Sunday, January 20, 2013

If You Give a Man a Hint ....

....He probably won't notice.  There is no point in assigning blame for this.  It is just true.  Men and women do not think the same, and trying the same hinting technique year after year is bound to just create the same frustration.

At BYU I had a Marriage Prep class.  "Men do not get hints" is one of the things I was taught.  If you want something from a man, ask him for it.  You'll have a lot higher chance of getting what you want that way.  Not many months later Derek and I were talking about this with our other newly married friends and I heard a story from one of Derek's former roommates.  It was humorous, but similar scenarios are likely played out by most couples, at least occasionally, and they do not feel funny while they are happening.

The story goes like this:
The husband and wife were travelling home from somewhere, and she was thirsty.  She asked her husband if he was thirsty.  He said "No".  She said, "There is a gas station over there where we could get a drink".  He said, "It's okay, it's not that far until we get home and I'm not thirsty". 

When they got home she burst into tears.  He was confused.  She had hoped that when she asked him if he was thirsty, he might ask her in return, or that he would get the hint when she pointed out a place where they could buy drinks.  She had never mentioned herself, and so he didn't know she was thirsty.  He told her that he would have been happy to stop and buy her a drink if she would have just said, "I'm thirsty, could we stop and get a drink?"

Now, I know that men do get hints occasionally when the hints aren't too subtle, but I also am pretty sure that they like it better when the women in their lives ask for what they want so that there is no mystery anger, or crying to deal with over something they (the men) had no idea they were supposed to have done.
This is Dan.  I had no good picture for this post, but Dan's expression is probably a little like a man's would be when the woman in his life is all of a sudden upset because he entirely missed a hint.

1 comment:

Saimi said...

Oh Sher I love this post!! How true you just have to be blunt when it comes to communicating with men and Dan's expressions is PERFECT!!