Interesting how you both posted the same info apparently without noticing the other had posted. 
Huh. You’d halfway expect that to be a shot of hero, wouldn’t you?
Hi - just joined this because my friend, moe, keeps talking about it so much!
The post by liberty3701 stated what my first reaction was - men talk more in public, women talk more in private.
I think it has to do with intimacy - women form intimacy through talking, and are often more comfortable speaking about their emotions, while men are often more comfortable in work and casual settings when they feel more entitled to dominate the conversation. Of course, the solution is balance - women learn to be more assertive in groups, men learn to talk about their emotions.
When women say the same thing in a million different ways to an uncommunicative partner who only grunts, I would suggest they are trying to rephrase because, obviously, if the partner is only grunting and not engaged in the conversation they must not have understood…
:smack: 
A few on this thread have mentioned this phenomenon. I’ve never witnessed it, to my knowledge. Could someone provide an example–a plausible made-up example is fine–to show me exactly what you mean? I’m having trouble imagining it.
-FrL-
:: scratches head and grunts ::
Nope. Not disregarding it all…I am including it. Consider the source of the anecdotal evidence…we are in the social services field; two day programs for developmentally disabled adults, a business that is predominately female employed.
My wife and I work together at our business. She is the program director and I am the fiscal manager. She is constantly talking to staff, clients, on the phone with counselors from another agency (regarding client matters and such) that we contract with, etc., etc., etc. That is her job.
I crunch numbers, billing, write checks, banking, mail, insurance, worker’s comp., mostly paperwork…also it is very notable that our employees are made up of 47 women and 5 men; the other 4 men I only see and talk to for about 5 minutes a week each. I don’t get stuff done by talking to our staff; she does.
At home, I do my best to listen to my wife and empathize with her regarding our youngest son who is having a hard time with language/speech issues and socialization. This in turn has made my wife very anxiety-driven regarding our son’s well-being to the point that she has been prescribed medication for her anxieties. Hence, I spend alot of time listening and empathizing with her and supporting her to minimize her anxieties, which has been a daily issue in our household for the last 3 years. She talks, I listen. Not a million different ways of communicating the same thing, but I can claim I’ve listened to HUNDREDS of different ways my wife describes our son and her anxieties.
I may be the exception, but damn it…I am a good exception that is not easily dismissed.
Quick, what’s that over there?
It’s the …
Is it?
It can’t be!
There goes the Whoosh-mobile!
Excelent!
Warning: purely anecdotal observations ahead
I am a rather quiet woman but my SO, also a woman, is chatty Kathy. She can talk on the phone for hours and hours and hours. Me, I avoid phone conversations like the plague and can go hours without talking to another human.
My dad, who is surely among the most masculine of manly men in the world, often talks on the phone for hours a day with other manly men. Not about business, but about deer, squirrel, their trucks, what they had for dinner, etc. A masculine version of teenage girl phone chat.
At my campus the women tend to have many more and much longer private conversations, while the men dominate the public conversation.
Is anyone else reminded of the great Arthur C. Clark collection “Tales from the White Hart” and the story “The Defenestration of Irmintrude Inch.”?
Going purely by memory:
[spoiler]A man is driven to distraction by his wife’s constant talking. He finally confronts her but she denies that she talks anymore then he does.
To prove his point, he rigs some electronics to cause separate counters to increment anytime either of them says anything. They cover the counters and agree to look at the end of the week to see who actually talks more.
At first, she is leery of the system and maintains silence. But after a day or so, she is back to her old habits and talking up a storm. The man sits smugly by, knowing that at the end of the week he will be vindicated.
Come the end of the week, they get together and reveal the counters. To his consternation his count is much higher than hers!
On investigation, he finds that his wife had recorded him speaking one of his typically short sentences, then spliced the tape into a loop and let it play for hours at a time during the day when he wasn’t at home.
He is so enraged that he snaps and throws her out the window to her death.[/spoiler]
So what we need here are counters to keep good track and we can settle this once and for all. But no cheating, you never know what might happen!
…
Get a group of men and women in a room together and you’ll have an answer.
Almost all studies that have looked at such a group have shown that men talk more. Just sayin’.
I’m male and an avid conversationalist. I do the same thing you described. If I’m explaining something and don’t get any sort of feedback, not even a nod, I am apt to explain and reexplain with different words, a better simile.
I have a friend at the job with whom I have marvellous conversations, but when we first met a few years ago I had to train her in certain complicated (but not complex) procedures. At the time, she appeared to listen intently, but barely surrendered any words of feeback. It was very frustrating for both of us. I ended up confusticating her because she grasped my instructions the first time around. Long after the event I suspected that she was shrewdly taking my measure.
With regard to the OP, I can’t draw any conclusions from my own experience and, frankly, I don’t trust studies. I am inclined to think women do more talking, but then I’ve known more than a few men who could talk the leg off a chair! I am the product of a father who tends to speak without thinking and a mother who tended to think without speaking. It makes for an interesting inner dynamic.
Okay. And hopefully you know not to trust anecdotes, and you know not to generalize from your own experiences, esp. if you haven’t done some serious critical inquiry into them.
So… what do you trust?
-FrL-
I would like to read these studies that show men talk more than women. I just cant wrap my mind around it.
Every Saturday morning, my wife calls her sister and they chat for a minimum of an hour and a half.
When we have guests, and it’s time for them to leave, wife spends 20 minutes or so
at the front door saying good bye. If the weather’s good, she then goes outside with them and continues the good byes for maybe 5-10 minutes more.
Her female friends are just as gabby.
Hah!
My husband uses about 500 minutes a month on his cell phone.
I use about 100. So, it can go the other way too.
In a group, my husband is the one who talks more. All of a sudden he starts holding forth on all sorts of things. If it’s just us, I probably talk a little more, but it’s about equal.
The most talkative person I have ever known was a guy. He would never shut up. One evening I was at a dinner party that he also attended, and I developed a headache, but he wouldn’t stop talking long enough for me to get a word in edgewise and say goodbye. About an hour later, he was still talking…and he was like that all the time. I didn’t care for him much.