molliemao愛的小小羊圈。

It’s that time of the year again when it’s everyone’s time of the month – guys included. Here in the bowels of winter, bad moods get badder, personal issues get issuier, and up to 15 per cent of us may even slide into that infamous cesspool of darkness: seasonal affective disorder.

每年的這個時候跟每個月的那個（不順的）時候，男人也算在內啦。就在深冬時節，壞心情就更壞，奇蒙子就更那個了。大約有百分之十五以上的人阿～更是陷入那個惡名昭彰的陰鬱坑洞（裝屎用的）---季節性的情緒失調。（季經？）

Over the years, I’ve found ways to deal with winter blues – long, despairing walks followed by long, despairing hot showers – but when it comes to helping the women in my life when they’re feeling downcast, I’ve tended to default to that stereotypical guy strategy: annihilating her problems as soon as they arise. To do this, I simply attack them with a rapid-fire barrage of solutions. Of course, this approach tends to make women – and really, anybody – annoyed. And still upset.

這麼多年來，我找來解決冬季憂鬱的處理方案是這樣的，就給他絕望地一直走路，然後再給他絕望地去洗個熱水澡（這樣有用的話？心理醫生還混什麼阿？），但是要幫忙這種情緒發生在我身邊的女人身上時，我傾向於使用典型的男人策略：在她們發生情緒問題之際就消滅它們。為了達成這個目的，我以豎立快捷防火牆的方法簡潔的攻擊這些情緒。當然，這種方式使得女人～而且真的～任何人～惱火勒。而且仍然沮喪。

So this winter, I ask the question: What is the solution to this hyper-solving problem?

於是這個冬季，我不禁要問：什麼碗糕是這個超級難題的解決方案？

Deborah Tannen, who began writing books about interpersonal communication a couple of decades ago with You Just Don’t Understand, says the first step is for guys to not get too down on themselves if their instinct is to solve. It’s normal, she says, for each member of a couple to have a different way of approaching problems, and it’s bound to cause misunderstanding.

 幾十年前開始著手寫些有關人際互動書籍的黛柏娜譚寧───「你就是不懂」一書的作者說：第一步驟是這樣：要讓男人本能解決女人的沮喪，就是他們自己不要太認真看待女人的沮喪。她說這很正常，夫妻彼此都用各自不同的方式處理問題，這樣做一定會導致誤解。

“Each one can feel that the other is minimizing something that to them feels important,” she says. “If a woman is feeling really bad and he says, ‘Well, just do X, Y or Z,’ it’s like he’s dismissing that she’s feeling bad, because he thinks it would be so easily solved. But I think he might also feel dismissed, because here he’s making these efforts and they’re being treated as if they were nothing.”

她說：「雙方都覺得對方輕視自己覺得最重要的所在」。「如果女人覺得真的很糟，然後男人說：阿～妳就照X、Y、Z方法來作就好了。這樣（表面上好像）他擊退了她的情緒不佳，因為他認為這是再簡單不過的小問題罷了。我卻認為男人也許也覺得自己吃鱉了，因為他所做的這些努力，好像也沒有改善女人的情緒。」

Although she stresses styles don’t always fall along gender lines, Dr. Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, says she and her husband match the stereotypical divide; she wants him to just listen and he wants to solve.

雖然譚寧博士，喬治城大學的教授所講的模式並非總是男性或女性才表現出來的。她說：她和她老公倒符合這種刻板的分法；她只想老公聽就好，老公卻想解決她的問題。

 (to be continued)