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Whoever is discussing PMS, word of advice: Don't ask if it's PMS or state that it's PMS to her. She knows it's PMS. You know it's PMS. She knows that you know that it's PMS. You know that she knows that you know it's PMS. DO. NOT. SAY. IT. It will not help you win an argument.
When a man is angry to that point, and another man tells him to calm down, trying to reassure him, usually that man does calm down, because he knows the other man cares and doesn't want that angry man to get in trouble or have him die from a stroke or heart attack due to the increased blood pressure.
Yet...
When a man tells an angry woman to calm down, she just gets angrier.
Why?
Wrong. Men don't tell other men to calm down. They just don't, unless we're talking about a same sex romantic relationship. They do it with women and the part that's insulting is the assumption that the person isn't justified in that angry (as if she can't comprehend her own circumstance), that somehow her anger is wrong or bad or dangerous, and that she's supposed to suppress her feelings for others.
There is the condescending air of the wise parent correcting their wayward child when a man tells a grown woman to calm down, often before he's even heard why she is angry.
Sometimes "calm down" is used as a passive aggressive statement to reflect the woman's disagreement as being emotional, when she's simply disagreeing.
"I am the even keeled, logical man who is always right, when you are in disagreement with me you should be characterized as unstable and needing to be calm, like me."
How odd. When my husband is upset and I tell him to calm down, he gets more upset.
I wonder if all men and all women are not alike?? Hmmm. What a thought.
But as for the women who get angry when you tell them to calm down, it probably sounds patronizing to them.
I would say - of course your husband gets upset when you say 'calm down'.
Saying 'calm down' is often mocking, dismissive, condescending, and patronizing - to both genders.
If the upset person's concerns are strong and deeply felt - or even have just some legitimacy - it is degrading and disrespectful to dismiss their concerns with a condescending 'calm down'.
An upset person usually wants their thoughts to be heard, not dismissed or treated as trivial. That applies to both females and males. And a woman does not want her concerns dismissed as being part of 'a female being emotional' which is an underhanded illegitimate dig for thoughts that are important to an individual.
The only time 'calm down' might be warranted is if a person is about to hurt someone physically or destroy belongings.
A frequent poster in the Relationships forum uses 'calm down' as a condescending dismissive put down and dig when the differing poster is not excited at all - it's a way of debating that is underhanded, low, and lame and tries to set oneself in a superior position, the poster using it to preface a differing point of view.
Last edited by matisse12; 01-02-2018 at 10:37 PM..
Simple. It sounds patronizing.....it totally invalidates and discounts their reason for being upset in the first place, as if they are being overly emotional, instead of reacting appropriately....and it sounds sexist.
IMO, it has to do with "being told what to do" when you are at a very emotional, angry state of mind which kinda makes things worse. Most woman look at that as being "submissive"...not a good thing. Like I said, jut my opinion.
It may make a difference if the guy says "babe, PLEASE try to calm down"...instead of just "calm down!"
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