Steve Harvey on the words men fear most

In his book “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” the comedian and radio show host shares insights on men and relationships. In this excerpt, he writes about why men hate the phrase “We need to talk.”

Chapter four
“We need to talk.”

For a man, few words are as menacing as those four — especially when a woman is the one saying them and he’s on the receiving end. Those four words can mean only two things to men: either we did something wrong or, worse, you really literally just want to talk. Now, we understand that we’re not the essence of perfection and there are going to be times when you’re mad at us and need to let us know it; we get that, though we don’t necessarily want to have to concentrate on an hour-long angry lecture about how we screwed up. But even more? No man wants to sit around gabbing with you like we’re one of your girlfriends. Ever. It’s just not in our DNA to lounge around, sip coffee, and dab at our eyes with tissue as if we’re in an AA meeting or on some psychologist’s couch trying to get things off our chest. When men are talking, and especially when they’re listening, it’s with purpose.

We don’t vent.

We just want to fix whatever situation is upsetting the balance.

We understand that this frustrates you time and time again, because sometimes you want to talk to share and get someone else’s take on a situation — you know, put a listening ear on it. But seriously? That’s what your girlfriends are for. You lay out your problem and she’ll commiserate with you — give you all kinds of “yeah, girls” and “I know that’s right,” and nod and agree and tell you stories about how the same thing happened to her. She’ll even go on to give you concrete examples of every other time something like this has happened to other women throughout the history of the world, and, hours later, you all will get up from the couch, having solved nothing but feeling so much better. Consider Exhibit A:

You: “I walked into work today and before I could get to my desk, I saw Tanya walking over to the coffee machine and wouldn’t you know that heiffa had on the same shirt as me?”

Your girlfriend: “You better stop it. Which one?”

You: “The blue one — you know, the one with the orange flower print? I got it from that store across town? On sale?”

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Your girlfriend: “You mean the one you found on the $29.99 rack in the back? The same day I found those shoes at the store just down the street?”

You: “That’s the one! I wore that shirt to work a few weeks ago and she complimented me on it and next thing I know, she ran to the store and bought my shirt and is wearing it to work! Can you believe it? Do you know how that made me feel?”

Your girlfriend: “Aw, hell to the nah. Are you serious? That’s horrible. She’s got some nerve ...”

For sure, this conversation could go on for hours, morphing into all kinds of side conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand: that some woman was wearing the same blouse as you on the same day in the same office.

With a man, exactly ten seconds into the conversation, he’d arrive at The Fix. I present to you, Exhibit B:

You: “I walked into work today and before I could get to my desk, I saw Tanya walking over to the coffee machine and wouldn’t you know that heiffa had on the same shirt as me?”

Your man: “Really? Don’t wear it anymore.”

End of conversation. It’s that simple for us. In this particular instance, and many more examples such as this, we can’t get more worked up than that. How you felt at work while you had to sit there with this other woman on the other side of the room with the same blouse on is irrelevant to us. As far as we’re concerned, the problem has already been fixed — you came home. You’re not looking at the woman in the identical blouse anymore. And if you don’t wear that particular blouse to the office again, you won’t have to deal with that particular problem again. In our mind, problem solved — no more talking.

All of this is to say that we men aren’t in the talking business; we’re in the fix-it business. From the moment we come out of the womb, we’re taught to protect, profess, and provide. Communicating, nurturing, listening to problems, and trying to understand them without any obligation to fix them is simply not what boys are raised to do. We don’t let them cry, we don’t ask them how they feel about anything, we don’t encourage them to express themselves in any meaningful way beyond showing how “manly” they are. Let a little boy fall off his bike and scrape his knee — see how fast everyone tells him to get up and shake it off and stop all that doggone crying. “Be a man,” we demand. There’s no discussion about how he felt when he hit the ground — nobody’s asking him to talk about whether he’s too scared to get back on the bike and try again. Our automatic response is to tell him to get over it, get back on the bike, and figure out how to ride it so he doesn’t fall again.

Now that he’s grown and in a relationship, you expect that same boy who was told to keep quiet and keep it moving to be a man who can sit and listen and communicate and nurture? I’m telling you now: your expectations are off. Women have different moods, and ideas in their head, and you all expect us to fall in line, and if we don’t, it’s a problem — you’re telling your girlfriends, “He won’t talk to me,” and “I can’t get him to open up.” But opening up is not what we do. Profess, provide, and protect — all our lives, that’s what we men have been taught and encouraged to do. This, we’ve been told, is how a man shows his love. And The Fix falls firmly into the “provide” category. For sure, provision isn’t just about money; for us, providing also is about righting what’s wrong, and figuring out what’s going to keep everybody happy. Because any man with sense knows that when mama’s happy, we’re all going to be happy. And when you’re happy, there is a great return for us. So we provide and fix.

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