“Talking In Scandinavia” - Part 1 - Finland
by zohefilmsI was having another fight with my boyfriend – only now I was in a hotel room in Finland. The locations changed, but the subject always remained the same.
I was here to do press for the TV launch of FLYING on Finnish television, YLE, beginning Thursday, November 1, and Swedish Television, SVT, beginning Sunday, October 28. Both countries were going to air the film in a weekly one hour evening slot, like a real series. I was thrilled. They had asked me to come to help with the press and also to do master classes in both countries about the film. In Finland I would do a seminar for the DOCPOINT with my editor Niels Pagh Anderson who was in Finland to edit a new film by John Walker (and also because his girlfriend is Finnish), and in Sweden I would screen the film at a festival called MDOX and run a master class there.
The film was having a fantastic reception. It seemed like there was a kind of love fest with the journalist here. I have never seen reporters ‘get’ FLYING like those in Scandinavia. I had already been to Denmark to launch the film on DR-2 there, and the reception and ratings had also been phenomenal. Somehow this film was just made for the region. But now, underlying all the excitement was the conflict with my boyfriend.
I was fine till I got back to my hotel room at night and then found myself unable to sleep – with the excuse of jet lag – except I had never seen jet lag like this before! I was averaging two hours a night and going down hill quickly. We had both reached a breaking point. We were having the same fight we had since early in our relationship – and I think we were reaching that point where — we just couldn’t do it anymore.
Our fight was about a seemingly simple topic: talking. I wanted to talk more; he wanted to talk less. I needed to talk about feelings, worries, and dramas in my family life or with friends. He found these things uncomfortable or even tiresome, tried to solve them quickly, and move on. I never wanted things solved; I wanted them explored; and if left to my own devises, I could explore them for hours. He felt I never got to “the point” and was impatient for me to hurry up in my story-telling; I wanted to tell him all the odd details that occurred so he would be able to get a true picture. Synopsizing was against my religion.
I have tried to adapt over the years: I have learned to sensor most of my inner life from my partner. I have stopped sharing many of my thoughts, feelings, and even creative ideas with him. I have learned to talk about the weather, what I did that day, what I ate, and what is in the newspaper. We call each other up each day and ‘report’. I have learned to avoid the frustration of asking him for some deeper conversation – and getting the response that he doesn’t have anything deep to share and – why am I always criticizing him. I feel I have changed and to be fair, he feels he has changed too. But since this is my rant, I get to tell my side of the story.
You see, no matter how hard he thinks he is trying, I end up feeling like I am living in silence. So once in a while I try to share something that is bugging me — because I have to let it out. I am a bit like a pressure cooker with feelings – eventually I’ve got to blow.
For example, I’d just had a big revelation that day when talking to one of my girlfriends, Paula, about my fears about having children that stretches back to when I was a child. As we chatted, I had suddenly realized that I was afraid to be happy. To me having children looked like the most hopeful thing in the world. What if you loved them and something bad happened? What if they got hurt or died? And then it hit me: I had been shocked when my middle brother, who I adored, was hospitalized twice before he was a year and a half old. I remember my mother rushing out of the house with him naked in her arms, screaming in fear. The second time, they threw him in the bath to bring his temperature down and then the police came to whisk her and him away. I stood at the window as the police car pulled away with its siren blaring, thinking I might never see him again. And indeed he had to have a huge operation and almost died.
Now as strange as this might sound, it suddenly came to me that I probably was traumatized by this event and my own fear and the fear of my mother. So honestly when I look at families today – I think, wow you guys are really courageous to take those risks. People think I am courageous to make films, but that is nothing compared with having children!
I was all excited to tell my boyfriend all this; it seemed like a big revelation that if I could get my head around, might actually help me to move forward with the adoption we’d been thinking about for so long. So I ran to the phone to call him, believing also that it would help him understand me better, which would lead to a better relationship. He answered the phone and I laid out my brilliant insight and traced the whole problem back to my childhood. I cried on the phone and felt really exposed. This was what relationship was about, I thought exultantly.
But on the line, his voice was irritated with that tone – oh no, here we go again with the deep stuff. He asked many tense questions and then changed the subject. “Well,” he said, “I don’t think you are willing to change your life enough to have children anyway.” And inside of me, I sunk. I was not talking about the practical side of child rearing but the inner ghosts preventing me from even beginning the process. I began to think maybe I hadn’t explained it right? Maybe he didn’t understand what I had told him? But he claimed he did. I tried to stay calm and not jump on him, tried to understand where he was coming from, tried to get a reaction to the story I had told him – you know connection, commiseration, compassion — but he didn’t have anything to say. Nothing.
I got off the phone feeling lost. It took me till the next day to react – after a long flight to Finland – I realized I was really angry. So once I arrived in the hotel and did my first two interviews, I called him on the phone and told him I was really upset. Of course, we got into the same spiral. He cannot talk more; I don’t accept him the way he is, I am always criticizing him. To me, asking to have a conversation about feelings isn’t criticism but expressing a need, a need that I can’t live without. And therein lies the difference between him and me. He can live with out talking and I can’t.
And of course, you are thinking: for a woman who just made a film about gender differences, this person is pretty stupid! Doesn’t she know by now that men and women are different? Of course I do know, but it is still hard for me to accept…
October 30th, 2007 at 7:11 am
…or you could also express it like this: You are able to live with communication and he isn´t…
Besides, all men are not like that, he seems quite extreme to me.
Christina
October 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am
I have been there many times. But I have started to realize that a lot of the times I have wanted to talk about things I have thought that I am open for discussion, when in reality I’ve only been fishing after his opinions and at the same time as I have been reluctant to share mine. I sort of bring up issues just to get a clue what he is thinking, rather than actually having the guts to tell how I feel.
October 30th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Jennifer, I don’t even know where to begin in my response to this post. It is as if you got inside my brain and wrote exactly what I have been grappling with for what feels like forever. With every man I have tried to be with, I have always felt like talking, sharing, communication has been THE issue. Talking, or lack of it, is always the problem. It seems to me that women, for the most part, live in their heart and emotional life. And they bond with each other through sharing it. Now I know men have the same feelings and emotions we have, but they don’t live from that place. I’ve been trying to figure out where it IS that they do live. Where in their being do they live? I’ve been trying to understand. But it feels like there is no reciprocity. I want to understand them, but they don’t care to understand me. It has become so disheartening. I believe that maybe I’ll be single the rest of my life, because feeling lonely with a man right next to me is worse than no man at all. I don’t even know anymore why men and women are together. Does a man just want you to be there physically and that is enough? It is so confusing, and upsetting. You are brave for trying to make it work. I wish you the best of luck. ~Lili
October 30th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Dear Charlott and Christina,
Thank you both for your posts. I agree with both of you even though you are hitting totally different points!
Something interesting has been happening now. I am in Denmark continuing my work and visiting old friends (I lived here for nearly one year when editing FLYING with editor Niels Pagh Anderson because the film is a Danish Co-production with Claus Ladegaard) and I happen to be talking to alot of women — and they all seem to be expressing the same frustation with trying to talk with their male partners. One friend said this: “It’s all about the difference between “acceptance” and “resignation”. When I accept that he and I are different, I feel good; but then some days I just feel resigned to that difference and it feels horrible…”
The problem with me is that I am asking myself: do I want to live like this? Can I accept it? There are the good things about being in relationship but is the price too high to give up talking openly like I need to do and so many men don’t need to do?
October 31st, 2007 at 6:06 am
I joined the mailing list a while back and have just gotten around to reading and going deeper into your blog and the story behind Flying.
I had a lot of communication issues with my husband and at times we still have issues. In our case though, it was me that had a hard time opening up to him as well as him being able to come and be open with me. I didn’t always want to be intimate with my inner feelings to him or with feelings coming from him.
I had a difficult time expressing my feelings growing up and it stems a lot from my Mother having those same issues and passing them on to me. She had a very messy divorce and clammed up a lot of inner personal feelings about her life for years. She always pushed me to be a strong independant woman and never to bow down before any male or to show your vulnerable side to people.
Since my husband and I have been together, he has forced me into being comfortable talking to him on many levels. He didn’t give up on me (despite numerous heated arguments) and he was patient in working with me to get to a comfortable level of communication. Now that we are at the point that we are, I can’t imagine not having a partner that I am able to go to in order to “get things off my chest” and have deep conversations with. We spend hours at a time sometimes talking about our feelings and how they relate to our current daily life, our past lives and our future life.
Communication, to me, is probably the most important factor in this world to keeping things “whole” and “complete”. If you can’t communicate with others, what do you have?
October 31st, 2007 at 10:42 pm
I think for me when i think of all this I feel that each human being — male or female - seems to have different levels of intimacy needs. No two people are like. Each person is coded completely differently depending on their family, their culture, their individual genetic makeup. A friend of mine said recently - ‘I was raised by my father, and I don’t like talking similar to most men….’
What has shocked me most, now that I am talking to everyone I meet about this issue since I am grappling with it (I am now in Copenhagen), is that everytime I bring it up nine out of ten women shake their head and say, ‘Oh, I struggle with the same thing.’
Even last night I was at a friend’s house who just had a baby here. I think of her husaband being such warm, man - with a lot of female communication qualities - but she said to me: ‘oh I know what you mean. I struggle alot with that with my husband…’ And I was shocked, but then when I thought about it. I realized that as warm as her husband is — I never hear him speak about his feelings.
And then I thought back, and recently their newborn duaghter was in the hospital — a very scary event - and when I talked to him he never expressed his obvious fear or anxiety.
So, it’s like even in my interpetation of him (he is a lovely person whom I have worked with), I didn’t really register that he never expressed his emotions, because I was reading his warm personality. That told me that I wasn’t even evalutating the men in front of me clearly!
Does that make sense?
November 11th, 2007 at 5:50 am
I’ve seen the two parts of Confessions O.A.F.W. released so far on the Finnish television and I have to say that your thoughts have moved me in a way I can’t even begin to express. So thank you for that!
I wanted to comment on the thought of male and female communication. What I’ve experienced so far in my life is that men really do want to “get to the point”. There has to be a point in what, how, when, why you are communicating with him. It seems to be hard for them to just talk, especially if the talk is about feelings.
My previous relationship never ever really touched the issue of feelings. Many were surprised when we broke up, but seeing the relationship from the inside, I can now admit that we couldn’t communicate in a way that would have made us understand each other better. He didn’t want to appear vulnerable. I also learned how to avoid the topic of feelings and now that we’re split up I have to learn how to express my feelings after a long time of non-sentimental-to-the-point-communication! And boy, is that a tough thing to do. My young mind adapted the male way of thinking, accepted the terms of communication, and now it seems very hard to get the learned patterns out of my head!
Sometimes the (for the female mind obvious) point would be to communicate for the sake of the relationship, for the sake of the closeness in the relationship, for the sake of being able to share something that you can’t share with anyone else: that would be the case, if your lover is at the same time your closest friend, and ah! Who wouldn’t wish for that!? I’m thinking of questions like how to be truly vulnerable and how to make a man really see, that you indeed are vulnerable and subjected to his opinions, thoughts, critique: isn’t that the greatest gift you can give a person you love? You give yourself to the one closest to you, you bare your very soul, you try to show him: “This is how I am. This is who I am.” And you trust that the person that you bared your soul to doesn’t hurt you.
In the end, closeness is just another word for trust.
November 18th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Hello Jennifer,
Ive seen two of your programmes, and I’m so happy that finally these topics and issues are talked about. You’re doing a great, inspiring job!
Thank you!
November 20th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Dear Jennifer!
thank you for your documentary FLYING which I’ve been following on the Finnish television for the past three weeks.
It certainly made sense to travel around the globe and talk with women coming from other cultures, because the perspectives on life and how to live it ARE different (and still so similar). And how they can teach us and make us see our life in a new light!
I’m 35 years old at the moment and until now I’ve been seeing myself having and raising my children primarily with my future partner. But of course I cannot be sure that there will be one “soon enough”, if ever. Anyhow, Episode Two made me fully realize that “no way” am I going to wait for that man in order to make this dream come true.
So far I have really enjoyed your discussions with the Indian human rights lawyer and her family! Especially the scenes in which you talk with her about the difference between love and attraction, and the one with the widowed women, were insightful and hilarious.
All the best for your life and work,
Anne.
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:16 am
Ehemm…! Sorry, Jennifer. Haven’t you read the classic by John Gray: Men from Mars and Women from Venus?
Men DON’T want to talk about feelings, we act and have sex instead….
But thanks for an amazing movie, I’ve learned a lot about you ladies…!
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Dear Jennifer Fox, thank you for the TV series FLYING, which has screened on Finnish as well as Swedish television. You have shown so many things in life that we men don’t get to experience. I feel almost envious…
Yes, there is a difference between men and women regarding how and about what we want to talk. But there are also expectations amongst women on what men are supposed to express.
There seems to be a couple of explanations for this:
Perhaps we men have a cheesy way of bringing out our feelings. After all, it is a discipline where we are rather untrained.
Another explanation could be that any one (male or female) can’t stretch their expectations too much. If a woman has learned to know you like you usually are, then you can’t expect her to accept you in a too distant opposite disposition.
I suppose the challenge for us men is to maintain a grown-up way of expressing one’s vulnerability. Often for men the behavioural pattern for showing feelings is copied from childhood. Opening up becomes a excuse for acting like a child.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Dear Jennifer.
Isn’t this the eternal question?
Why do men have an issue with women’s need to talk.
I’ve heard a lot of different explanations, and the one that I can relate to is the “stone age theory”.
Just think about it, what was the big purpose for men in those days? Well, they had to go hunting to get food. That’s why they are so good at finding their way in a new city, understanding maps, remembering directions and so on. They also had to concentrate if they would be able to get the pray, that’s why they are so good at focusing on one thing at a time. They also have to solve problems, otherwise they couldn’t get the heavy pray to the cave. That’s their purpose.
Women, on the other hand, stayed at home in the cave, they had to keep the fire going, make sure that no children fell into it, cook, remember where those nice berries grew and look out for dangerous animals. Of course, we learned to focus on many things at the same time.
SO, how do men solve problems? They stare at the fire (read television set) and think about the problem, and then they solve it. Women, on the other hand, solve problems while they are talking about them. We have to tell ourselves how to solve our problems (perhaps we started talking to the walls all those lonely nights in the cave when the men where out hunting for days).
Therefore, let me share some “stone age tips” to make your life with your partner a bit easier…
Before you start talking, tell your man/husband that you don´t need him to solve a problem, you need him to only listen.
I’ve been married for 20 years, and once I started with this technique, everything became much easier, believe it or not.
I’ve also learned to “advertise”. If I have something to discuss, I tell him that I need time for discussion later that evening, together we make a deal what time we can talk. The benefits twofold: I get a chance to sort my thoughts, and he can prepare his mind by staring at the fire (read television set).
(This tip is also very handy when it comes to cleaning the house, first “advertise” that the cleaning must be done, then make a deal when you should do it, and then of course you have to be patient and wait for the cleaning day to come…:-)
Thank you for a very interesting series about your thoughts and experiences. I can honestly say that it was educational!
Good luck!
Katarina
December 5th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Dear Jennifer
I’ve been watching all 6 programs of FLYING on web-TV here in Sweden now and I found them very interesting. Thank you so much for sharing your self and other women around the world so openly with us!
I then read your blog just now about how even Swedish women
say they can’t speak to their men and WHY is it so?!!
Forgive me now if I may sound ‘I’m so good-ish’ but being a woman myself (Swedish) I can’t say I recognize it, at all, any more…
There was a time when I had relationships with men who couldn’t speak about their feelings… but since I started to explore my inner world not by analyzing but rather by finding ways of having inner peace and living here and now (meditation and being aware of your body for example) I don’t find I am drawn to those type of men anymore.
In my experience there is a lot of untraditional men who CAN talk about their feelings….
Maybe the problem is those men often come across as softer than the ordinary ‘machoguy’ and most women are not attracted to ‘not macho’ guys…
So, what to do? (I seem to be a bit ‘male-ish wanting to solve the problem *smile*, if this part doesn’t appeal to you please skip it)
Well, for me I know the search for self that I took, not through analyzing myself to bits (I tried that to start with but it never solved anything inside of me really), but by going WITHIN myself helped so much more. I feel so free yet so strong and safe within nowadays (it’s took about 10 years since I started, I’m 36 now) I’ve searched and tried a lot of different alternative therapies and it’s been worth every single penny!
I found that after having gone through some soulsearching but not analyzing too much, I started to meet and have relationship with more ’soft’ gentle men whom I could both speak to and have great sex with
One thing that made a big change for me was ‘the journey’, a healing method created by Brandon Bays, in case you’d like to know more specifically…
It was, by the way at a seminar by her I met my last boyfriend, whom I could both talk to AND have great sex with…
Much love - Mira
January 16th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Hi Jennifer!
I just wanna say that the talking problem you have with your boyfriend is exactly the same as I had with my ex-boyfriend. It was so exhausting because if he didn’t say anything, it felt like I was the only one present in the relationship.
Now for 3 months I’ve been single (he loved his job the most) and I enjoy every moment of life. Even though it was a bad relationship from start to end, I am so much more confident in my self. I would not have moved from a village to the big city of Stockholm (Sweden). I feel so much stronger in every way and I love it! I enjoy life now at 23 years of age.
I have been watching all of FLYING - more than once:) and I love the way you make me grow, to see things differently in a good way.
I was raised in a family who belonged to Jehovah’s Witnesses, where you are not allowed to question anything and the woman is to stand by her husband and to obey him because he is the head of the family. Sex is just allowed within marriage, between husband and wife.
I got out of the religion at 20 something because of other things and because I felt like I couldn’t agree to everything. It was not my way of life. (I could write for a long time about this:)
It was the best decision I have ever made in my life and my parents have always supported me.
I really hope you and your boyfriend work it out. I really do!
Love Linn
March 4th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Hi Jennifer,
I’d also like to express my gratitude for the series! It was so stunning to see it here in Finland for the first time, and notice that after all I’m not all alone with my feelings.
Just for this conversation: I’d just like to know how many male friends do you have? I have quite equal distribution of men and women as my friends and the same with the absolute closest ones with whom I can share everything. I haven’t noticed much difference among them. It might be that my female friends have more insight in e.g. mother-daughter relationship but the male ones compensate in other areas. Maybe my male friends are more of this gentle and sensitive type that Mira described earlier, and many of them are still single. Most of them also feel that they are not masculine enough to attract women.
I don’t want to say that I don’t believe in gender differences but there is still lot of work to break out from the traditional role models - also here in Scandinavia which should be the number one place for gender equality.