¶ … 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.
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…
