f and said “you can have plastic surgery to cover up the scar and restore the shape of your breast”. Eve had taken comfort in her girl friends comments but was upset by Mark’s. The other example is a husband and wife in bed, when the husband remarks that he can’t sleep, and the wife comments that she never sleeps well. The husband got offended by her comment and asked why she was trying to belittle him, she states that she wasn’t and was just trying to show that she understood. Women and men are both often frustrated by the others way of responding to their problems, and are further hurt by each others frustration. While women resent men’s inclination to offer solutions to problems, men criticize women’s refusal to solve the problem at hand. Our differences appear to go as far back as our growing up. A sixteen year old girl told Tannen that she would rather hang around with boys than girls. Tannen saw her opportunity to test her ideas and asked if boys and girls both talk about problems, the girl assured her yes. Tanned asked if they went about it in the same way, and the girl responded: oh no, the girls go on and on, while the boys raise the issue, find a solution, end of discussion.Talking about problems isn’t the only conversational task that men and women view differently, another is asking for information. Tannen tells a story about a couple she labeled Sybial and Harold. The couple had been trying to get to a friend’s house for an extended period of time, it could be perceived that they were lost. Harold refused to ask for directions, and that made Sybial upset, not because he didn’t know his way, but because he insists on finding it himself instead of asking for help. Her anger is the result of looking at the situation through her lens: if she were driving, she would have asked for directions as soon as she realized she didn’t know which way to turn, ...
