John Gray catches a lot of flak for his 1992 best-seller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Wenus.
But I’ve personally gotten a lot of use out of this short idea from Gray’s book:
“The most frequently expressed complaint women have about men is that men don’t listen. Either a man completely ignores her when she speaks to him, or he listens for a few beats, assesses what is bothering her, and then proudly puts on his Mr. Fix-It cap and offers her a solution to make her feel better. He is confused when she doesn’t appreciate this gesture of love. No matter how many times she tells him that he’s not listening, he doesn’t get it and keeps doing the same thing. She wants empathy, but he thinks she wants solutions.”
The thing is, it’s not just men who prematurely jump to solutions. And it’s not just women who will ignore offered solutions, even when they are perfectly good.
We are all like this, much of the time.
When we are frustrated, most of us hate having suggestions tossed at us. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? It would never work in my case! Why don’t you just listen for a second?”
I know I’ve reacted like this, at least internally, while keeping up a stoic front. And I’ve seen plenty of other guys — some of them manly, practical-minded men – nervously shrugging off good solutions to their ongoing problems.
The question to me is why? Why do women and men both choose not solve problems for which there are good solutions?
I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about this.
My conclusion is this isn’t a trivial human quirk, or like Gray says, just a hysterical cry for a bit of empathy.
Instead, my feeling is it goes back to fundamental human needs, like those I talked about yesterday.
Specifically, the need for uniqueness… and the need for meaning.
It might not seem very rational from the outside, but it makes perfect sense from the inside:
People will hold on to their problems just so they can keep feeling unique. “I might not have much… but I’ve got trouble like nobody’s ever seen.”
Or they will cling to pain and failure, even when there’s an easy way out. Because if there really is an easy way out, then what was the purpose of all that suffering they’ve experienced in the past?
In other words:
You might be selling your prospect a shiny new chrome pipe. And your prospect might desperately need it — the old pipe is rusted out and the basement is filling up with water. But what you don’t realize is that installing that new pipe might undermine the very foundations of your prospect’s house.
So that’s the problem that you face.
It’s tricky.
And it’s definitely unique.
But don’t worry. I won’t irritate you with any pigheaded suggestions for how you can solve this problem. At least I won’t do it here.
I’ll save that for an upcoming paid product. Maybe I will call it Marketers Are From Mars, Prospects Are From— but where exactly? I still have to work that part out. In case you want to get notified when this mansplaining guide comes out, sign up for my email newsletter.