The need for conversation seems to have some overlap with the need for openess and honesty. However, you can have openess and honesty without frequent stretches of conversation. Likewise, you can talk endlessly but never really open up. Many women feel the need for both openess and conversation.
This is also a particular need of mine. Talking out loud, by itself, can be useful since it helps me work through ideas and concepts. Bouncing them off another human being and getting feedback and questions is also useful. Sometimes if an idea is bugging me, I have to get it outside myself so I can see it and deal with it more effectively. Almost every idea about which I write was discussed at length with one or more others before finding it’s way to paper.
Women in particular have a need to talk. Men have a need to do or watch. When men get together, they usually do something or watch something. When women get together, they often talk. There may be an activity in which they engage as the official reason for getting together, but while men might consider a ball game a good social time with hardly any conversation, women often value bridge meetings and bunko games for the conversation, not just the game.
This means that when a man gets in a relationship with a woman, there is a high likelihood that her need to have conversation will be greater than his. Men often talk to share information. Women talk to relate. A man may have to learn that he isn’t listening for facts, he’s listening to listen. He’s listening to show that her life is important to him. He’s listening to show that he likes being the first person she thinks about when she wants to share.
Just as with openess, it isn’t about solving a problem. It’s about listening and talking. Sometimes the “conversation” need women have is really just a need to be heard. That’s a woman’s desire to feel safe and secure to open up. She is easily shut down by invalidating or minimizing her feelings. Very often she knows she’s being foolish, and rationally she knows what she needs to do, but emotionally she’s a wreck and she needs to air it so she doesn’t act on her feelings. My wife, from time to time, will tell me “I know this isn’t true, but this is how it feels...” and she’ll go on about her feelings. I listen, and usually we work through it.
Conversation is not just about listening when she opens up. It’s talking back and forth about anything. It may have nothing to do with opening up or being vulnerable. You might just talk about a movie you saw, or a clothing style that’s popular. One time my wife and I ended up in a three hour discussion launched from a psychoanalysis of a popular music figure. We discussed culture, subcultures, what we thought of certain ideas and ponder the challenges of what we might do if a child of ours was interested in such a thing.
With some regularity we discuss the problems in which other people find themselves and ponder what we might do in similar situations. A few times this intellectual preparation has paid off when we did find ourselves in a similar situation and we had already thought through it. We discuss politics, games, art, movies, cats, dogs, backyard care, and what we might do around the house.
We discuss things we might like that we would never buy. I was looking at a very expensive computer system and talking about all the things it could do. If I had the money to spend, though, I would never have spent it on such a thing. We just talked about how incredible it was that people could build something like that.
Conversation can be a powerful thing. A woman who is out half the night with a new man and comes home to her roommate would be considered lucky if she could truthfully say “We just talked!” It’s easy to find a man who will be romantic to get her in bed. It’s easy to find a man who will do things for her for the same reason. But women know that it is a wonderful and all too rare thing to find a man with whom she can just talk - for hours - about anything, even about nothing. This doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t after something anyway, but the simple fact that a man can have a many-hours long conversation is quite a find.
One of the fortunate things about women and conversation is that this is something they can do with one another. If a man doesn’t have very good conversation skills, she can talk with her girlfriends, her mother, or her sister. However, a failure to communicate at the basic level of meaningful and even not-so-meaningful conversation is a basic intimacy builder for women. A man who wants to be considered a confidante by his wife should cultivate this skill.
GETTING CONVERATION
A basic strategy for getting conversation is to talk about something that interests the other person. Once you get the other person going, then just listen and let them talk. Ask more questions and show your admiration and appreciation for their knowledge, insight, understanding, skill or whatever else praiseworthy there is in the topic at hand.
Men who never want to talk either don’t have the skills or don’t have anything to say. If they know they are safe with you and won’t be criticized for their talking skills or what they say, and if they are allowed to talk about what they know about without being criticized for that - then they are much more likely to talk.
One woman I know had a simple strategy for starting conversations with men. She’s ask about sports. One day at work she was faced with a man who was hunting down a last minute gift for his wife. He didn’t know what she liked, and his brain seemed paralyzed by the very thought that he needed something, and he needed it now. The pressure froze all recollection of his wife’s tastes. Since she wasn’t gettng anywhere, she asked about the baseball game from the night before. She happened to catch part of the game and it finished with a great play. He saw the game, too, and suddenly a conversation was off and running. Another man joined in, and the three of them had a nice chat about baseball and sports in general.
By the time they got back to what his wife might want, his brain was unlocked and he went on for several minutes about the kind of things his wife liked, about what she already had, and they found some things for her and he left happy, gift in hand. The other man also made several purchases. If she’d been a commission salesperson that day, she would have made a bundle.
Anyone who wants to have a conversation with someone just needs to find something about which the other person is passionate and ask about it. If the other person feels safe and knows that his passion won’t be used against him in the future (“You get more passionate about sports than you do our anniversary!”), he will be more likely to talk. Once he has practice and feels comfortable talking about one subject, it becomes easier to talk about others. If he feels that the time talking is your effort to enter his world, he is more likely to engage in the conversation.
One of the most dreadful moment’s for a man is when a woman says “We need to talk.” He knows that it almost always means he’s in trouble or she wants something from him, probably a committment or some obligation. If a woman learns to talk about the things that interest him, then she is less likely to invoke such feelings of dread when she wants to talk.
PRACTICING CONVERSATION
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a classic book for learning how to get along with other people, and practically mandatory reading for anyone in a business even remotely related to dealing with people. It is also a great manual for making and keeping friends and acquaintances. He was considered a great conversationalist and had even been invited to parties specficially because of his renown as such.
His secret was simple: Listen.
He’s listen for what the other person found intersting, asking them questions about themselves until he found that area bottled up inside of them that really wanted to get out. It might include stories told a thousand times that had worn his friends out, but Dale would listen with intent and enthusiasm. He’d ask more questions and perhaps mention the story to another in the immediate area.
He’d hardly talk. Almost everything he said was an open ended question or reflecting on something that the other person was discussing. He’d enter their world, try to understand their feelings and emotions and he’d sincerely compliment them on anything therein he could find. At the end of the evening, he’d have a dozen stories or more from the party goers, and he’s hardly shared anythign at all. His fellow guests had been kept so busy talking about themselves that they did not even realize that no one had asked Mr. Carnegie about himself.
The first skill to learn is how to listen intently. Try to understand what the person is saying and remember it. Reflect it back to them in your own words from time to time to make sure you’re following what they say. Ask questions and listen for the answers with enthusiasm and a genuine desire to understand. As you understand more of the life and the world in which your partner lives, it becomes easier, bit by bit, to have increasingly meaningful conversations about it.
Reflective listening means you have to pay attention and try to understand the subtext of what is being said. Are there meanings to the story that are not being said? Often, an event will mean one thing to one person and something very different to another. Don’t just listen for facts, listen for the emotional context, too.