The girlfriend voice is a distinct change in pitch or tone of a man’s voice when talking to their significant other. The girlfriend voice is characterized by a higher pitch and a more effeminate tone with speech patterns scattered with pet names and childish words.
Let’s talk about this for a minute. I have direct experience with ‘the girlfriend voice’. Not because any man has ever used it on me or because I’ve used it on any woman, but I’ve listened to my brother use it on his wife for almost twenty years. Needless to say, they’re separated now. This voice makes me cringe. This voice makes me want to gauge out my own eyeballs. This voice used to make me want to yank out my brother’s vocal cords and set them on fire.
What makes me crazy about this voice is that it’s dehumanizing. It turns the girlfriend (or wife) into some kind of child that you have to talk in low, hushed, and gentle tones around like she might break like a china teapot. It insinuates that she can’t handle your regular voice. It also implies that you assume she’s going to blow up at you at any sense of equality or any indication that you see her as a partner and not as someone you must care for, like an invalid or a therapy client.
The pitch is always high and gentle and soft and is accompanied by words like, ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey’ and ‘baby’ which are all words I actually really love when not accompanied by that high, annoying, blinded-by-so-called-love-and-therefore-can’t-see-that-my-wife’s-a-psycho voice. Why the voice change? Why the condescending ‘gentle tone’? Do men think this is hot? To guys think it’s caring and sweet to sound all passive and retarded.
Whenever I used to visit my brother and his wife I used to want to kill them both. It was awkward at times. They both used the ‘voice’, but coming out of my brother who was woefully immature and was in no place to maintain a marriage was especially horrifying. I think they both thought that if they sounded like honey dripped from their tongues every time they spoke that they were sounding the way one sounds in a healthy relationship. Really, it was once they shrugged away those voices and spoke to each other in their actual voices that they could really deal with the damage in their marriage. Of course, nearly twenty years of ‘the girlfriend voice’ wreaks havoc on a relationship.
1. I used the girlfriend voice on my ex so often that now I can’t remember how I really sound. Even in bed I find myself saying shit like, ‘oh sweetie, how’s your little button feeling?’ when I really want to say, ‘yo bitch, did you fucking come already?’
2. The dude I’m seeing starts talking really slowly and softly when he really wants to convince me to let him play video games while I’m giving him a blowjob. My friend told me he’s using the girlfriend voice. I resent that. I’m not his girlfriend.
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