“I’m TALKING” … do men and women differ in how they handle interruptions?

[Indubai]

My DH really struggles if anyone interrupts or interjects when he is talking.

It’s not something that annoys me, personally. I seem to be much more comfortable with the ebb and flow of conversations.

Is this a male privilege / entitlement thing? Perhaps women are generally more used to giving space to other people and taking into account their views, and wonder if men just expect to be listened to a bit more.

Interested in your thoughts.

So it can be said people ware rude when they interupt someone so how would it be ''male privilege / entitlement" to be interrupted?

so when bad things happen to men they are still privlidged? it could be said if someone is not annoyed, they are being a doormat?

Surely everyone gets interrupted from time to time, or have someone interject into conversations. Sometimes it’s rude, but often it’s not. I just wonder if women tend to handle it in a different way.

Being interrupted is really irritating. Especially for something unimportant.

Not interrupting people when they are talking (unless it’s super urgent) is a pretty basic lesson that we try and teach kids before they go to school and as the sex who generally spends more time with their kids, it’s usually the mum teaching that skill.

I don’t think it’s a man/woman thing at all. Both are (rightly) annoyed by unnecessary interruptions and that’s fine.

I think there's a difference between interrupting and a flowing conversation style. I notice with my DH, and with men at work, that they like to finish their sentences and fully articulate the thought before anyone else speaks. But if you watch groups of women talking, often that doesn't happen because everyone understands the point being made. There's no need to keep going right to the full stop. Especially when people are agreeing. I have to admit it drives me potty with DH and I want to shout "come on, get on with it...." half the time. But it's not just me- there have been studies around it. Will see if can find them.

@Indubai are you the one interrupting your dh and that’s why you see no issues with it?

Depends. Persistent interrupters are annoying. But more annoying are monologue-ing bores. Especially when time is short.

I think women are socialised into listening and bringing others into conversation through questions, monologues are more tolerated from men. And the monologue style is more likely to perceive anyone else trying to contribute to the conversation as an interruption.

Not really. It’s much more like how @Artesia describes it.

Yes @DontKillSteve and @UnaOfStormhold - the monologue!

With my dad and his partner, she talks over him all the time. Some of this might be about hearing. My dad, me, my siblings - we all can't hear if two people talk, so we don't talk over each other at all. We never do it. We just stop talking when someone else starts, immediately.

I don't think this is because we have amazing manners because we don't particularly, I think it's more about us all being a bit deaf in this particular way. But my dad's partner, and her kids, they all talk over each other and seem to be able to follow each other. They also have conversations in noisy places! Wild.

My BFFs also talk over each other. They are Americans and are stereotypically loud. This tbh works for me as I am deaf, but it does mean sometimes they just miss what I'm trying to say to them and they've had to recalibrate a bit to include me, sometimes perceptibly stopping each other to make space for me in the conversation.

It doesn't feel gendered to me particularly.

My dad (78) gets extremely cross with what he calls interrupting. I would describe the conversation as a naturally flowing and normal conversation, most of the time someone will be making agreeable noises and he will get cross. His tolerance for it is extremely low and it’s like he expects to be able to monologue without anyone else being part of the conversation sometimes.

i agree!

My husband can be very long winded and if you interrupt him often starts again from the beginning.
I always assumed it is because he seems mildly OCD (for instance when we go out he will shake/ push the front door repeatedly to make sure it is locked and sometimes takes a few steps away and returns to do it again.)

This definitely hits a chord!

We need @boiledbeetle s Interruptarion for this thread

I’ve lost my screen shot 🙃

My daughter does that. She is diagnosed ASD, and has some OCD tendencies.

Back to the original question, I'm not sure women are happier to be interrupted. I have seen many many posts on this board, the wider MN and social media where women are infuriated they have been interrupted/talked over. By men, admittedly, but nobody seems to accept it.

DP glitches if you interrupt him when he's completely failing to get to the point. In the end, I figured it was easier to do a hard reboot rather than wait for the spinning circle in his head and he eventually got the hang of starting with The Point and finishing with the explanation.

Difference is that I want objective -why-when-how in order to get on with planning and dealing with whatever shit is about to hit the fan in 3 dimensions whereas he's all about the fucking fronted adverbials, tripled descriptors and persuasive writing.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a whole lot harder to forget what people are saying or misinterpret it if you lead with the objective - and interruptions are both less likely and less disruptive.

I dislike people who interrupt and often say "as I was saying" in response to their interruption.

Males have a more "reporting" communication style which tends to link in with their preferred one-task-at-a-time information processing mode. The flexibility often noted in females is often attributed to stronger connectivity between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.This facilitates rapid switching between different contexts.

I (female) prefer to concentrate on one task at a time and resent it deeply if I am interrupted.

DH has a far-too-big 'thing' about interruption, but I think that comes from a mixture of ADHD and his argumentative family. He immediately gets annoyed and doesn't consider if people have just made a normal 'I'm listening' interjection (eg 'Yes', 'uh-huh') or if they might have just thought he'd finished speaking.

I come from a family where we all get on but do talk over each other a bit but no one cares about it and it's a bad combo!

My (male) partner interrupts me all of the time. Often when I'm mid way through the answer to a question he's asked.

I know he doesn't mean to do it, but I do find it annoying. I used to get angry about it and walk off. Now it's a bit passive aggressive but I wait for him to finish and then say...

"What I was about to continue with..."

He's not got the hint yet and he's very bad at reading non verbal cues.

Not sure if you've ever done "insights" profiles but I find this trait more often in people with high "red" and "yellow" energies rather than "blue" or "green". I use an AI app now to take meeting notes and I also find that those higher in red and yellow will have more speaking time (it tracks that). It's quite good for that team actually because now we can purposefully ask for contributions from those who may normally be talked over or be accidentally excluded by those who just naturally talk more and can see whether our interventions have been effective. I sometimes wish I had it for conversations with my OH.

They are better at forming and maintaining boundaries.

Certainly I feel there is a degree of conditioning of women that we can be interrupted at any time (verbally or while doing something) when someone wants something, while the menfolk are Not To Be Interrupted.

Yeah and they enforce that boundary better than we do.