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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