The Authors Miscommunicate!
Male-female miscommunication... it can happen to anyone. Even the authors of He Meant, She Meant: The Definitive Male-Female Dictionary Especially them. Isn't that the whole point? In the chapter "The Correspondence," some of their arguments have been preserved in their e-mails.
Here's an excerpt that shows what happens when a man and a woman try to write a book about male-female communication...
The Correspondence
Jenny Lyn,
I got the package. Thanks. I’m incorporating the editor’s notes, and will be talking to you soon.
Take care.
Bill
Dear Bill,
Did you read my note about collapsing “lonely” and “loneliness”?
I enclose a list of things for us to do, and those outlines I promised a couple of weeks ago.
all best
Jenny Lyn
Jenny Lyn,
I must tell you something about myself with which I am not pleased, but there it is: I am not capable of taking on new tasks until I am at least almost done with old ones.
I see the ideas you have for changing words, dropping those which seem redundant, and so on.
Yet, slow bull that I am, I cannot keep up. I need to keep doing what I am doing, the original task for which tomorrow’s deadline was set, or I will feel frustrated and rudderless. I have a need to finish the task we set last week, before I can respond reasonably to your quite reasonable ideas.
Please: can we just do what we said last week we would do, and look later at the new ideas you are sending?
As always, Bill
Bill,
Hi. Please don’t fret sweetie - I don’t mean to be throwing a lot of stuff at you. I find our miscommunications so funny and genderesque, I wonder if we should excerpt them in the dreaded “methodology” section...
If you had read the whole list, you would know that the tasks aren’t that great. I am sorry my letters seem "rather extensive" - I think the sight of them unread is much more overwhelming than what is in them. I do not think I having sudden new “reasonable ideas” but working on old ones.
(What makes Me feel frustrated and rudderless is the idea that you are Not reading what I have written to you.)
- Jenny Lyn
Jenny Lyn,
Of course you are right these are not new ideas. I do remember talking about them. But they are new to me in the sense that anything other than dealing with editorial comments seems new to me right now.
That is probably confusing to you. I don’t intend to make you feel rudderless. I do try to read everything you send me, but since I don’t put it into practice right away things start to feel like they’re piling up, and I start picturing you ready to send more, and wondering why I’m not keeping up, and why I am not sending you e-mail of equal length. And then I start to feel guilty in addition to feeling behind. And that makes the work, pleasurable though it undoubtedly can be, seem burdensome.
Perhaps you are right that this is a gender thing. I keep thinking of Linda Goodman’s analysis of the Libra-Taurus interaction — the way the airy Libra runs mental circles around the slow-moving bull, confusing him but always charming, and nearly always right. And bulls do so like to be charmed, that they don’t even mind being confused. Except once in a while. It’s not easy for me to feel slow; usually I feel rather fast, by comparison to whichever verbal counterpart I am dealing with.
I am having a productive evening, and appreciate your letter. I suspect the trouble is less anything you are doing and more what I think you are expecting from me in reply. I suspect that is a gender problem. Also a residue of Irish Catholic guilt. I sometimes think my whole life is a residue of Irish Catholic guilt.
Anywho, take care. Bulls may plod, but they have a sticktoitiveness that comes in handy (inertia?), and I’m still plugging away —
Bill
Bill
You don’t seem slow — I feel as if I’m lagging behind too. The thing you said was premature I thought was two weeks late and felt guilty for not sending sooner.
Your bull-libra imagery is great. I feel metaphorically that you are trying to rebuild our house from the ground up, while I am trying to sand and paint it... you think we can’t sand and paint it until it is finished, and I ask why we can’t do everything at once as we go along - then the house will be painted already when it is built! Of course I am right that we should sand as we go along or we’ll have trouble doing it later, and of course you are right that we should leave some painting till the end lest everything drip on us.
-Jenny Lyn
p.s. I’ve sent you a list of priorities
Jenny Lyn,
I was so happy to receive your letter about the house. It was appropos, and showed you understand the situation perfectly.
Thanks for the priorities. By the way, don’t you want to get the book in on time?
Bill
Bill -
Yes I’d love to have it in too. Let’s try not to see this as a delay but an opportunity to give in an even better draft on Monday.
Glad you liked the house.
Jenny Lyn
