Cody Butler explains why men and women talk past each other: men want facts and solutions, women want to feel heard. When he corrects a timeline, she hears dismissal. When she prioritizes how something felt over what actually happened, he thinks she's being illogical.
Chapters
And what is— because men and women think differently. Men are very emotional. Men are very logical and factual in their approach. Women are very emotional in their approach. Women don't really care what the facts are. They care about how they feel about what's happened. Whereas a man really is much less concerned with the feelings of the situation than he is with the the logistics and the truth, the logical truth of the situation, the factual clarity, right? So he thinks that a calm conversation is logical discussion, factual, factual clarity, correct timelines, technical accuracy of what's happened, happened, uh, problem solving, solving missing misunderstandings, et cetera. And let me explain what happened, where she doesn't see a calm conversation that at all. She thinks a calm conversation, or the way she experiences the conversation as being calm, is it's about emotionally understanding the situation. So the woman might say, for example, when we went out on Tuesday night, you made me feel like X, Y, and Z. And the man will go, well, actually it wasn't Tuesday, it was Wednesday. Or the woman will say, when you said 'X, Y, and Z, it made me feel like whatever.' And the man will go, 'Well, actually, that's not what I said.' When for the woman, the calm conversation is saying, 'Hey, it doesn't matter where we were. It doesn't matter exactly what you said. What I'm trying to tell you is that in that moment, I felt this way.' And if that doesn't line up factually, to be factually accurate, the man is going to correct the situation, which to him is completely logical, completely reasonable, and completely calm.
