Man fucks up. Woman knows this. Man says "Thank you for understanding." Can you even imagine that? I bet you can cause this is such a common occurence that it's not even a big deal one might say. I've seen this come up so many times and in my gender class we talk about how men and women (in a cisgender hetero sense) communicate differently because of power dynamics and social structure. The conversation I mentioned at the beginning obviously was longer but that's essentially what happened. A normal person (or at least what I thought would be normal) would be that the person would apologize for fucking up. But no. The man says thank YOU the woman for understanding that me, a man, fucked up. Majority people might not think of this so intensely, but I guess that's why I started a blog. It angers me that we have built up this societal structure for men to not have the vulnerability to just say sorry. In my class, we talk about how men are typically communicating in ways that are straight forward, to exert power, and exude their knowledge on certain topics, which I also think resonates with the idea of mansplaining. Women on the other hand speak in ways that value social harmony, communion, and building relationships. By no means am I saying this is completely true and correct, just referencing key ideas from the class. But it made me think. Are men a hear me out if they can't understand what I'm saying? I will never be caught defending men and these are not excuses for men's poor communication skills, but if this theory is true what do we do? It's not we can reprogram them, or can we? It's the same story time and time again, that they just never get it and to quote my muse, Carrie Bradshaw, the iconic conversation between her and Mr. Big: "I don't get it." "And you never did." or even Fiona Apple: "He said it's all in your head and I said so is everything but he didn't get it." Men are just known to never "get it" or understand, but why? This is a constant reoccuring thing, both of my references are from the late 90s and now its 2026 and things haven't changed. I have come across this idea of "boybrain." What I define boybrain as is when men just don't think about social interactions that deeply or emotionally. Toxic masculinity can play a part in this, but because men do not value social harmony as deeply, they are willing to answer the questions without reciprocating to the other person. In more formal terms, men do not exert as much tentative speech compared to women using tag questions (asking "How about you?" to continue the conversation) and intensifiers (really, very, super, etc). Tag questions and intensifiers affirm the other person that the conversation is enthusiastic, interested, and mutual. Men tend to do this less, which is why they are annoying and give their partner or woman they are seeing nothing to work with. In one of my clubs we say, there is no such thing as a good partner in bed or good at sex, they're just a good communicator. Which yes, a different context but I still think it's fitting. If men and women cannot communicate efficiently, then really how biologically predisposed are we to being partners? Socially, women and men come from different cultures in society, but also literally. Different cultures can have different language patterns, causing miscommunications, learning, and adjusting. In my opinion, men have not learned a single bit. But I digress. Obviously, this is from a perspective of a cisgendered woman so I may not be able to expand upon other perspectives, but with enough first hand experience with either boybrain or my own tentative speech patterns, it makes me wonder: will we ever get over the language barrier between men and women?