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Why do women talk so much?

A

Andeavor

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 19, 2010
297
1
I have a mother and sister and I've observed just how much nonsense they can talk together in one given day. When I spend some time with them, no minute is silent and they have to tell me e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that happened to them and comment on e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g around them - on the phone, in the car, while cooking dinner. Every day it's just yackety, yackety, yackety...

Meanwhile, my stepdad, my sister's boyfriend and I just sit back and only speak when there's an actual topic of their interest or if someone ask them for our opinion - or when one of the girls let's us speak again! 30 years later, I still haven't mastered the art of "butting in".

So, is there some gene women have that gives them the urge to fill all silence with words or is my immediate family the exception?
 
I don't get it either and have stopped trying to. now i just do the Charlie Sheen which is nod and say any of; "i understand", "i see your point", "cool".

Rinse, repeat cycle.
 
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Opposite here, my sister and I are pretty quiet, tend to only talk if we have something to say, whereas our father seemingly never stops.

It's almost like generalisations based on small data sets don't always hold.
 
Two years ago I setup a script to just type "k" every few minutes and let it run while "talking" to my girlfriend. Over an hour later she never knew. Then she commented, "is 'k' your only word?" and I replied "lol" and it was back to the k's.

My take was that women basically want to be listened to, no so much spoken to. Granted I made a bot to do that but it seemed to work just the same.



Michael
 
Tinmania said:
Two years ago I setup a script to just type "k" every few minutes and let it run while "talking" to my girlfriend. Over an hour later she never knew. Then she commented, "is 'k' your only word?" and I replied "lol" and it was back to the k's.

My take was that women basically want to be listened to, no so much spoken to. Granted I made a bot to do that but it seemed to work just the same.
Click to expand...

That is genius. Reminds me of my MSN chats with my sis when we were both overseas.
 
Women have 4 lips while men have 2 heads, which is why they talk more and we think more to ourselves ;)


But in reality, I think it might be a small attention thing, even if the women don't realize it - they want to say what's on their mind and have some acknowledgement for it.
 
Macaroony said:
I have a mother and sister and I've observed just how much nonsense they can talk together in one given day. When I spend some time with them, no minute is silent and they have to tell me e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that happened to them and comment on e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g around them - on the phone, in the car, while cooking dinner. Every day it's just yackety, yackety, yackety...

Meanwhile, my stepdad, my sister's boyfriend and I just sit back and only speak when there's an actual topic of their interest or if someone ask them for our opinion - or when one of the girls let's us speak again! 30 years later, I still haven't mastered the art of "butting in".

So, is there some gene women have that gives them the urge to fill all silence with words or is my immediate family the exception?
Click to expand...

Aside from personal experience, do you have any objective empirical sources to support the assertion that "women talk so much"...by which, I assume, you mean they talk more than men.

Under all circumstances, in all conditions, without reference to any parameters...women talk more than men.

Somme objective source material supporting your assertion, please. :D
 
I have read a couple of books that claim the difference is speech is due to hormones. Some say talking releases endorphins in the female brain, much like an addict gets from their drug of choice.

But I have to wonder if it is not due to women being insecure in a male dominated society. People who talk a lot usually want to be noticed. Women want to be noticed by men (to a lesser extent than in generations past, but still). If you ever get a chance during a conversation with someone, toss in a slight where you know they are insecure and watch them start to babble.

Of coarse, these are just my observations as a female introvert, so they are biases from my perspective.
 
Macaroony said:
I have a mother and sister and I've observed just how much nonsense they can talk together in one given day. When I spend some time with them, no minute is silent and they have to tell me e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that happened to them and comment on e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g around them - on the phone, in the car, while cooking dinner. Every day it's just yackety, yackety, yackety...

Meanwhile, my stepdad, my sister's boyfriend and I just sit back and only speak when there's an actual topic of their interest or if someone ask them for our opinion - or when one of the girls let's us speak again! 30 years later, I still haven't mastered the art of "butting in".

So, is there some gene women have that gives them the urge to fill all silence with words or is my immediate family the exception?
Click to expand...

Well you're certainly generating a healthy bit of nonsense yourself.
 
senseless said:
If you want to see men chatter incessantly, bring up sports.
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Or... just spend minutes on MacRumors! Kiddie section seems to be in iOS, middle age is OSX / MacPro, and the grumpy old men hang out in PRSI.

And trust me, no shortage of chatter with the men here. :D
 
When a woman drags up the old thing about them being able to multi-task, my reply is always, "but only when one of the tasks is talking" :p
 
I have since taken a leaf out of Charlie Harpers book, and during a brief pause will look at her and say "I understand".

I learnt the hard way that when Women come to you with a problem, they don't want help, or a solution. They want you to wait for them to stop speaking, and then say "I understand".

Before that enlightenment it was many a confused evening as she stormed off screaming "You never listen!" because I made the mistake of offering her advice or a solution to the problem she came to me with.
 
As someone who did volunteer student mentoring, the only thing talking is your sexism. Men are quite as capable of creating verbal diarrhea and being overbearing in conversation.


Benjy91 said:
I have since taken a leaf out of Charlie Harpers book, and during a brief pause will look at her and say "I understand".

I learnt the hard way that when Women come to you with a problem, they don't want help, or a solution. They want you to wait for them to stop speaking, and then say "I understand".

Before that enlightenment it was many a confused evening as she stormed off screaming "You never listen!" because I made the mistake of offering her advice or a solution to the problem she came to me with.
Click to expand...

Then you tell her that you feel like you can't have 2-way communication with her. Just because people do it doesn't make it good behavior. Sometimes people will outright tell you they want you to listen, and you can use it when they get all annoyed that you don't talk to them.
 
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in my case my wife even repeat herself in short period of time; saying the exactly same content 3-4 times in a row. :eek:

I learned better to not interfere ... :eek:

I love her though ... :)
 
This isn't a female or male thing. Chattering on is a psychological defense or even a compulsive disorder for some people, and maybe more often just a local cultural (familial) pattern.

I broke up with a guy once because he could not let a topic of conversation come to a natural end, with a little silence to follow. He'd launch something into that just-forming silence, and it didn't matter if it was awkward, a repetition or even a complete non sequitur. It's how his family was also. The whole bunch of them: men, women and children.

Anyway it just clashed so much with my own prior life experience that I couldn't deal with it after about two months. I can only explain my feelings like this: it was like my ears were out of breath from constantly having to listen. It was an overwhelming sensation.

In my family, at meal times, we were used to some comfortable silences, alternating with conversations I'd peg as either "necessary" or "informative" or once in awhile just "entertaining". It was bad form not to listen to what other people said at the table, and rude not to reply if asked a direct question. But there was no modelling of constant chatter. It was perfectly okay for all of us to sit there in silence for a few minutes now and then. It all seemed companionable to me. There was time to think about saying something, or not saying it.

Taking time to think before saying something? How bad could that be? Yet today, who knows. We all seem to fill up any silences by piping an iPod or TV or something in there. That seems to pave the way for substituting idle chatter when there's no such device handy. So, I try to have one low-tech day per week: to listen to the silence.
 
Tinmania said:
Two years ago I setup a script to just type "k" every few minutes and let it run while "talking" to my girlfriend. Over an hour later she never knew. Then she commented, "is 'k' your only word?" and I replied "lol" and it was back to the k's.

My take was that women basically want to be listened to, no so much spoken to. Granted I made a bot to do that but it seemed to work just the same.



Michael
Click to expand...

This is the greatest post ever:eek:.
 
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