely, women think that people should disentangle different opinions and make a solution through equal-share conversation, when the involving parties should listen to each other properly, and try to understand the other opinion or analysis.

This could be why, while women may think a relationship is going the right way; men could be indicating that the "right way" is not their right way. Men have a higher "independency" value than women, which encourages them to be involved in individual activities, which demand greater space for their sole existence, not always involving other people in their reign. The article explained, sometimes men want to be "their own man," which means, "being free to do their own thing, and being as successful as they can be."

While women's concerns may always involve the "togetherness" factor - doing things together, helping each other to achieve a goal, sharing each others' feeling and life plan to show love - men would find that there are "things to adjust in the relationship," in other words, to give them more space and recognition to be in control. For women, these actions could be interpreted as being ignorance to the partner's feeling, and refusal to the devoted attention that women give to their partner.

DeAngelis (2001) said, "Men see women trying to contribute or get organized or plan or problem-solve, and misinterpret it as women's attempt to control them." She explained that women often want equal partnership in the relationship. It means that they would want to share their opinion when their partner has a problem, because women want "to be involved." It is not necessarily to take part in making the decision, but women require the partner to see them around to show that "they are not alone."

In some improper occasions, men could not take this generous offer as help. In some problems, or perhaps in most problems, they need to show themselves that they are capable enough to solve things without asking for assistance from other people, especially from the women partner. They are supposed to help women, not in the opposite situation. As a result, most men would feel offended and make general opinion that women like to be in charge of their partner.

Women need to show their compassion, as well as men need to take care of things on their own, unfortunately both needs do not comply with each other. Men would see women's need as a threat to their powerful manner, while women see men's reluctance as a rude intention to get them away from the partnership of the relationship.

This is an important aspect that many men think they need to clarify in a relationship. The more daily associations they have - that for women means a more secure relationship - the more men feel the need to declare some boundaries of "controlling" factor they need to make a good relationship.

The Difference in Message-Delivery Methods

Woodall (1993) also underlined that men and women have the different ways of thinking. It seems that the separate ways also result in the difference nature of conducting communication and delivering messages. The high demand of independency of the way men handle a problem seems to be different from what women think they need. Men could think about an important matter - something that involves making big decisions - on his way. He would analyze the problem, consider the advantages and disadvantages of his choices, or conduct a survey by himself and then comes up with a decision without informing his partner when the process is taking place. For example, buying a property or make a career change.