Sounds like Mary Richard’s interview with Lou Grant.
That’d be my thought too. Especially considering both your comments I quote.
A famous observation is that “Men’s minds are like waffles; everything’s neat little compartments. Women’s minds are like spaghetti; everything is tangled up with everything else.”
Obviously that’s a stereotype and there’s vast room for individual variation and most humans embody some of each. If you’re more to the hard-male side and she’s more to the hard-female side of that stereotype, communication will always be challenging.
The larger issue about her communication style as it applies to you is that she runs through whatever complicated tree or chain of reasoning applies, then answers with one of her intermediate thoughts, not her conclusion. That shortcoming might be trainable if she’s willing.
But only if her actual thought process gets to a conclusion she can herself identify. For some people, the conscious part ends at “I had PB for lunch”, and only an unconscious nonverbalizable process continues to arrive at an unconscious generally favorable disposition towards eating again soon.
The only other response is to train yourself to play Sherlock Holmes and search out the tangle yourself based on the answer you got
e.g. you hear “I had PBJ for lunch.” and so you think "Lunch was 5 hours ago and that’s a small meal by her standards, so I conclude she’s hungry now. I will convert her sentence into ‘Yes dear, I’m hungry now.’ ". Then you say “Great! I’d like to go for Chinese. Where do you want to go?” To which she answers “We had Chinese for lunch 3 days ago.” From which you deduce “Chinese is too recent and hence not desirable now. What/where haven’t we eaten in over a week that she likes? I know: Luigi’s downtown.” etc.
If she’s a generally sensible person you can do this with high reliability once you put your mind to it. If she’s a ditz where what comes out of her face may as well be from reading the Magic 8 Ball™ then … you have a different choice to face about your relationship.
Just as you do if you decide your unwilling to play Sherlock Holmes the rest of your life.
Here is another example of an answer I dont understand though for an entirely different reason from an entirely different person.
You are not alone in that.
I suspect the person mostly meant “You @K2500 expressed the desire to change her. That is taboo.”
You’ve essentially outlined my approach it. It seems to work very well. Shes aware I struggle with it. She’ll notice my wheels turning sometimes when I’m particularly challenged and will respond with the equivalent of “…but yes, I’m hungry” with maybe and understanding laugh. It becomes less easy as the seriouslness of the conversations increase, which is where we struggle most.
She is indeed a generally sensible person. We do well with it, it’s not always frustrating or even an issue. Just one of those things I guess.
Reminds me of an old friend of mine. A group of us would be sitting and joking around and he would jump in with a total non-sequitur. When we asked him what the heck he was talking about, he would explain the five steps in the chain of thought to get to the topic he was talking about (a la James Burke’s “Connections”).
My husband is like this. Exactly like this. He doesn’t know he is doing it, and wouldn’t be able to stop if he did know. It might be a slight form of autism; he just doesn’t hear the intention when someone asks him something, very well. Obliqueness does not work with him at all, he will not pick up the cue, or else, worse, he’ll pick up a cue you didn’t give and respond to that, which can be really confusing to everyone.
For example if you wanted to talk about your plans for the day so you ask, "anything planned for today? he will typically say something like, “It’s early yet.” He is not just evasive, he is meta-evasive. Decisions are always difficult, even painful for him, right down to whether to go to the store today or tomorrow.
It won’t occur to him to ask about your plans in response, either.
He also often uses pronouns to discuss things that, for comprehension, need nouns. “It’s coming together nicely.” He doesn’t know when to provide context.
My advice? She is not going to change (easy to predict, people rarely do). It is probably a deep mental habit coupled with poorly-developed verbal social skills (this is why it is more common in men, who tend to be less socially adept). You will need to habitually provide patient prompts. “I didn’t get the answer I needed out of what you just said.” “Could you respond yes or no on this?” “I want you to ask me how my day went.” “Could you tell me who ‘he’ is, in your sentence?” Your friend may not have such a global problem as my husband. You have to decide if you can adapt. Getting irritated is not helpful, just bewildering.
I accept I’ll be sherlocking to some extent for the duration. I might ask how she came to give the answers she does sometimes so I can better understand how we got there. Which will help me figure things out with fewer steps.
Ahh, then there’s hope. Good for both of you for trying to communicate.
My best friend has a wife who just canNOT answer a yes/no question. I’d been trying to decode her replies for years when I decided to be honest and texted her:
“Look, I’m a guy. A white middle-aged Swiss guy. I’m trying to plan here, and I really need Yes or No answers from you.
SO… do you or do you not want to pick up breakfast sandwiches at Blue’s Clues and take them down to the lake, in an hour, at 10:15 am?”
Her reply? “Yum!” Followed by “Doesn’t Blue’s have THE best lemon curd scones?”
Congrats, K2500.You’ve gotten farther than I have.
If she’s throwing in extra info or just not good at being specific that’s one thing, if the answers always obscure the truth so that she can decide what she means later on then that’s another thing.
I pointed out dishonesty before but don’t take that as a serious indictment, it may not be her intention. That’s up to you to figure out, but there are people who live their lives this way, never committing to anything one way or another. They never have to apologize for their choices because they didn’t make any, anything that goes wrong is your fault because it was really you making the choice. Other people who do this just may not have a choice, may not be making any decision, and just can’t express that positively, they need to be better at saying “I don’t know”, or “I’d like to wait and decide later”.
And just because they do this, for whatever reason, about the minor issues in life, what to eat for dinner, what to watch on TV, what color umbrella to order on Amazon, they may be fine with the big issues in life.
But do watch out for people who lack the concept of truth like politicians, and let that attitude affect every aspect of their life.
Ha! I have a friend who answers the question you asked him - and only the question you asked him.
HIM: We’re meeting at Jenny’s house to watch the game at 6:30.
ME: Should I bring something?
HIM: Yes.
or
HIM: We’re meeting at Jenny’s house to watch the game at 6:30.
ME: Excellent, where does Jenny live?
HIM: In Steelville.
In general its all about pretty benign stuff. Her responses make perfect sense to her and as far as I can tell she truly believes the question has been answered definitively. I’ve never noticed an intent to decieve me in any harmful way.
There are definately times when the answers are intentially noncommittal, deceiving or obscure but they usually arise when the answer would be “no” or that she thinks I might otherwise find displeasing, a self preservation technique she developed before we met and that requires a more delicate response from me. These instances are immediately identifiable by body language and I dont have any trouble noticing or working around them. It did take a while to get to that point though.
As @digs said a few posts ago, there is hope. AT least you both identify and agree there’s a challenge to be worked on and both seem to be trying with honest intent and goodwill.
Whether all this is worth it to you, both now and for the longer term is a separate question you didn’t ask and only you can answer. I merely point out the question does need an answer from you. The weight any of us can carry for a week, a month, and a decade or three are different.
A point I hasn’t considered. I believe that it is worth it but I’ll weigh it to be sure.
Dear OP, I do this. No one’s ever complained. They understand I’m opening a conversation for a fun chat.
You: “Are you hungry?”
Her: “I only had a PBJ sandwich for lunch” …implying “yes but let’s talk it over,” If you’re not good with the implications of the conversation, you need to tell your girlfriend, “I’m unable to follow indirect answers to my questions. Tell me yes or no”
Particularly when talking with women, who tend to require more verbose communication, a characteristic that can be described as “less socially adept”
Let’s not get into one of these Mars/Venus boondoggles.
I’m going to suggest @K2500 that since your GF seems to be giving you access to her intermediate thoughts (rather than what you’re looking for - the end decision) that it might be generally helpful to give her more a more comprehensive account of your intermediate thoughts.
“Are you hungry?”
“I had a PBJ sandwich for lunch.”
“I don’t actually know if this means yes or no. The bit of your thoughts that tells me if that’s a yes or a no would be helpful right about now”
Who pissed in your cheerios, bud?
I recently watched the fantastic British show Line of Duty and in the second series one of the characters is in jail. Whenever she is addressed by the guards any question, no matter how simple, is prefaced by the phrase, “Answering only ‘yes’ or ‘no’…”
I can only presume that it is a real procedure, designed to avoid misunderstandings. Or belittle the prisoner. Perhaps both.
Just memorize this response from debatably the best SciFi show evah! Change the name as needed.
That was a stirring reply, Citizen G’Kar. Unfortunately, while all answers are replies, not all replies are answers. You did not answer the question that I asked.