Decoding The Message

I am at a local wing joint, with some friends from work. It is only guys, and we stumble upon the usual topic of conversation . . . women . . . after avoiding it for the first five minutes. We all work offshore, away from our families, which causes much stress on us, men, as well as our significant others. And we start talking about how our wives or girlfriends behave when we are not there, or more to the point, what they say to us when we are not there.

One guy, for now we will call him Frank, begins telling us what happened the last time he was on the rig. One time, out there, his wife had called for him, but he did not answer because he was doing some work. When Frank returned her call, his wife said, and I quote, "Where were you? . . ." What Frank's wife said after that is severely unimportant. What is more important is what Frank thinks when he heard the question.

First, I should describe Frank to you. He is a typical man in that, his relationships to things depend on purpose or benefit. He neither loves his job nor hates it; it is how he gets paid. He loves his wife and wants to take care of her, but he will not sacrifice himself completely to the point of self destruction to do that. He likes hanging with fellas. It brings him some adventure, and entertainment, but it is not part of his ritual as a man. He is not an idiot, at least he has a bachelor's degree from a worthy university, so he can comprehend what people say and respond intelligently. But when we heard, "Where were you?", that degree had little value and his, seemingly, even keel nature fell off to one side. Frank had no idea why she said that so he became inexorably frustrated.

In his mind, his wife was asking, and I am not putting this mildly, a dumb question, for they both knew where he was. He was on the rig. What annoyed Frank the most was not the simplicity of the question but how it was asked. And here I am interpreting his words, she sounded like she was aching from the fact that he was not there, when she first called; that some how he had failed her by not being there, when she needed him; that he had momentarily abandoned her. Frank, as I explained, became frustrated because at work, he cannot really be there for his wife, and sadly, and obviously, for her, his loyalties were directed somewhere else besides her.

It should be noted his frustration has two levels. The first is this, he genuinely wants to be there for his wife at all times, and he realizes he cannot, which on some levels, he will not tell his wife because he does not want to disappoint her. So, he feels considerable angst at his inability to fulfill an obligation, which he willingly entered into by marriage. The second level is his wife. When she spoke like that, she appeared to be weak, not the type of woman he really wanted to marry, and not type of thing he needs to hear at work. In his sense of it, he now has two burdens: his work and his wife's emotional state, and both are heavy and important, where as his wife believes only one is important and both are light.

It is the four of us and we are all listening to Frank's tale as if his worry is our collective worry. If he cannot win this battle then, none of us can win it, and since we are men, we hate to lose, so Tommy, which is not his real name, jumps in with remedy and response. Frank stops talking and the rest eagerly await the answer. It feels like the huddle before the start of play, and we are about to hear the winning strategy.

A note about Tommy. He is a big guy, not in fat, but in muscle. He is squat with a barrel chest, like two large rubber plates are underneath his polo shirt. His voice has two registers. Deep then deeper. We often laugh at him about that. He just laughs in return; it sounds like an echo from a cave.

Tommy puts his hand to his ear pretending it's a telephone, and begins a scoffing diatribe to the woman on the other side of his hand. It was a very good thing it was not Frank's wife. We all know this particular response, Tommy emphatically expresses disappointment and frustration at the question, which he rightly feels and we agree. Tommy also includes a stinging indictment, if only implicitly stated, that it is stupid questions like that that will make her sense of abandonment become real if she does not stop the insanity. We all laugh at Tommy's prescription for Frank's wife, and I say, you can only get away with that because of your size and that deep voice, and Frank enviously agrees.

And then I offer my take on the situation. I say, I think your wife was really telling you that she misses you and was disappointed that she did not get to talk to you when she called. Frank quickly agrees, jumping on it like a clue that was evading him for the longest. "Why doesn't she just say that?" he explodes. Such direct words he could have understood, for in it, there is no cloying or weakness, but a profound understanding of her emotions and a resistance to let it control her. Frank could have readily given his wife the response she needed, but he could not because he did not know how to decode the message.

This, I think, is the problem most men have. They cannot decode the message. Some men can, and that is not to say that I can decode any better than anyone else. More messages are lost than are understood. Sometimes, I only figure out what my woman is saying a week after she said it. I think my mind is on delayed broadcast. It is like a foreign movie. I can only understand what is going on when I read the subtitles, which are only added in at a later date. But it is the decoding that men find difficult. It is what keeps us separate from out mates at times.

How to decode the code? Women will not tell, for they think they are plain spoken, and it is not their job to elaborate. Our job, as men, is to listen, disassemble, convert, reassemble, then understand in the space of a couple of seconds, a talent which we are in very short supply of. But I will explain how it is done. A few days after that session, at the wing joint, my lady asked me to take her to the nail salon without thinking I said yes, because the task was within reason even though the importance I could not recognize. The thing is the nail salon is less than ten minutes from our house and she does have a car, and so why would she need me to chauffeur her there. The answer lies in the fact that it obliterates the obvious, she asked me and no one else. It was her way of asking to spend time with me, a chance for me to take care of her in a small way. She knew she could take herself, but she just wanted her man to pay attention to her need, which is not to much to ask, is it? But it is all in the decoding. I could have easily raised objections to her want, but I decoded and came up with a different answer; I said, I would love to.

Maybe all we, men, need to do is decode and we will be ahead of the game. Too bad, the code key is locked in a woman's brains under heavy guard of emotion, practice, romanticism and plain obstinacy.