See the problem? All too often, we women casually throw something out there (“Why’d you go down Main Street? All these stoplights will make us late.”), and we think we’re opening a conversation. After all, another woman would catch the conversational ball and say “Oh, I’m only going to be on Main Street two blocks. There’s a parallel road I’m going to try in a second, and that should be faster.”
But because most men don’t generally process out loud, our man hears what we blurt out — our conversational starting point — and thinks it’s an ending point. He hears: “I’ve thought it through, and decided you’re an idiot for going this way.” In his mind, he was trying his best to get around a challenging situation, and make you happy by getting the two of you to dinner with friends on time — and you’re saying that he utterly failed. He feels inadequate, stupid, and humiliated. So he gets angry (a man’s signal of feeling inadequate) and stops talking.
You notice that he seems a bit upset, and then you get defensive. “For goodness sakes,” you blurt out, in Round Two of trying to explore what is happening, “What did I say? There’s no need to get so oversensitive!”
Great, he thinks, Not only am I stupid for trying to do something nice, but now I’m a jerk for not liking the fact that I’m being made to feel stupid.
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