I ended up doing office/secretarial work long before it was generally fashionable in Ireland to do so - no, I'm not gay.
As a result, over the years, I've spent a lot more time in conversation with women than men, and here's what I noticed about them and myself in regard to men listening:
ERRANDS
Men are like a shopping trolley, you've to coax them in the right direction, e.g. if you want a certain thing to register with them, like picking up something from the shop, etc then you need to pick the time to say it when they're not engrossed in something, as it gets put on the back burner, i.e. they'll remember the message just after they've turned the key in the front door.
Confronting men to make them remember does not work. They'll get mad and the item still goes to the back of their minds.
GENERAL CONVERSATION
If during a conversation a man appears to go off on a tangent, you can try and bring him back on topic once, after that, just leave it. He's basically telling you that the current conversation is either uncomfortable or just boring, and he does want to change the subject, and didn't just lose track of the conversation.
THIS IS THE BIG ONE. If you are going to tell him a story about some encounter or conversation with someone, please summerize. If it takes you 2 minutes just to tell him how you encountered the person, and then proceed to recreate every bit of the dialogue, you'll lose him very fast. He just wants the punchline, and when there's no sign of it, he'll be planning his tv schedule or spending his money in his head.
Don't know if that helps girls, I know a few of the lads probably dozed off after the shopping trolley bit...
mcneillm Forum Posts (1,250)
RE: Do men listen?
haha, sometimes we don't even listen to each other...