Mommyspeak

http://www.heytom.net/pages/robert_speaks.php

"Hey Tom" is a website associated with Flylady.net. Flylady teaches people how to keep their house clean and organized and also other things about taking care of oneself or one's physical space. Primarily women subscribe to Flylady's services (which are free, by the way) and frequently these women have questions about how to understand the men they are involved with. Also they have questions about home maintenance as in drains and floor tiles. So the Hey Tom website was created.

Flylady (Marla Cilley) is married to a man named Robert who sometimes contributes to the Flylady efforts and also to Hey Tom. Recently he wrote an essay about what he calls "Womanspeak," which is a manipulative way of trying to get what one wants. The essay is worth reading and I hope you do because below is an analysis of it.

First off, Juanita would call this "Mommyspeak." She differentiated sharply between being a woman (an Adult) and being a pretend woman (a little girl dressed up in Mommy clothes). This kind of speech is patronizing (or should that be "matronizing") and dishonest, which are the strategies of a child.

What is the situation here? Women often feel that they are in the Power Position of an Authority/Power Relationship with their husbands. That means they are not in a position of authority. How do you get what you want if you are not in a position of authority?

If you are a person with Personal Authority (an Adult) you don't sweat the positions. Personal Authority cannot be taken away by other people and it cannot ultimately be ignored no matter who is in the Authority Position. If you are a child, then you lack Personal Authority and so you have to use manipulation in order to get what you want.

Let's look at one of Robert's examples:

" WOMANSPEAK: Don't you think you should ______________? [What kind of moron would be doing whatever-it-is, if he really thought he should be doing something different?]

HONEST VERSION: I think you should be doing _______(what you really want them to do)They can't read your mind."

Robert points out that this is a command disguised as a question, and in his book it's manipulative and dishonest. It certainly is.

It's also the strategy of a person who KNOWS she doesn't have grounds (grounds are an important concept for Juanita) to give a command and so she gives one in disguise.

I'm sure Robert has never read Juanita's writings, but he has the appropriate way of handling this in his "Honest Version." The honest version is an OPINION. Adults have the right, no matter what position they occupy, to express their opinions. They also recognize the rights of other people to accept or reject that opinion. So, in this case, the husband could agree or disagree and an adult would accept that. After all, Adults are aware of their own rights but also the rights of other people.