IT’s rued as the ‘incessant din’ — women talking about their problems, that is. And now, a team of neuropsychiatrists in the US have added their bit to lend scientific credence to that old shibboleth that women can talk their heads off but it brings them nowhere nearer to solving their multiple neuroses, read crises. Men, the team reports, talk through their problems to find solutions. Women, on the other hand, feel good talking about their troubled lives (it’s called ‘my life’s a mess too’ syndrome) but feel even more depressed and anxious after the conversation — for things don’t seem to have improved much. Such reiterative angst is called corumination, not to be confused with ruminants of the grass-eating, cud-chewing variety. Not that it would be off the mark to say that women do tend to regurgitate their problems, as it were.
While you chew on that, here’s the update. The women talkathon is a hangover from teenage times where one problem leads to another, with women’s lives becoming a merry-go-round of home, heart and hassles. The anxiety deepens only in times of ‘corumination’ — a woman holding forth to her husband does not lead to doubling of trauma. Apparently because there’s so much crib that men can take and so they tend to switch off, blank out, ten minutes into any conversation. We’re awaiting the survey that points to men’s innate capacity for self-defence or inability to comprehend, either way.
Suffice it to say that women can’t seem to talk through their problems. But what can be done? Men form the bulk of their issues, and they ain’t going nowhere.