Men and women are different. John Gray said men are from Mars, women are from Venus, a great metaphor to underline their differences and recommend a correct couple communication.
Men and women are different beyond sexual aspects. Their brain works differently, the skin has different sensitivity and in a fight they have different reactions, they give a different communication of the fact.
It is therefore no surprise such difference in communication may lead, in the long run, to a crisis likely to take the couple to a separation, being it a divorce, a legal separation, stop living together or, more simply, the end of the relationship. As if the normal day-to-day routine was not enough!
Here it comes, the brand new couple at the beginning of their relationship! Things go so well they decide to move together. It’s all sparkling, like champagne, then man and woman, each one taking their time, discover there is a cohabitation, a couple, some roles, expectations and much more.
Now comes the hurdle: what do we do? Fix the thing or start working on it, considering the environment, our roles, dynamics of relationship, the individual and couple’s space, following traditional roles, develop or implement the couple communication? Because communication means more than simply talking. Communicating is to know that, if values are deep and well structured, whichever comes out is almost all the time a temporary thing, a transitory crisis (the word crisis comes from the Greek krisis, turning point or judgment, defining an evolution in the life of the couple) and that there are also things that, if missing, cause a fracture in the communication itself which is often incurable and the consequent end of cohabitation, separation, divorce and so on.
The easiest example is the way the word communication is perceived: for a woman it means to establish social relationships (have you ever wondered why they are always stuck on the phone?), whilst a man thinks it is about telling the bare facts (do you finally understand because men’s calls are always monosyllabic?). It is really interesting to notice what happens when working with a couple in a crisis (they say they are in a crisis!). We often find out the so called crisis is nothing but a big misunderstanding, a hassle which, once noticed, improves both communication and cohabitation. Sometimes they say the relationship is in danger, only to discover there is no relationship at all, it’s only two individuals, a man and a woman, sharing each other’s presence and it’s therefore impossible to even think about a couple. They reach the awareness that is not a relationship, rather a conjunction of two individualities.
Several thousands of years we lived according to traditional roles (we’ll see there’s more of that in a following post, though) have structured man and woman’s brains differently, and such structure is partly cause of what we’ve discussed.
Last but not least, communication is also a direct expression of our perspective. Woody Allen in Manhattan said “I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.” It is important to know a couple’s perspective: is it short, medium or long term? This will determine the result of cohabitation, how long the relationship will last, the possibility to make it last a long time or end up in a separation, divorce or end of a relationship. Communication is a two-way flow, where every new message is an evolution of the previous one, in good and bad. Leave or omit some details means to deprive elements of communication some of which may indeed be very important. Adding it all to the structural difference between man and woman we get all the potentials but also all the perils of a relationship.
