When His Love Language is Arguing

He says debating is a fun bonding activity, she says it's hostile condescension, let's call the whole thing off.

Photo by Julee Juu on Unsplash

It really feels like the Museum Guy debacle happened a good six months ago, when it was just last week that a woman went viral for attempting to publicly shame a suitor who DMed her on Twitter after seeing her at a museum, and attempted to debate her about one of her blog posts.

Most of Twitter didn’t approve of her attempt to spark a “public reckoning,” as she put it (and ironically turned on her so hard to the point that she was publicly shamed). But even those who disagreed with her conduct noted that jumping into a flirtatious DM with a woman to tell her why you think she’s wrong—even if you aren’t aggressive in your language—is a hostile, condescending move. If I were single, and a man messaged me to tell me he disagreed with my take about unleashed dogs getting out of control, I’d probably be like, uhhh…why are you telling me this?

This got me thinking. How many times have I seen my husband, my brother, or any of my male friends, dig into a playful debate with one another, sometimes over something completely trivial? How many times have I heard men argue, smiles on their faces, for what feels like hours, over whether LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan? Even when they call each other idiots, none of it seems intended to offend. I can only recall one instance where a man actually got offended, and it was a political argument (one guy supported Trump and the other guys didn’t, but the Trump supporter wasn’t an American citizen so it felt low-stakes) and it was also on St. Patrick’s Day, so everyone was very drunk. Even then, the argument resolved without issue about an hour later.

Arguing as a woman (especially with other women) feels completely different. It’s not that women don’t argue, but women don’t seem to argue for fun, and certainly not as a way of bonding. Female friends have many ways of bonding; endlessly debating whether Sabrina Carpenter is on par with Madonna isn’t one of them. I disagree with my female friends on a million things, but I’ll never once debate these things because there is simply no upside. My friends might be offended, and neither of us would enjoy the conversation. If a female friend disagrees with me about something I’ve written, my first thought isn’t that they’re wrong or that I’m wrong, but that my writing must have offended them on a personal level and I should apologize.

So what happens when a man uses his man-style debating tactic to get familiar with a woman? Well, with some exceptions, it doesn’t go well.