While eating my egg and cheese sandwich/coffee breakfast this morning, I perused the paper and discovered that for some married folks pets are better listeners than their spouses.

While I can’t verify any of that from personal experience since I’ve never married, I have listened to plenty of talk from espoused male friends about their communicative challenges with their wives, usually, I think, with a certain masculine hyperbole attached that plays on gendered stereotypes of often puzzled and clueless male tolerance of female chattering.

(Why this or any poll focuses on the marriage class other than the cultural bias toward and privileging of that specific cultural institution despite it’s common dissolution continually befuddles me. It goes to the problematic of polls generally, their design flaws including and starting with the questions that are asked and their format. Most of them are ridiculously flawed!) Continue reading →