I am not deaf. Or even a bit deaf. Yet on a recent night away with my old friends (also not deaf), I discovered that some of them experience versions of the same phenomenon with their respective spouses.
This is mine: Herself has a habit of talking to me when we are in different rooms. Sometimes she’ll be upstairs and I’ll be downstairs. Sometimes she uses my name so I know her utterance is aimed at me; other times I know from the tone of her voice. Or, she can start saying something to me when we are in the same room, but walk out when she is in mid-sentence.
Usually I have to move to her location and ask her to repeat herself, and every time she is slightly irked about having to do so. Some of my friends reported variations on this, and that their partners also found having to repeat themselves slightly irritating. And in these situations, we would be accused of being deaf.
Yes, I know: it could simply be the case that we are having hearing difficulties. Or worse than that: years of familiarity have caused our brains to filter out the sound of our wives’ voices. But we all love our wives and would have no wish to do that. And we have no difficulty hearing anyone else.
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One obvious reason for this disparity is that, in most other cases, the people we communicate with remain stationary. Herself is always on the move, talking to me from a variety of angles and distances. And another reason is that men and women communicate in different ways.
This is a subject drenched in controversy and cliche. Despite the fact that some men can be emotionally intelligent and some women can be tactless and insensitive, the usual narrative is that women communicate with the aim of creating emotional bonds. They ask lots of questions and make sympathetic noises. Men stand with their arms akimbo, yelling facts at each other.
Of course, there is some general truth to this, but it’s far from 100 per cent accurate for all situations. Or even most situations: because most situations contain a range of circumstances other than gender. The people involved could be strangers. Or they might not be strangers but intensely dislike each other. Or love each other. There’s also the significant ingredient of time.
Over time the way people communicate with each other changes. Herself didn’t always speak to me from other parts of the house, but I think that’s evolved over the years into what you might call a sense of emotional proximity: you associate the family home with the people who live in it, to such an extent that you can forget that they aren’t in the room with you. You can be in your bedroom and make a comment to them, even though they are downstairs trying to write a column for The Irish Times, and be slightly put out when the other person doesn’t reply.
[ Gardening feels like outdoor housework to me but my wife is caught in its gripOpens in new window ]
At least, that’s my theory. In the interests of fair representation, I have to point out that Herself denies she does this long-distance talking at all and it’s simply down to me being deaf. I’m also required to point out that if such a thing happens (which it doesn’t), then it’s very occasional. Most of the time we communicate exceptionally well.
Just before coming into the house to start writing this, I was in the back garden attempting to fix a wonky step on the decking. Herself and Daughter Number Four looked out to tell me that they were going to the shop. She cocked her head to the side and said: head? Meaning that it was sunny and I might get sunburned again like I did when we went whale watching a couple of weeks before. I nodded, meaning: I’ll go inside now. Often, you barely need words at all.
