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Notes -
Hm, I could definitely see how that could be the case. If that’s really going on, though, it sounds like the women in question would be the ones who need to change their behavior — unless the men are truly terrible people (which I doubt in most cases) I bet they’d appreciate either the more active interest of their partners with their own knowledge or a polite but clear indication that they’d like to change the subject. Like most things in relationships, communication is the solution.
My gf has definitely gotten bored of a discussion before, but I can usually tell. It’s also happened that she’s talked about something she’s passionate about and I got bored — I know a lot less about biology than she knows about politics and history, so there’s a greater disconnect. But honestly, I’m just excited that she’s excited and I love knowing she cares about what she’s doing.
So many of the relationship complaints I hear from people of both sexes just seem so petty to me. I respect that a lot of people have serious problems in relationships and I want everyone to be respected and appreciated by their partners. But so much just feels like a dark force just wants men and women to hate each other.
Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that some women getting terrible relationship advice is the fault of the men in their lives. Like that article a few weeks back about college girls egging each other on to have sex right away with every guy they were a bit interested in, and then feeling upset about the results. It sounded like the girls in question had gotten a lot of really dumb advice from the women and female media in their lives.
Personally, I like it when my husband uses an interest to suggest an experience we can share, like he'll research some ruins and plan a day trip to go look at them and play tour guide. I don't like it when he tries to info dump about weapon usage in Ukraine or something, but that's at least half negative emotional valance of it being about ways to kill people.
Yeah, it probably was better to have a norm not to complain about one's romantic partner just because you got in a spat and are feeling angry about it. Healthy couples mostly seem not to do that. We seem to have lost some outlets, living so far from our families, -- I've called my in-laws to complain once or twice when feeling really outraged, and it was way more effective than complaining in the comments section of the NYT or something.
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