Chris Taylor
This post is a few days late—but better late than never, right?
Does your wife say that she would like to have better conversations with you? Or more conversations?
Let’s take a look at what that means as well as what it has to do with sex.
What Conversation Means to Her
What your wife means by the word “conversation” may not be what you think it means.
Linguist Deborah Tannen has written about how men and women use language differently.
For men, conversation is about establishing dominance or exchanging information.
This was evident when my sons were growing up and their school friends would call in the morning to say they were on the way to our house where they would walk to school together. When my sons would get a call, it was always quick. I would often hear only a word or two from one of my boys: “Okay” and “See ya” were sufficient.
I also hear it on Saturday mornings when my husband, father-in-law, and brother-in-law gather to talk. I will sometimes hear my husband and his brother disagree about whether something is good or bad, what it means, what to do, or whatever. They are trying to assert their superior knowledge over the other. If they get too loud, my father-in-law has to say only “Enough!” to quiet his sons. It’s clear that he is still the dominant one of the three men.
Women use conversation to establish and maintain relationships.
Whereas my sons would have 10-second conversations before school, my daughter would get a call in the morning and be on the phone for 15–20 minutes. She and a friend would talk about what they were wearing to school, who they hung out with the day before, conversations they’d had with other friends, what TV show they’d seen, what they were going to talk about on the way to school, and so on.
Every week when I come home from my knitting group, my father-in-law asks me what I learned. The answer is almost always that I didn’t learn anything. And he says, “Then why did you go?”
The point of the conversation I have with my knitting friends isn’t to share the news (although that happens from time to time). Rather, it’s to share what we’ve been doing, how we’ve felt about it, what struggles we face, and how we can help each other. There is no power hierarchy, and we use language to get to know each other more deeply and share our lives with each other. We verbally meander because one person’s comment may remind someone of an experience she wanted to share or a thought she’s had about something.
Conversational Clashing
Early in our marriage, I would try to engage my husband in conversation. Instead of having a conversation as I defined it, he would say things like “Get to the point” or “What am I supposed to do about all this?” My response would be a confused “Why would you think there’s a point? I’m just sharing my day with you.”
Sometimes I would complain and say I wanted us to have more conversations, and my husband would be left in his own confusion since, from his point of view, we had plenty of pointless conversations.
Or we had conversations that had a point—updating each other on groceries, bills, phone calls, and family news—that were about keeping the family going. We exchanged information, but we weren’t maintaining our connection or building our relationship.
My husband thought he was doing what I wanted so couldn’t understand why I kept saying I wanted more conversation.
Because it didn’t occur to me that conversations meant something different to him than to me, I thought he was ignoring my request for conversation and being dismissive of me. I felt emotionally neglected.
Do you know what my feeling of being emotionally neglected led to? You guessed it—less sex.
J and I have talked about how sex can feel risky and vulnerable for wives. From my point of view, my husband was asking for a whole lot of vulnerability on my part through having sex, but he wasn’t giving me anything that I needed to feel emotionally safe enough to do so.
Having connectional conversations helps me feel known, accepted, and loved in a way that makes it easier for me to anticipate and enjoy sex.
For more insight on how wives communicate differently, read Why She Communicates the Way She Does (and It May Not Be What You Think), a guest post J wrote for The Generous Husband.
Conversation Tips for Husbands
If your wife has commented that she would like for the two of you to improve your conversations with each other, you might be wondering what exactly you can do about that.
Here are some things to try:
- Ask open-ended questions rather than questions that ask for either a yes or a no. Asking about what you can pray about for her or how her big project is going might be good.
- If she asks you how your day went, tell her about something that happened at work. “It was a normal day” isn’t as connecting as “One of our drivers peeled off the top of the truck going under a low overpass.”
- Ask follow-up questions. If she says that her boss praised her for something she did, ask her how she felt about it or how she would like to celebrate.
- Give her eye contact. Men often prefer side-by-side conversations, but most women appreciate some eye contact. That doesn’t mean you have to stare into her eyes for minutes on end. It just means that every so often, look directly at her while you’re listening.
- Avoid screens. Looking at your phone or flipping through TV channels tells your wife that you aren’t paying attention to you. Being able to repeat what she just said isn’t the same as fully listening to her. She wants to feel connected, so show her that your attention is fully on her.
- Offer a solution only if you are asked for one. If she talks about a problem she has, she is inviting you to be closer to you. She wants you to know her. She wants you to understand what she is experiencing. If she wants you to tell her how to fix the problem, she will ask. My husband and I have a system where he waits at least an hour to offer me a solution. That gives me time to feel heard and valued while also giving him an opportunity to try to fix something for me.
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:6
