[col-sect][column]We’ve all observed that the default instinctive way that women tend to attempt to fix a faltering social bond is to get right in there to find out what the other person is thinking/feeling and then quickly formulate a solution aimed at emergency closeness. This usually entails a whole lot of discussion. And really, what better way to find out what someone is feeling than to confront them directly. “We need to talk. What are you thinking?” Get in there. Fix. Reconnect through sharing feelings. Good times. And maybe that works on women. But, oh, hold on, it turns out that it doesn’t with men. In fact it pisses them off. Huh, well how about that. Who knew?

A new book called “How to Improve Your Marriage Without talking About It” lays out this ground-breaking theory that is completely obvious to half of the population and yet perfectly incomprehensible to the other half. When a woman pesters a man, and insists on being a general pain in the ass by wanting to talk about some problem, it triggers the release of cortisol (stress hormone) in his system, which causes unpleasantness. Seems that when there’s a conflict, instead of getting into it, men want to pull away to avoid an overdose of cortisol. So the book’s main message as advice to wives out there, amazingly, is “shut the fuck up!”. I’m paraphrasing a bit. 

I’ll tell you two things about this book’s philosophy: 1. It’s correct and 2. It won’t sell. Why. [/column][column]Because it’s off-code, meaning that it’s inconsistent with how a woman WANTS to solve her relationship problems. She wants to talk. She needs to talk. To a woman, talk equals connection. So the effective way to deal with men, i.e. finding alternatives to lengthy painful uncomfortable conversations, is irrelevant, and will be ignored and forgotten because when it’s going down and a woman finds herself confronted with a fresh new relationship crisis, her urge to just fix it causes tunnel-vision, and she will follow her instinct to get her talk on. In times like this her rational mind hasn’t got a hope in hell of overcoming the urge; she needs to find out what he’s thinking because her relationship is in jeopardy. She wants to get in his face and talk the hell out of it, even if doing so will cause the very consequence that she is fearing. It’s the irresistible desire to fill a void. So, chilling out is not a realistic option to expect her to consider.

If you want to sell a whole lot of relationship books, the on-code content formula would be to reinforce the existing female internal desire to talk and discuss and share, and of course, to blame the guy for being impossibly uncommunicative. Because in the end, it’s not about solving relationship problems; it’s about validating existing emotions and desires.[/column][/col-sect]

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