You Just Don’t Understand, Men and Women in Conversation In the first chapter of her book, You Just Don’t Understand, Men and Women in Conversation, Deborah Tannen quotes, “...studies have shown that married couples that live together spend less than half an hour a week talking to each other...”. (24) This book is a wonderful tool for couples to use for help in understanding each other. The two things it stresses most is to listen, and to make yourself heard. This book opened my eyes to the relationship I am in now, with a wonderful person, for about four years. It made me realize that most of our little squabble-like fights could have been avoided, if one or the other of us could sit down and shut up for a minute to listen. Most of our fights had erupted from a misunderstanding or miscommunication on either of our parts, and we’re only dating! I can only imagine the conflict two partners would have in a marriage with children. This book outlined a lot of couples’ problems, where they may have started, and how to circumvent them. After starting to read this book, I realized to do a book report on the entire book would be very difficult, so I chose situations that most related to me to report on.Intimacy is a very important when dealing with people trying to minimize their differences and attempting to reach a compromise. Independence is also a virtue you need to get any kind of status in today's ranking world. In order to get any kind of rank you need to be demanding, tell others what to do, and the act of taking orders is a sign of low rank in society. Everyone needs both intimacy and independence, though women concentrate more on the first and men more on the latter. This conflict of interest can cause different views by men and women on the same situation. Tannen used an example of a couple she called Linda and Josh. Josh got a call at work from an old high school friend that w...
