Oh, How the Men Drone On

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at [email protected].

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Dear James,

How can I put this without sounding like a harridan? With few exceptions, my male friends seem incapable of having a balanced, one-on-one social conversation with me. I like these guys very much and have known them for years. They’re the husbands of my closest friends. But after a perfunctory “How are you?” or some such rote inquiry, they’re off and running: I’m deluged with their reports of troublesome health problems, recent enviable travels, distressing interpersonal professional or personal dilemmas, upsetting political matters. Some of these topics interest me, so I’m willing to be a welcoming listener. (Disclaimer: I’m a psychotherapist.) When it gets to be too much, I occasionally try to steer the conversation toward me, but this suffices only momentarily—and soon we’re back to their “me, me, me-isms.”

I have no interest in confronting them and suggesting that they “work through” what I deem to be (mostly) their problem. I’m more intrigued by the possibility that you, obviously a liver of the examined life, may have some explanation for this phenomenon. Do you?

Dear Reader,

Men talk over, talk past, talk through women—it’s true. Across centuries of sonic warfare, we have used chauvinist bass, patriarchal booming, and crude shifts in tempo to seize and hold the floor. Also: long stories, which are their own form of conversational oppression.

But there’s no monopoly on self-involvement, in my experience. I’ve been solipsistically droned at by persons of all genders and none. People think I’m a good listener, but I’m really not. What I’m actually doing while they’re blathering is listening to myself—attending closely, that is, to my own reactions, positive or negative, and planning my (eventual, if they ever stop bloody talking) response.

You, though, are a therapist, and listening is your business. And consciously or not, these men are taking advantage of this: They’re getting your expertise for free. No doubt you ask them good questions and keep it flowing nicely, and they probably come away from these encounters feeling soulful and enriched—while you feel baffled and depleted.

So be less of a therapist, is my suggestion. Be a worse listener, a coarser and more rhythmless interlocutor. Invert your training! Fidget; sigh; check your phone. Laugh at the wrong thing. Launch your own anecdote, entirely unrelated. Belch. Throw these men off their hobbyhorses, off the tracks of their discourse. They might even thank you for it.

All ears,

James

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