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Dear Breakup Girl,

Once every year, my boyfriend and I break up. Even after we moved in together, the pattern has repeated itself. It typically follows a long and excruciating period of silence in which he appears to me to be completely oblivious to the lack of "relating" occuring in our "relationship." I, on the other hand, spend our quality time together initiating converstation and then listening to the pin drops falling within his silent response. He finds his entertainment in a book, on the internet, or with a school or work project in which he becomes so engrossed that he all but divorces himself from the everyday going on's around the house. Only slightly obsessive in relationships, I find ample time to enjoy my hobbies, books, work, and personal time, too. The household activities are centered primarily around friendly conversations about political theories, history, feminism, dogs, movies, etc., none of which is too intense or could be construed as intellectually intimidating.

The key characters of late are my father, his girlfriend, Earl, myself, and, once in a blue moon, my boyfriend. I'm beginning to come around to my personal faults in the matter and have discovered that I have a deep seated ideology about the nature of a man, a standard which I insistingly and threateningly hold over my boyfriend's head and which is bound to put the pressure on him. My ideology holds men to be equal to women, and to me as an individual, in their abilities and aptitudes to communicate and understand the spoken word.

Yet everyone I talk to or question responds alike, "Men who are communicative are rare. This isn't suppose to mean, I don't think, that men who like to talk about themselves are rare, or that men do not talk, but that, generally, they will not seek out or engage in reciprocal conversation. Probably from dogged pickiness, I've mana ged to know mostly talkative and sensitive men (most of whom grew out of it eventually).

It makes me think maybe they were all just after sex. I'm almost twenty-five and my needs are more sophisticated than in post-adolescent crushes. So tell me the truth, am I working from a naive and dangerously fallible belief that I should settle for nothing less than a man who knows how to listen and how to respond? My dad's girlfriend says I've got a skewed perspective because my father and I talk so frequently and in such depth. She claims most boyfriends don't communicate well or often.

I've gone nearly out of my mind in the three years since my lover and I have been together trying to explain to him that I need a degree of intimacy that involves eye contact and cooperative verbalization. LOL, I've gone so far as to invent the term "cooperative verbalization," but really for me it is a quality of interacting. I've tried to change him (I say sheepishly), I've tried the old "can't beat him, join him" and attempted to shirk my need for talk (for months), and I've tried to earn his trust, then later ruined it (when it didn't bring results) with bullying, yelling, and becoming a condescending smart-ass. So we're broken up again over the same issue of talking and I just have to ask you, BG, did I invent in my head the funlovin' manfriend who knows how to communicate or is he real and needs some magic coaxing out that I've yet to try? Did I drive away a loyal friend and devoted lover to chase down a phantom?

--Ms. Conversation Commie

Dear Conversation Commie,

Well, yeah: anyone who says they're "cooperatively verbalizing," um, isn't. (At least you chuckled at yousrelf in there somewhere.)

Also, BG is unlikely to "cooperatively verbalize" with anyone who starts sentences with "Most boyfriends..." or "All men..." or whatever -- or with the people who quote them. Oh, I know, men and women tend to have different ways of communicating, sure sure, I know I know. But generally, the only compelling consistent difference I see between women and [straight] men is the ability to understand why Woody Allen is sexy.

Which suggests that this whole Men Don't TALKtalk thing is a great big unsharing red (as in "red planet," as in MARS!) herring. Communiation problems are an issue in the relationship, not the creation of Man. I mean, you've tried everything, some things potentially effective, others way less so. I wonder if you're so fixated on this "the spoken word" thing that you're missing the unspoken. Is it possible that you guys -- you two, as a pair -- simply have an as-good-as-it-gets interface? Which -- from they way you describe it -- isn't all that good? I mean, are you guys friends? Is your partnership -- even allowing for the usual mishigas -- growing, thriving, happening? Does each of you think the other is the bomb? That -- the answer that I suspect is "well, uhhh, no" -- is the phantom you're not, but perhaps should be, chasing down. This funlovin' manfriend, he's out there. You're the one who has to be willing to see him.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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