She carps until she’s blue in the face. He silently stews. And neither is happy.
Researchers from the University of Texas in Austin have found that critical, loquacious women mixed with taciturn men can make a toxic brew.
Previous studies have shown that some troubled marriages follow a pattern in which women make demands, perhaps because they lack power in the relationship, and men “stonewall” in response, convinced they have nothing to gain from confrontation.
“We wanted to look at how combinations of communication styles affect relationships,” says William Swann, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas.
Swann devised a test that measures verbal inhibitions—and coined a word for those who freely share their thoughts and feelings: blirtacious.His team then assessed the communication style of each individual in hundreds of couples and asked them to rate their level of satisfaction with their relationship. When blirtacious women were paired with men reluctant to speak their minds, both partners were less satisfied. And the men’s inhibition seemed to amplify the women’s criticism.
It’s easy to imagine why these types pair up, despite the bad chemistry. “More verbally inhibited men tend to be shy,” says Swann. “So a blirtacious woman must seem like a godsend: the pressure is off, and he can avoid the thing that frightens him the most—a first date. The woman, meanwhile, is on a constant quest for airtime and finds herself in a virtually unobstructed situation.”
Eventually, however, the man will become unhappy in the relationship, without articulating why. In an attempt to draw him out, the woman will berate longer and louder. A downward spiral ensues.
The pattern is gender-specific, as reserved women tend to tolerate critical, blirtacious men. “We’re now investigating why that is,” says Swann. He speculates that a subtle form of sexism could be at work, in which critical women are perceived by men as exerting too much control.
People who find themselves in a precarious combo can work their way to solid ground. But not simply by talking things out, despite our culture’s staunch belief that more communication is the cure-all for romantic ills. More specifically, “The man can recognize that he’s going to have to make explicit attempts to say what he needs and not assume the woman can read his mind,” Swann says. “And the woman may have to make an effort to give the guy a chance to speak—because she is in fact capable of being quiet.”
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